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Consuming War

Consuming War. Weapons of Mass Persuasion. April 4, 2008. 1. 1. Consuming War. Media is commodified Media is a vehicle for wartime propaganda War Coverage is framed like movie genres. Consuming Media. The press operates like a market

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Consuming War

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  1. Consuming War Weapons of Mass Persuasion April 4, 2008 1 1

  2. Consuming War Media is commodified Media is a vehicle for wartime propaganda War Coverage is framed like movie genres

  3. Consuming Media • The press operates like a market • Sorting through media is central to democracy • Wars are ugly, scary and largely hidden from the public.

  4. Methodology • Purpose: “to investigate how consumers of Iraq war made meaning and what some of these meanings were.” • Focus Groups • Toronto Area

  5. Propaganda - a set of messages intended to influence the opinions and behaviours of large groups of people-used frequently by governments during times of war

  6. Media and Wartime Propaganda

  7. Washington Goeson the Offensive • Manipulation of Language • Every War needs a brand • The public's interpretation • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuRjX7Srw0I

  8. The Role Of the Press • Objective journalism? -Weak reporting -Embedded journalists -Panel of "experts" -Incomplete coverage

  9. Iraq War: Appearing as a War made in Hollywood? • The panels accounts of what they saw were “peppered” with specific references to recent movies: • Ex. Wag the Dog, Terminator 3, Three Kings, Star Wars, Star Trek • Iraq the movie was actually a series of stories, some tragic, some comic, and some triumphant, appealing to a range of tastes.

  10. Breaking War Down by Genre 1. Adventure: • “ …this is appealing to what I call the Joe Lunchbox type” 2. Sci-Fi: • “hideous” weapons that he might soon launch. • “…the great unseen, unknown peril that lurks on the other side of the sand dune” • “…I mean it’s Star Wars, no question about it, this push-button warfare. It’s quite unbelievable.” 3. Action: “…I guess my big surprise was all this yakking about fire power and shock and awe and stuff…and how little actual hitting and damages there was.”

  11. Breaking War Down by Genre 4. Human Interest “..The passion for the human-interest story was one of the worst things about public affairs coverage in the modern age.” 5. Comedy • “…The Iraqi minister who became like the knight in the Monty Python skit who continues to fight on when he’s lost all his limbs.” • http://youtube.com/watch?v=bAPJBcKqZF4

  12. Consumer Voices= Practicing Democracy? • Interviewees were voracious consumers of the news media • Created defense mechanisms against the onslaught of propaganda and infotainment. • The impact of the war media was always mediated by their views, their prejudices, their tastes, the ways the navigated through the torrent of images and sounds. • The ways the individuals extracted meaning from the welter of infotainment and propaganda showed the very kind of competence essential to democracy

  13. Recap • Media is commodified • Media is a vehicle for wartime propaganda • War Coverage is framed like movie genres

  14. That’s a Wrap • In using a panel, did Rutherford prove that the media has a strong hand in shaping opinion about the war? • How could the study have been improved? (Biases? Limitations?)

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