Discourses of War (original) (raw)

2013, Selling war. The Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the "War on Terror"

The irruption, in Modernity, of the masses in the political scene brought about a deep change in the way war is thought and fought. From an operation carried out with the use of a restricted number of troops, modern war has increasingly become an event that requires the total involvement, whether direct or indirect, of the people inside a State. This historical-political change strongly contributed to transform war from a purely military activity to a cultural event. Notwithstanding the varying nature of the media used in the course of history, modern war was always preceded and accompanied by a discourse: a set of narratives and images capable of imposing, on the public sphere, a historically specific concept of war in order to attain popular support. Through the analysis of the different discourses of war, we can observe how the twentieth century, during which the relationship between war and communication reaches its most mature phase, saw the development of three main discourses; three discourses that are different yet inescapably connected. The first half of the century was characterized by the circulation of a discourse that conveyed a positive idea of war, exalting its mortiferous nature and heroic dimension. War thus became socially accepted, and though taking on different nuances in each single country, Europe was pervaded by the idea that war could regenerate a continent considered by many old and tired. After the two World Wars, the tragic historical consequences connected to this discourse and the development of weapons of mass destruction contribute to the development of a very different concept of war. That event which had triggered so much enthusiasm until the mid-twentieth century became a dangerous and potentially catastrophic event, which produced a constant international tension and consequently shifted war onto a strictly virtual plain. Only with the end of the Cold War, there is a return of a war that is actually, materially fought; this time, however, the discourse developed around the concept of war appears to reverse the terms that had been dominant in the first half of the century. The penetrating role of the media imposes the dominant idea, in the public sphere, that war is a cold, aseptic event: it appears as an operation that aims exclusively at restoring a violated normality through absolute technological precision. Through a comparison of the different discourses of war, we can observe how the concept of war continually undergoes a process of semantic sliding. This is not a spontaneous process, but the consequence of constant power dynamics that transform the public sphere into one of the most important and significant battlefields. (The attached file is a draft, but it has the same layout and page numbers as the original)