Arrested war: the third phase of mediatization

Abstract

After Broadcast War and Diffused War comes Arrested War, the latest paradigm of war and media. Each paradigm coincides with a discrete phase of mediatization. This article explains how war and media operated during each phase, describing the key characteristics of war, the form and nature of the prevailing media ecology, and how power was exercised by and distributed within government, military, and media elites. Following the sense of flux and uncertainty during the second phase of mediatization, when digital content and non-linear communication dynamics generated Diffused War, Arrested War is characterized by the appropriation and control of previously chaotic dynamics by mainstream media and, at a slower pace, government and military policy-makers. We use the ongoing Ukraine crisis to examine Arrested War in operation. In setting out a new paradigm of war and media, we also reflect on the difficulties of periodizing and historicizing these themes and ask what theoretical and conceptual tools are likely to be needed to understand and explain Arrested War.

Keywords:

• war
• mediatization
• journalism
• conflict
• Ukraine
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Andrew Hoskins is Interdisciplinary Research Professor in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow. [email: [email protected]]

Ben O'Loughlin is Professor of International Relations and Co-Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. By ‘media ecology’ we draw on William Merrin's work to mean the idea that media technologies can be understood and studied like organic life-forms, as existing in a complex set of interrelationships within a specific balanced environment. Technological developments are seen to change all these interrelationships, upsetting the existing balance and thus potentially impacting upon the entire ‘ecology’. For a defining and historically rich account of ‘media ecology', see Merrin (2014) and especially pp. 44–60. Cf. McLuhan 1964; Postman 1970; Fuller 2007.

2. See http://projects.nytimes.com/watching-syrias-war

3. See also Hoskins and Tulloch (in press) who identify ‘hyperconnectivity’ across established and emergent media as shaping new conflagrations of risk actors, discourses, and events, affording twenty-first century risk its uncertain and insecure character.

4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fh2r1

5. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bbc-documentary-to-show-helmand-through-soldiers-eyes

6. New verification agencies have also emerged, such as Storyful. See https://storyful.com

7. In early 2015, for instance, the British military announced its new unit to use social media to conduct psychological operations (psyops) to undermine the morale of enemies (BBC News, 2015). Named the 77 Brigade, the unit was quickly labelled the “Facebook warriors” (DUN Project, 2015). News of this initiative was repeatedly discussed on television through the weekend of 31 January 2015.

8. http://rt.com/shows/breaking-set-summary/

9. The Oxford English Dictionary provided the following relevant definition of ‘meme’: An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.’ Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/meme