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Images as weapons of war: representation, mediation and interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2010

Abstract

Belief that images have become the critical ‘weapon’ in contemporary warfare has enjoyed great currency in the past decade. This belief rests upon certain understandings about the impact visual footage of terrorist attacks or still images of the abuse of prisoners have had on public opinion in different parts of the world. These understandings, in turn, reflect simplistic models of representation and mediation in which citizens are assumed to know little of the ‘true’ situation of war but are easily and primarily shocked by unexpected graphic images. To explore these relationships, this article presents analysis of original research from a three-year study of military practitioners, media coverage of security events, and collaborative audience ethnography across towns and cities in the UK. While military practitioners feel frustration that communicating with publics is ‘like talking to a brick wall’, analysis of audience interpretations of Abu Ghraib and other events suggests varied and negotiated understandings in which audiences account for processes of mediation as well as reflect on the event being represented. Images cannot necessarily be considered primary to explaining how an individual interprets a news story, and, to the extent and manner in which images do matter, this often depends on what longer historical narratives such images are situated within – by media or audiences themselves. No image is intrinsically shocking. For policymakers concerned with public diplomacy, for journalists and for audiences themselves there is a need for further research into the role images – Weber's ‘visual language’ – play amid today’s conditions of diffused war.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

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References

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33 For confidentiality reasons it is not possible to identify their roles in any more detail.

34 Moss and O'Loughlin, ‘Convincing Claims'.

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81 It is perhaps notable that in 142 interviews in the Shifting Securities study, cinema or miniseries were mentioned 14 times in this way.

82 Readers may also explore the literature on moral panics, which contain explorations of the sources of apparent underlying social fears. See Cohen, Stan, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (St. Albans, UK: Paladin, 1973)Google Scholar ; Cohen, Stan, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (3rd edition) (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar ; Hall, Stuart, Critcher, Chas, Jefferson, Tony, Clarke, John and Roberts, Bryan, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (London: Macmillan, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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89 This is not an original claim but is often overlooked in policy and academic discussion of images as ‘weapons’. Media studies scholars have long established that the meaning of images is ‘anchored’ in surrounding text or commentary. See for example, Hamilton, Robert, ‘Image and Context’, in Walsh, Jeffrey and Aulich, James (eds), Vietnam Images (London: Macmillan, 1989)Google Scholar .

90 Shifting Securities, Strand A, Interview MG2, lines 639–93.

91 Powell, Colin L. ‘Remarks to the UN Security Council’; (5 February 2003), {http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq-030205-powell-un-17300pf.htm}Google Scholar .

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95 On manufacturing consent, see Herman, Edward S., and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: The political economy of the mass media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988)Google Scholar . On recent models, see Bennett, Lawrence and Livingston, When the Press Fails; Robinson, The CNN Effect; Entman, Robert W., Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004)Google Scholar .

96 For example the AHRC programme Beyond Text: Sounds, Voices, Images, and Objects; the AHRC-funded projects Tuning In: Diasporic Contact Zones and the BBC World Service {http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/}, and Mediating and Commemorating the 2005 London Bombings; the ESRC-funded project Legitimising the discourses of radicalisation: Political violence in the new media ecology.