Dead Ground: Time-Spaces of Conflict, News, and Cultural Understanding

Abstract

Slogans like “geography matters” or “space makes a difference” are often repeated but in media studies there have been few efforts to go deeper into these concepts and to systematically explore what kind of geography could matter when we talk about conflict and war reporting. This article introduces the concept of “dead ground,” which refers to hidden cultural time-spaces where the cultural faultlines of conflicts are located. It explores cultural “dead grounds” within reporting on armed conflict in post-Soviet Georgia. It also analyses three different elements of dead ground by comparing local and news discourses on the conflict. Empirically, it explores the war between Russia and Georgia through interviews with local journalists, foreign correspondents, and international observers. The article shows that in order to move beyond “dead ground,” conflict reporting should advance towards anthropological reflexivity on how the spatio-temporal context defines a cultural understanding of conflict.

Notes

1. “There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know” (Donald Rumsfeldt, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2002). The starting statement is taken from Donald Rumsfeldt's 12th February 2002 press briefing, held at the Pentagon, and relates to U.S. operations against al Qaeda. U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) news transcript http://www.defenselink. mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid?2636. Last accessed 5 June 2008. (Salovaara-Moring, 2009a).

2. The two distinct paradigms are portrayed in Table 2. The first (news narrative) builds on the literature quoted previously and on studies on international newspaper coverage of the war in Georgia (Nazarenko, 2009; Salovaara-Moring, 2009d 2009e forthcoming). The second (cultural narrative) collects the critique against cultural superficiality which informants in Georgia expressed against this coverage in the interviews conducted during the field study. The news narrative presents representations from the discourse contained in international media covering the crisis (Nazarenko, 2009; Heikkilä, 2009, forthcoming). The cultural narrative presents critical representations contained in the interviews collected from informants in Georgia by the author during November and December 2009. The interview data consists of 25 interviews of which 5 were given by informants who want to remain anonymous (see list of references). It must, however, be noted that the informants were not solely critical against international reporting but also considered it insightful and professional, within its limited cultural scope.

3. The ontological question defines the form of reality and, consequently, what can be known about it. At this level, questions that relate to matters of real existence and real action are admissible. The ontological question revolves around the existence of a reality. The epistemological question focuses on the relationship between the observer and what can be known. Is there a correspondence with a reality? What can be discovered? The methodological question focuses on how the inquirer can go about finding out whatever he or she believes can be known (Moring, 2005, p. 360).

4. On 12th August 2008, Brian Whitmore wrote in the Asia Times Online: Brian Whitmore: Saakashvili Overplays His Hand. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH12Ag01.html.

5. The headlines used in this section are from Salla Nazarenko's study on media coverage of the Georgian War.

6. The news narrative presents representations from the discourse contained in international media covering the crisis (Nazarenko, 2009; Salovaara-Moring, 2009e, forthcoming). The cultural narrative presents critical representations contained in the interviews collected among informants in Georgia by the author.