Communication And Culture In War And Peace

By exploring the role of both culture and the mass media, this volume fills a gap in the literature on war and peace. Outstanding scholars provide an overview of critical mass media research and open up entirely new perspectives on the ongoing debate over communications issues in war and peace. The contributions bring together common themes including the military-industrial-communications complex, cultural imperialism and transnational control of communications. Various perspectives are covered, such as gender issues, language study and bureaucratization.

Roach provides an excellent account of the contributions of feminist peace researchers to the analysis of cultural militarism and its twin, cultural violence against women. Altogether, this book is a worthy enterprise that will help both activists and scholars gain a more in-depth understanding of the barriers to change errected by the media′s use of information technology, and will be useful in developing scenarios and strategies for the creative use of that technology for peaceful social transformation. --Elise Boulding in Media Development Does the media have a perverse fascination with war and violence? Do television, newspapers, and magazines neglect the forces of peace in favor of the more dramatic war machines, thereby amplifying the guns rather than muting them? If so, how does media coverage reflect the culture for which it works? By exploring the role of both culture and mass media, this volume fills a crucial void in the study of war and peace. Outstanding scholars provide a history and overview of critical mass media research and investigate emerging issues dealing with the ongoing debate over communication in war and peace. Several chapters deal specifically with the role of communication culture in the Gulf War, while others discuss more general themes, including the military/industrial/communication complex, cultural imperialism, and transnational control of communication. Many of the essays offer a uniquely feminist reading of war and peace, a perspective typically unacknowledged in mainstream communication work. This timely book also weaves peripheral concerns like multiculturalism, international communication law, women and peace, and communication technology into the primary themes of media and war. The research and practical information given here will be useful for courses in peace and conflict studies, international mass communication, and intercultural communication. Professionals in international relations, negotiations, and the media will find this book to be both fascinating and illuminating. "Original research on the coverage of disarmament stories and peace issues in Canadian dailies and Vincent Mosco′s excellent blueprint for converting the military machine to a peace system give Roach′s work practical and positive dimensions. Abstracts at the beginning of the chapters, full bibliographies, and a preface by the ′father′ of peace studies, Johan Galtung, add to the importance of this book. Recommended for anyone interested in the use/minuses of mass media to cover up/explain/promote governmental efforts to keep situations tense and warlike." --Choice "Communication and Culture in War and Peace provides a strategic road map for scholarly and citizen action. This is tightly edited, passionately--and convincingly--argued, and a broadly conceived book. It fills a large gap and is likely to be a widely used seminal resource and text for some time to come." --George Gerbner, Professor of Communication and Dean Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania

The Language of Peace: Communicating to Create Harmony offers practical insights for educators, students, researchers, peace activists, and all others interested in communication for peace. This book is a perfect text for courses in peace education, communications, media, culture, and other fields. Individuals concerned about violence, war, and peace will find this volume both crucial and informative. This book sheds light on peaceful versus destructive ways we use words, body language, and the language of visual images. Noted author and educator Rebecca L. Oxford guides us to use all these forms of language more positively and effectively, thereby generating greater possibilities for peace. Peace has many dimensions: inner, interpersonal, intergroup, international, intercultural, and ecological. The language of peace helps us resolve conflicts, avoid violence, and reduce bullying, misogyny, war, terrorism, genocide, circus journalism, political deception, cultural misunderstanding, and social and ecological injustice. Peace language, along with positive intention, enables us to find harmony inside ourselves and with people around us, attain greater peace in the wider world, and halt environmental destruction. This insightful book reveals why and how.

During the First World War, mass media achieved an enormous and continuously growing importance in all belligerent countries. Newspaper, illustrated magazines, comics, pamphlets, and instant books, fi ctional works, photography, and the new-born “theater of imagery”, the cinema, were crucial in order to create a heroic vision of the events, to mobilize and maintain the consensus on the war. But their role was pivotal also in creating the image of the war’s end and fi nally, together with a widespread, new literary genre, the war memoirs, to shape the collective memory of the confl ict for the next generations. Even before November 1918, the media raised high expectations for a multifaceted peace: a new global order, the beginning of a peaceful era, the occasion for a regenerating apocalypse. Likewise, in the following decades, particularly war literature and cinema were pivotal to reverse the icon of the Great War as an epic crusade and a glorious chapter of the national history and to create the hegemonic image of a senseless carnage. The Mediatization of War and Peace focalizes on the central role played by mass media in the tortuous transition to the post-war period as well as on the profound disenchantment generated by their prophesies.

During the First World War, mass media achieved an enormous and continuously growing importance in all belligerent countries. Newspaper, illustrated magazines, comics, pamphlets, and instant books, fi ctional works, photography, and the new-born “theater of imagery”, the cinema, were crucial in order to create a heroic vision of the events, to mobilize and maintain the consensus on the war. But their role was pivotal also in creating the image of the war’s end and fi nally, together with a widespread, new literary genre, the war memoirs, to shape the collective memory of the confl ict for the next generations. Even before November 1918, the media raised high expectations for a multifaceted peace: a new global order, the beginning of a peaceful era, the occasion for a regenerating apocalypse. Likewise, in the following decades, particularly war literature and cinema were pivotal to reverse the icon of the Great War as an epic crusade and a glorious chapter of the national history and to create the hegemonic image of a senseless carnage. The Mediatization of War and Peace focalizes on the central role played by mass media in the tortuous transition to the post-war period as well as on the profound disenchantment generated by their prophesies.

Contemporary Peacemaking draws on recent experience to identify and explore the essential components of peace processes. The book is organized around five key themes in peacemaking: planning for peace; negotiations; violence on peace processes; peace accords; and peace accord implementation and post-war reconstruction.

Amid the ongoing and volatile debate over the nature and potential of peace journalism, this volume presents visionary insights from some of the most prominent scholars in the fi eld. Th e signifi cant empirical studies included here will provide foundation data for communication studies. Th e contributors broaden the purview and terrain of peace journalism to include new media, and off ers essays on the eff ects and the content of global communications. In sum, the thirteenth volume of Peace and Policy deepens our empirical knowledge of the nature and eff ects of confl ict, while underscoring the increase in numbers of participants and breadth of communications.