Digital war – Images of the 2003 Iraq war
One of the main questions in this first part of the module was how the relationship of politics and the media is shaped. One of the approaches that was introduced prominently was the so called CNN Effect hypothesis, which is, among others, one of the current explanation strategies in conflict communications research, stating that media coverage affect policy processes. As we could see from the readings of this unit, the empirical evidence has still many gaps in this field (see Robinson 1999) and the results of the debate around the CNN effect are often contradictory (see Gilboa 2005). The discussion about the relative power of media in conflict coverage is stuck in a dead-end road (see Robinson 2005). Brüggemann and Weßler state that the media impact can't be generalized, that every conflict is different and has to be analyzed in his own context to explain whether media had a certain political influence on a conflict or if they were just obedient chroniclers of political propaganda. In the following, I want to discuss the media images of the 2003 Iraq war as an example where the classical attempt by the war waging state (here the U.S.) to direct media coverage is confronted with a new rival in the race for dominance over public opinion – the internet.
U.S. information policy in the 2003 Iraq war
The information-concept of the U.S. government constituted of three major aspects: increased "entertainization" of the war coverage for the public in the own country, the embedded journalists program, and the famous shock and awe strategy towards the enemy. Key themes included frequent repetition of the official justifications for war, including the threat of weapons of mass destruction, the argument for regime change, and the "war on terror" argument. Additionally, the U.S. policiy sought to promote its agenda on a daily basis by highlighting humanitarian activities and underlining the brutality of regime of Saddam Hussein( Robinson 2005).
So there were accelerated attempts by the government to manage the information environment. They used publicity rather than censorship to shape coverage.
"Taking advantage of the limited capacity of news agendas, political administrations encourage coverage of particular issues through the provision of information and access." (Robinson 2005) The journalists were embedded in the troops and shared the perspective of the soldiers right on the frontline, leading the viewer at home to believe that he is really part of the events. These embedded journalists delivered a massive load of pictures and other material, that didn't essentially contain more or new information. As they were bound to the soldiers they were not able to see anything different, for example the impact of a battle on the civilian population.
These techniques are explicitly designed to influence media agendas by promoting coverage of some issues over others and to influence the framing of stories in ways that support official policy (Robinson 2005).
News coverage from other sides
Of course there where not just embedded journalist in this war, there where many independent ones, too, trying on their own to get good pictures, although the U.S. government didn't make it easy for them. Those journalists often came closer to the Iraqi civilians and victims, and their pictures draw a different picture of the war, showing for example the boy Ali Ismail Abbas who lost both arms through a bomb attack. Those kind of pictures were especially welcome to the Iraqi government, and often they directed journalists specifically to hospitals with many civilian victims, so that the spread the images of the suffering population. These for the U.S. more inconvenient pictures were shown in some big magazines, but mostly on the internet (see www.digitaljournalist.org).
The role of the internet
The internet became an important source for the people in the U.S., they looked up on the internet what the other media didn't show them. From the side of the government, there was no way to control or censor this quite new information flow. The people had access to war blogs and forums that provided pictures and comments on the events in the field, sometimes even through eye-witnesses. This is the way how many pictures showing the cruelty of war were spread, leading to a growing opposition towards this war. The digital pictures became visual weapons of ant-war activism and not the classical news networks such as CNN. The U.S. government for example tried to prevent that pictures of coffins of fallen soldiers or war death lists were published, but they obviously underestimated the internet.
The inconvenient truth
Images of prisoners or deaths shall mostly effect a demoralization of the enemies public, and of course every side in a conflicts wants to prevent that. But often such kind of pictures are used to influence politics, for example the pictures of captured U.S. Soldiers were shocking the country, so that there was a need of a propagandist counter strike, in this case it was the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
Arabian broadcasting stations in contrast often showed dead or injured Iraqi children, sometimes also victims of U.S. war crimes. This was supposed to bring into focus the war victims and to destroy the image of a clean war wanted by the USA.
Worth mentioning here are also the pictures of torture from the Abu Ghraib prison, that we all still remember very well. They were a moral and political disaster for the USA. Such kind of pictures rarely became public before, but in this case the fast spread via the internet was exceptional leading to a news coverage afterwards. From that point on, more and more shocking private pictures taken by soldiers appeared on the internet and reached a broad public in the end. Those pictures, aside from the government-wanted vision of a clean war framed our view of the conflict.
The efforts to influence the press coverage of the Iraq wars by the U.S. government were designed to prevent the CNN effect (see also Livingston, Eachus 1995) understood as media coverage affecting the policy process, but the endangerment came from a different direction. At that time already, another then underestimated information tool emerged – the internet – and due to its increasing influence, it is questionable if the classical CNN effect will still play a big role in the future.
By Patrizia Loacker
References
Michael Brüggemann, Hartmut Weßler (2009): Medien im Krieg. Das Verhältnis von Medien und Politik im Zeitalter transnationaler Konfliktkommunikation. In: Politik in der Mediendemokratie, Wiesbaden, p. 635-657.
Eytan Gilboa (2005): Global Television News and Foreign Policy: Debating the CNN Effect. In: International Studies Perspectives 6, p. 325-341.
Steven Livingston, Todd Eachus (1995): Humanitarian crises and U.S. Foreign policy:Somalia and the CNN effect reconsidered. In: Political Communication, 12(4), p. 413-429.
Gerhard Paul (2004): Bilder des Krieges- Krieg der Bilder. Die Visualisierung des modernen Krieges, Paderborn u.a.
Gerhard Paul (2005): Der Bilderkrieg, Inszenierungen, Bilder und Perspektiven der „Operation Irakische Freiheit", Göttingen.
Piers Robinson (1999): The CNN Effect: Can the News Media Drive Foreign Policy? In: Review of International Studies 25, p. 301-309.
Piers Robinson (2005): The CNN Effect Revisited. In: Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22(4), p. 344-349.
Marcel Saba (ed.) (2003): Witness Iraq. A War Journal February- April 2003, New York.
