Information at War. Philip Seib

information at war is present even when armed conflict is unlikely. Disinformation about the Covid-19 virus, vaccinating children against measles and other illnesses, and similar topics can be used to foster uncertainty and disunity among publics of nations that are considered long-term adversaries. Probing and softening a country’s resolve are parts of the long game of information at war – laying a foundation for possible future conflicts.

      Chapter 7, “Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going,” pulls together elements from past and present and considers what might lie ahead. Shakespeare wrote “What is past is prologue,” and another way to say that is “Nothing is new.” The preceding chapters presented numerous examples of how information has been used in war, and these instances provide some guidance about what the future might hold.

      This final chapter also focuses on the giant looming over the future of information at war: China. This material appears near the end of the book because dealing with China and its information-oriented “three warfares” strategy will be so crucial to the future of so many aspects of global affairs moving forward in the twenty-first century. This will be the next great challenge for those who address issues related to information at war.

      A note about the focus of this book: many of the examples cited relate to American journalistic and military issues, although there are substantial explorations of topics grounded in experiences of the United Kingdom, Russia, China, Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic States, Middle Eastern countries, and numerous others. The author, being an American and having written much about US media and foreign policy, is trying to make the best use of his expertise and is certainly not trying to understate the significance of the military and information-related histories of any other nation.

      What would Homer have thought about all this? How would he have told his audiences about our contemporary manifestations of rage – wars with many weapons, including information? I refer to Homer’s work in several places in this book because I consider him to be a prime ancestor of those who gather and disseminate information at war.

      In his book Why Homer Matters, Adam Nicolson stated: “Homer knows about the reality of suffering but never thinks of a world without conflict … . We might long for peace, but we live in war.”³³ Civilization will always be plagued by conflict of one kind or another, including those that use words and images as well as bullets. Information at war will be part of that.

Notes

      1  1 Homer, The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles (London: Penguin, 1998), 77.

      2  2 Journalism, “Fake News,” and Disinformation: A Handbook for Journalism Education and Training, UNESCO, 2020, https://en.unesco.org/node/295873.

      3  3 Committee to Protect Journalists, https://cpj.org/data/imprisoned/2019/?status=Imprisoned&start_year=2019&end_year=2019&group_by=location.

      4  4 See Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson, The Murrow Boys (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996).

      5  5 Melissa A. Wall, “Blogs over Baghdad: A New Genre of War Reporting,” in Ralph D. Berenger (ed.), Cybermedia Go to War (Spokane, WA: Marquette Books, 2006), 297–8.

      6  6 Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 284.

      7  7 See Peter Braestrup, Big Story (abridged version: Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994).

      8  8 Dominique Moisi, “The Clash of Emotions,” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 1 (January–February 2007), 8.

      9  9 Kate Bulkley, “The Rise of Citizen Journalism,” Guardian, June 10, 2012.

      10 10 Philip Seib, Headline Diplomacy: How News Coverage Affects Foreign Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 1–13.

      11 11 See Laura J. Ahlstrom and Franklin G. Mixon, Jr. (eds.), War Movies and Economics: Lessons from Hollywood’s Adaptations of Military Conflict (London: Routledge, 2020).

      12 12 Fiona Macdonald, “Mrs. Miniver: The Film that Goebbels Feared,” BBC, February 9, 2015, www.bbc.com/culture/article/2150209-the-film-that-goebbels-feared.

      13 13 Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2015), 236.

      14 14 www.medialit.org/media-literacy-definition-and-more.

      15 15 https://americancentury.omeka.wlu.edu/files/original/60e94905a0e02050a5b78f10b1b02b07.jpg.

      16 16 See William Prochnau, Once Upon a Distant War (New York: Times Books, 1995).

      17 17 Philip Knightley, “The Falklands: How Britannia Ruled the News,” Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 1982, 52.

      18 18 Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), 364.

      19 19 See Philip Seib, Beyond the Front Lines: How the News Media Cover a World Shaped by War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 69–86.

      20 20 Julie Salamon, “New Tools Make Coverage More Instant but Coverage No Simpler,” New York Times, April 6, 2003.

      21 21 Seib, Beyond the Front Lines, 58.

      22 22 Seib, Beyond the Front Lines, 78–9. Mark Jurkowitz, “Americans Want Facts and Flags,” Boston Globe, July 14, 2003, http://forums.lukpac.org/viewtopic.php?t=230.

      23 23 www.bbc.co.uk/send/u16904890.

      24 24 Lilie Chouliaraki, “Citizen Voice in War and Conflict Reporting,” in Piers Robinson, Philip Seib, and Romy Froehlich (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security (London: Routledge, 2017), 174–5.

      25 25 See Martin Bell, In Harm’s Way (London: Penguin, 1996).

      26 26 See Abdel Bari Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015).

      27 27 www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/11/16/algorithms-in-action-the-content-people-see-on-social-media.

      28 28 See Henry Hemming, Agents of Influence: A British Campaign, a Canadian Spy, and the Secret Plot to Bring America into World War II (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019).

      29 29 See Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).

      30 30 Lawrence Freedman, Ukraine and the Art of Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 140.

      31 31 Julian E. Barnes, “Cyber Command Operation Took Down Russian Troll Farm for Midterm Elections,” New York Times, February 26, 2019.

      32 32 Jens Stoltenberg, “NATO Will Defend Itself,” NATO, August 29, 2019, www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_168435.htm?selectedLocale=en.

      33 33 Adam Nicolson, Why Homer Matters (New York: Henry Holt, 2014), 181.

1 Living-Room Wars

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