Media Power: A Radical View

Abstract

Even though they are recognized as being among the most important agents of contemporary societies (see Debord, 1967; Baudrillard, 1981; Harvey, 1990), the media have rarely been investigated as an agent contributing to the transformation of war.* That a transformation has occurred seems to be confirmed by the constellation of labels that have been used to define contemporary conflict: it has been called a war that is ‘of the third kind’ (Holsti, 1996), ‘postmodern’ (Gray, 1997), ‘without identity’ (Laïdi, 1998), ‘new’ (Kaldor, 1999; Shaw, 2005), ‘virtual’ (Ignatieff, 2001), ‘virtuous’ (Der Derian, 2001), ‘humane’ (Coker, 2001), and even a form of ‘spectator-sport’ (Mclnnes, 2002). Besides the nuances differentiating each scholar’s view, contemporary conflict and warfare have been invariably connected to several recurrent elements: globalization; the decline of the state; the emergence of transnational relations, both cultural and economic; late capitalism; post-industrialism; the end of ideologies and metaphysics; post-heroism; and the rise of the ‘society of spectacle’ and the information age.¹