Spinning the War

This week we discussed media tactics during times of war and conflict. While am going to try to keep this post from being a political rant, a passage in Hanson’s chapter entitled “War and Peace in the Information Age” really resonated with me. Not only does it sum up my feelings on the war on terror, I think it clearly illustrates much of the reason for complexity in today’s new media. She writes:

“The confounding of the war on terrorism and the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Arab and Muslim world encouraged an array of simplistic, hard sell tactics that focused on delivering the message without taking the first important step of listening to the targeted audiences and trying to understand their values and worldviews” (Hanson 118).

Hanson sums up quite well the reasons for the lack of buy-in for the war on terror, reflected in increasingly low ratings for the President. This is not to say the US should have sit back and taken a passive response to the attacks on September 11th. Of course I believe that from a military standpoint, a forceful reaction to the terrorist attacks was absolutely necessary and warranted, but the reaction in the media channels leaves itself open to further critique. The framing of events was very effective with the US population, mainly due to the fact that the political and media interpreted the war as a threat to cultural values, an appeal that spoke to the American people. However, as time went on the focus of the invasion became muddied, and the reasons for the US occupation more and more unclear. If you go back to day one in class, we learned that communication technologies have crossed political boundaries, bringing messages and influences from all the corners of the globe. Failure to take these points of view into consideration is too narrow a lens to view today’s complicated issues, especially in a war as politically delicate as the invasion of Iraq. In addition, the American media spin on the events that did not seem to reflect well on either the people of the Arab world.

Interestingly enough, the article by Powers and el-Nawawy explain in part why this occurs. The hope for international media coverage was to increase a public conversation, and perhaps even homogenize, to an extent, the public sphere. Alas, the reality is more like “sphericules”, or bubbles of culturally similar values around which media channels tend to report in a “impartial, yet [locally] sensitive” manner (Powers and el-Nawawy 268). The media presents these conflicts with a bias towards one culture or another, depending on where they are broadcasting. Thus, going back to the quote by Hanson, it is important to know and understand your audience if you are trying to present an opinion with which they will agree.