A Century of Media, A Century of War

by Robin Andersen

Book Overview

Forged over the course of a century, the connections between war and media run long and deep. As this book reveals, the history of war and its telling has been a battle over public perception. The selection of which stories are told and which are ignored helps justify past battles and ensure future wars. Narratives of protest and pain, defeat and suffering, guilt and abuse struggle to be heard amid the empowering myths of war and heroism. As Robin Andersen argues, the history of struggle between war and its representation has changed the way war is fought and the way we tell the stories of war. Information management, once called censorship and propaganda, has developed in tandem with new media technologies. Now, digital imaging creates virtual battlefields as computer-based technologies transform the weapons of war. Along the way, images on the nightly news, on movie screens, and in video games have turned war into entertainment. In the grip of virtual war, it is difficult to realize the loss of compassion or the consequences for democracy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820478938
• ISBN13: 9780820478937
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publi
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Must Read to Better Understand the War in Iraq

Media critic Robin Andersen's timely work, A Century of Media, A Century of War, is a must read for those seeking to understand how we were drawn into the war in Iraq. Just how did the Bush Administration and its corporate media allies sell us on successive lies to get us into this war? Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Fordham University, Professor Andersen investigates the collaborative relationship of the media with the current and past administrations to promote the wars of the last 100 years. The chapter, "The Military Entertainment Complex: Permanent War and the Digital Spectacular," is the most cogent look yet at the nexus of the media industry and the Pentagon as Andersen examines the Department of Defense's (DOD) funding of corporate research and development of "militainment" for the recruitment, training and selling of current and future wars. In her conclusion, "War, Humanism and Democracy," Andersen clearly elucidates the threat the media/DOD collusion is to democracy, writing, "Militainment does not fulfill the media's democratic mandate, any more than does the simple dissemination of government proclamations." This seminal work provides the reader with a better understanding of how we are being manipulated and gives us the tools to cut through the media fog surrounding wars and maybe, just maybe, help prevent future armed conflicts that are not in the nation's interest.