458999 2012
MWC5310.1177/1750635212458999Media, War & ConflictHoskins et al.
MWC Media, War & Conflict 5(3) 201–203 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1750635212458999 mwc.sagepub.com
Editors’ note Andrew Hoskins University of Glasgow, UK
Ben O’Loughlin
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Barry Richards
Bournemouth University, UK
Philip Seib
University of Southern California, USA
Media, War & Conflict’s fifth anniversary conference will be held from 11–12 April 2013 at Royal Holloway, University of London. The journal was first published in April 2008, bringing together international scholars and journalists from the fields of political science, history and communication, and military, NGO and journalist practitioners. The aim was to map the shifting arena of war, conflict and terrorism in an increasingly mediated age, and to explore cultural, political and technological transformations in media–military relations, journalistic practices and digital media, and their impact on policy, publics, and outcomes of warfare. The fifth anniversary conference offers the chance to showcase the best research in this field while also taking stock of how the field has developed, and identifying the emerging challenges we face. We invite papers on the following topics: • • • • • • • • • • • •
Contemporary and historical war reporting Changing forms of credibility, legitimacy and authority Media ethics in the coverage of conflict The role of citizen-users and social media in conflict Terrorism, media and publics Intelligence operations and media Media and conflict prevention, peacekeeping and post-conflict scenarios Photo and video journalism in wartime War and conflict in popular culture The power of the visual and other modalities Commemoration and memorialisation of war and conflict Digital or cyber warfare
Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com by guest on October 27, 2015
202
Media, War & Conflict 5(3)
The final deadline for abstracts is 20 January 2013. Please submit 250-word abstracts and author-affiliation details to
[email protected]; registration details are available from 1 September 2012 at http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/mwcconference/. Further details of the journal’s aims, scope and published articles can be found at http://mwc. sagepub.com/. Media, War & Conflict (from 1 September at http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/mwccon ference/. Further details of the journal’s aims, scope and published articles can be found at http://mwc.sagepub.com) was launched at a time when the character of both war and media seemed marked by flux and uncertainty. Wars and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Darfur seemed irresolvable. The war on terror was to be the long war, perhaps even the war without end. The new media of 2008 seemed to be contributing to the stretching out of war. At any moment of possible resolution, participants on any side could record and disseminate a violent, calm-shattering video. Old identities and antagonisms could be revived. History was not settled, it was an archive whose digitization made it malleable for contemporary ends. The debates and buzzwords of the time addressed media’s ‘weaponization’ and the chaos this was unleashing. Five years on, the field is experiencing some consolidation. The shock of the new has been overtaken as many – though not all – policymakers and practitioners have learnt to manage social media and its integration with broadcast media. There is a realization that rapid transformation of media technologies is now a permanent condition. After eyecatching uses of Twitter by the Mumbai terrorists of 2008 and Al-Qaeda’s sophisticated, adaptive platforms of 2005–2009, authorities put into practice a range of surveillance and censorship practices and found creative ways to push their own counter-narratives. A generation of journalists are now more comfortable using digital media to produce programming on the move. The pages of Media, War & Conflict reflect this consolidation. As editors we have been able to see bodies of work form around themes not only by surveying the articles received and published but also by downloading figures for articles and citation analysis. Readers may not be surprised to learn that the traditional themes of this field have reemerged: the image and the visual; the role of journalists in war time; compassion fatigue and public attitudes to conflict; and government power, control and legitimacy. The role of digital and social media was initially an additional theme, an exciting new trajectory, but it seems that analysis of the actual role of these new tools and environments shows they are integrated into the classic relationships between publics, newsmakers, militaries and governments. We launched the journal because we were dissatisfied with a proliferation of ‘soda straw’ views of these changes. We wanted to create a forum for more systemic, comparative and historically-informed explanations. Journalists and policymakers expressed their frustrations with adapting to the pace of new devices and information flows but lacked any space to stand back and reflect. Scholars in the early 2000s were ploughing their disciplinary furrows and often producing exactly the same explanations they always had. Meanwhile many of the best studies in, say, psychology or international relations, were being overlooked by scholars working in other disciplines who didn’t read psychology or international relations journals. The journal’s pre-launch conference in Marquette
Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com by guest on October 27, 2015
203
Hoskins et al.
in 2007 saw many now-established voices realize that others were working on the same problems through different but potentially helpful lenses. The journal aimed for global reach. With 20 percent of subscriptions coming from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, we are moving towards this goal. One of the clearest trends in the first five years of Media, War & Conflict has been the steadily increasing number of research articles being submitted from Africa, and East Africa in particular. We have also been impressed with the panoply of different approaches contributors have taken. As with many academic journals open to analysis of media and communication, Media, War & Conflict receives a large chunk of predictable and often formulaic content and frame analyses. Indeed, we can count dozens of articles on the 2003 Iraq War analysing coverage of the same news sources to answer the same narrow range of questions. However, there have been original studies of institutions, roles, policies and interdependencies across a range of media, military and NGO actors, and across cities, countries and regions. We have seen close hermeneutic textual interpretation alongside quantitative studies of journalists’ psychological health. Articles have covered journalists’ and policymakers’ first-hand experiences and reflections and the presentation of findings from major research council-funded programmes. Protests and activism have been addressed from political science studies of mobilization to cultural commentaries on shoe-throwing, while the journal has published treatments of the political economy of news agendas, military budget reporting, aid appeals, and the war on drugs. We have also published reviews of several exhibits, conferences and films, as well as books. We have published a select few special issues in the first five years. We wish to thank the editors of those special issues, namely Shahira Fahmy on Media Images, Piers Robinson for The CNN Effect Reconsidered, and Maura Conway and Lisa McInerney on Terrorism in ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Media. All three offered rigorous scholarship on questions of major political and analytical consequence. As we move into the next five years, we invite proposals for potential special issues. The first five years would not have been possible without the hundreds of anonymous reviewers who have given their time and expertise to serve the editorial process. Chris Perkins has been a reliable and imaginative Reviews Editor since 2010, and we are lucky to have had so many knowledgeable commentators write critical, thoughtful pieces for the Book Reviews section. We are indebted to Mila Steele, Asli Anik, Monica Schiza, James Tattle and Jane Price at Sage. We also appreciate the enormous professionalism and day-by-day assistance of Arlene Luck and Myles Clarke at the University of Southern California.
Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com by guest on October 27, 2015
