War on terror and the media
Media framing of (and media influenced by) the war on terror / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The mass media is recognised as playing a significant role in the war on terror, both in regard to perpetuating and shaping particular understandings of the motivations of the United States and its allies in undertaking the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as sustaining cultural perceptions of the global threat from terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Political theorist Richard Jackson argues that "the 'war on terrorism' [...] is simultaneously a set of actual practices—wars, covert operations, agencies, and institutions—and an accompanying series of assumptions, beliefs, justifications, and narratives—it is an entire language or discourse".[1] Jackson notes that such political discourses only rise to prominence when other social actors, like the media, reproduce the language across wider society and that, following the September 11 attacks, the media reproduced official discourse "in a relatively unmediated fashion, while at the same time silencing and marginalising alternative narratives".[2]
Similarly, David Holloway states the "idea of a war on terror was itself a representation of events, a rhetorical construction, a series of stories about 9/11 and about America's place in the world".[3]