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In his Chapter 10 “Civilians, pundits, and the mediatized ideology,” Cherkaoui analyzes the impact of the cognitive frames, language, and public debate which have undermined the formulation of a civilian counter-narrative in relation to the militaristic master narrative. The chapter also illustrates the constraints of language, military exceptionalism, and the dangers of spin journalism within the prospects of formulating a civil framework of the media narrative in the future. According to Cherkaoui, most media organizations have not freed themselves from the hegemonic discourse of the military in waging wars and serving their respective state politics. He examines the tendency of reporters to promote an “absenteeism” of the civilian identity in their stories, linked to the shadow of numbers. He argues that civilian casualties remain out of the public frame. In his conclusion to Chapter 10, Cherkaoui explores the prospects of a civilian framework in reporters’ repertoire, practice, and worldview to narrow the gap between the objective norms and subjective applications of war reporting. When journalism moves on separate and parallel tracks of military journalism and civilian journalism, it would then narrow the gap between the objective norms and subjective applications in this public field of mass media.
This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war.
Underpinning the physicality of war’s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival.
Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants.
This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.
