Ben O’Loughlin

Strategic narrative: A new means to understand soft power:

Soft power in its current, widely understood form has become a straitjacket for those trying to understand power and communication in international affairs. Analyses of soft power overwhelmingly focus on soft power ‘assets’ or capabilities and how to wield them, not how influence does or does not take place. It has become a catch-all term that has lost explanatory power, just as hard power once did. The authors argue that the concept of strategic narrative gives us intellectual purchase on the complexities of international politics today, especially in regard to how influence works in a new media environment. They believe that the study of media and war would benefit from more attention being paid to strategic narratives.

Why People Dual Screen Political Debates and Why It Matters for Democratic Engagement

Dual screening during televised election debates is a new domain in which political elites and journalists seek to influence audience attitudes and behavior. But to what extent do non-elite dual screeners seek to influence others, particularly their social media followers, social media users in general, and even politicians and journalists? And how does this behavior affect short- and longer-term engagement with election campaigns? Using unique, event-based, panel survey data from the main 2015 UK general election debate (Wave 1 = 2,351; Wave 2 = 1,168) we reveal the conditions under which people experience agency, empowerment, and engagement now that social media have reconfigured broadcast political television.

The Syrian data glut: Rethinking the role of information in conflict

Central to the longevity of the free flow of information doctrine is the idea that greater access to information will facilitate improved international cooperation, decreasing the likelihood of conflict in the international system.1 This commentary2 challenges the pervasive narrative of ‘information as peace inducing’. Political actors are employing big data tools to better understand conflicts, but not necessarily to end them. Building on an historical record of ways in which information freedom is selectively used to justify geostrategic policy, we explore the relationship between information and conflict through the lens of the Syrian civil war, ‘the most well documented conflict in history’ (Balian, 2014). Since 2011, the Syrian conflict has been mapped by various international actors, including governments and NGOs, facilitating real-time tracking of violence, opposition and government forces, as well as foreign fighters and weaponry. Yet, despite this avalanche of data, the Syrian conflict continues today, leaving nearly half of the Syrian population displaced and more than 200,000 dead. Specifically, we argue that the conditions required for information to reduce the likelihood for violence are at fundamental odds with the conditions of war. Thus, while greater access to accurate information can, theoretically, reduce the likelihood of conflict breaking out, adding an abundance of data

Do tabloids poison the well of social media? Explaining democratically dysfunctional news sharing:

The use of social media for sharing political information and the status of news as an essential raw material for good citizenship are both generating increasing public concern. We add to the debates about misinformation, disinformation, and “fake news” using a new theoretical framework and a unique research design integrating survey data and analysis of observed news sharing behaviors on social media. Using a media-as-resources perspective, we theorize that there are elective affinities between tabloid news and misinformation and disinformation behaviors on social media. Integrating four data sets we constructed during the 2017 UK election campaign—individual-level data on news sharing (N = 1,525,748 tweets), website data (N = 17,989 web domains), news article data (N = 641 articles), and data from a custom survey of Twitter users (N = 1313 respondents)—we find that sharing tabloid news on social media is a significant predictor of democratically dysfunctional misinformation and disinformation behaviors. We explain the consequences of this finding for the civic culture of social media and the direction of future scholarship on fake news.

Deflating the iconoclash: shifting the focus from Islamic State’s iconoclasm to its realpolitik*

ABSTRACT This article explores the tension between religious and political motivations in the strategy of Islamic State. It develops the Arendtian model of politics as a space of appearance through the work of Silverstone, Devji and Cavarero to consider how Islamic State exhibits itself in this space using religious modalities. This space is conceptualized as a global media ecology. Whilst no political actor can control how it is recognized within that ecology, religious and even ethical modalities grant Islamic State a compelling attention-grabbing and persuasive capacity. However, greater exposure of its pragmatic, realpolitik behavior might deflate that identity. The second half of the article sets out several examples of such behavior. The article concludes by suggesting that icons are something all societies live with but the news media that constitute the global space of appearance remain transfixed by iconic acts or icon-smashing. This leaves publics-cum-audiences adrift, uncertain and anxious about the nature, actions and threat of Islamic State.

