War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War

The trinity of government, military and publics has been drawntogether into immediate and unpredictable relationships in a "newmedia ecology" that has ushered in new asymmetries in the waging ofwar and terror. To help us understand these new relationships, Andrew Hoskins and Ben O'Loughlin here provide a timely, comprehensive and highly readable survey of the field of war andmedia.

War is diffused through a complex mesh of our everyday media.Paradoxically, this both facilitates and contains the presence andpower of enemies near and far. The conventions of so-calledtraditional warfare have been splintered by the availability andconnectivity of the principal locus of war today: the electronicand digital media. Hoskins and O'Loughlin identify and illuminatethe conditions of what they term "diffused war" and the newchallenges it raises for the actors who wage and counter warfare, for their agents and mechanisms of the new media and for masspublics.

This book offers an invaluable review of the key literature andpresents a fresh approach to the understanding of the dynamicrelationships between war and media. It will be welcomed by a broadrange of students taking courses on war and media and relatedmodules, especially in media, communication and cultural studies, politics and international relations, sociology, journalism, andsecurity studies.