Online Engagements: War and Social Media

  • Andrew Kirton
Chapter

Abstract

This chapter involves a consideration of the opportunities that new ‘Social Media’ may provide for the circulation of alternative and critical information pertaining to war, particularly that which reveals the criminality and wrongdoing present in war, and especially on the part of those powerful institutions who would seek to legitimate it. The chapter is not concerned with engaging in debates about what constitutes crime, wrongdoing, or otherwise in the context of war, but rather with the ways in which wrongdoing in this context may be brought to the public attention, and with what the implications of this might be. It is asserted that as part of its analyses, a developing criminology of war must concern itself with the role of this changing media environment.

Keywords

Social Medium Powerful Actor Armed Conflict Powerful Institution Mainstream Medium 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

References

  1. Alexa. (2015). Top sites. Available at: http://www.alexa.com/topsites. Accessed 30 Oct 2015.
  2. Allan, S. (2014). Witnessing in crisis: Photo-reportage of terror attacks in Boston and London. Media War & Conflict, 7(2), 133–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Allan, S., & Zelizer, B. (Eds.). (2004). Reporting war: Journalism in wartime. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
  4. Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  5. Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
  6. Fuchs, C. (2010). Alternative media as critical media. European Journal of Social Theory, 13(2), 173–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Fuchs, C. (2011). Foundations of critical media and information studies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  8. Fuchs, C. (2013). OccupyMedia! The occupy movement and Social Media in crisis capitalism. Alresford: Zero Books.Google Scholar
  9. Fuchs, C. (2014). Social Media: A critical introduction. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  10. Glasgow University Media Group. (1976). Bad news. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.Google Scholar
  11. Glasgow University Media Group. (1980). More bad news. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.Google Scholar
  12. Glasgow University Media Group. (1982). Really bad news. London: Readers and Writers.Google Scholar
  13. Greenslade, R. (2003, February 17). Their masters voice. The Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/feb/17/mondaymediasection.iraq. Accessed 23 Oct 2015.
  14. Harkin, J. (2006, August 12). War porn. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/aug/12/comment.media2. Accessed 23 Oct 2015.
  15. Herman, E., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of mass media. Toronto: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
  16. Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
  17. Jewkes, Y. (2015). Media and crime (3rd ed.). London: Sage.Google Scholar
  18. Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and postmodern. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Kellner, D. (2004). Media propaganda and spectacle in the war on Iraq: A critique of U.S. broadcasting networks. Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 4(3), 329–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Mair, M., Elsey, C., Watson, P. G., & Smith, P. V. (2013). Interpretive asymmetry, retrospective inquiry and the explication of action in an incident of friendly fire. Symbolic Interaction, 36(4), 398–416.Google Scholar
  21. Mair, M., Watson, P. G., Elsey, C., & Smith, P. V. (2012). War-making and sense-making: Some technical reflections on an instance of ‘friendly fire’. The British Journal of Sociology, 63(1), 75–96.Google Scholar
  22. Pilger, J. (2014). War by media and the triumph of propaganda. Available at: http://johnpilger.com/articles/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda. Accessed 30 Oct 2015.
  23. Rentschler, C. (2004). Witnessing: US citizenship and the vicarious experience of suffering. Media Culture and Society, 26, 296–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Self, W. (2014, January 23). Click away now: How bloodshed in the desert lost its reality. The Guardian, Tuesday, pp. 27–29.Google Scholar
  25. Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the pain of others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
  26. Tait, S. (2008). Pornographies of violence? Internet spectatorship and body horror. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(1), 91–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. The New York Times. (2010). The war logs articles. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/26askthetimes.html?_r=0. Accessed 25 Sept 2015.
  28. Thussu, D. K., & Freedman, D. (Eds.). (2003). War and the media. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  29. WikiLeaks. (2010). Collateral murder. Available at: https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/. Accessed 25 Sept 2015.
  30. WikiLeaks. (2011a). About. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/About.html. Accessed 23 July 2015.
  31. WikiLeaks. (2011b). Banking blockade. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html. Accessed 30 Oct 2015.
  32. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations (E. Anscombe, Trans. & Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  33. Zelizer, B. (1998). Remembering to forget: Holocaust memory through the camera’s eye. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Andrew Kirton
    • 1
  1. 1.University of LiverpoolLiverpoolUK

Personalised recommendations