Book Review: London Calling: Britain, the BBC World Service and the Cold War

parties in the region. Although there is a range of issues, it would appear that manipulation of boards and directorships of state and public broadcasting are the most overt signs of party manipulation of critical aspects of the mass media. Analyzing trends in media freedom via party actions is a very useful aspect of understanding the fate of media freedom both in this region and in general. As such, Péter Bajomi-Lázár has made a very useful contribution to the field of comparative political communication. He also has captured critical details about how media policy affects media outlets and journalists across a range of countries in new democracies, a study that can be broadly applied to new democracies around the world. Future iterations of the work would benefit from greater reference to the party literature, particularly in thinking about the difference between weak parties in new democracies and stronger parties in more established democracies. New parties in East and Central Europe must not only overcome a Soviet legacy that leveled civil society but also put down deep and meaningful political roots among the populace. There is ample evidence in the political narrative of this book (and via other studies) that this has yet to happen. As a result, both the media and the charisma of leaders become more important, setting in motion a vicious cycle in which populism fostered to win elections undermines the ability to make long-term, rational policy decisions. That being said, this book highlights compelling evidence of the relationship between European-style party politics and media freedom, aiding our understanding of the complicated and critical dance among the intertwined forces of media and politics. Another intriguing question for the future is studying how and why media systems and journalists can sometimes resist and fight back against poor policies, which, as the evidence in this book shows, can happen even under repressive one-party rule.

The permanent campaign

In London, Washington DC and Brussels, ‘information warfare’ has returned to policymakers’ lips of late. The concept is used in the framing of Western efforts to counter and overcome the persuasion campaigns of Russia in Ukraine and ISIS’s targeting of potential Western recruits. It is not simply that Russia’s ‘hybrid war’ model might be destabilizing audiences’ sense of certainty about what is happening in world affairs. It is that such a strategy undermines the very fundamentals of information and credibility that informed debate are supposed to rest upon. The return to information warfare also signifies frustration that ISIS’s social media content appears to be driving a very visible and unstoppable flow of young Westerners to Syria. In short, there is a palpable sense that the West is losing its information wars. The return of information warfare is only likely to deepen the condition of permanent war that seemed to take hold of the imaginations of policymakers and journalists in the last 15 years. The war on terror was framed as a generational strategy – by 2009, US military leaders spoke of ‘the long war’. Security was understood to have diffused to include any causes of instability, uncertainty or danger. This justified the interpenetration of military and intelligence agencies with economic, social and even cultural and religious institutions. Digital connectivity expanded the speed and immediacy of news coverage of global crises. While it is a practical burden for journalists to trawl through endless user generated content, that content has brought vivid footage of war and conflict that has enlivened and resurrected traditional news organisations. There are a number of factors, then, that explain why war has become the ongoing backdrop to our lives. One of the biggest problems with the explicit turn to information warfare is that it continues the blurring of war and not-war. The field of media, war and conflict can help clarify how this is happening. Scholars bring theoretical lenses, attention to historical comparisons and concern for communication ethics. Consider a few examples. In terms of theory, we can explain how the mediatization of war contributes to the blurring of war and peace. Stig Hjarvard (2008: 114) writes:

Book review: New public diplomacy in the 21st century: A comparative study of policy and practicePammentJames, New public diplomacy in the 21st century: A comparative study of policy and practice, Routledge: London, 2012; 184 pp.: ISBN 978 0 415 51971 7, £85 (hbk)

‘objectivity’ on such a politicized issue is doubtful. Further, in making the case for the value of quantitative approaches over qualitative case studies, they cite the fact that such examinations have found that the vast majority of terrorism cases are found in only a few countries (pp. 117–118). Were highly sophisticated statistical formulas really required for this rather obvious finding? Furthermore, in some cases the arguments are questionable. For instance, when Porter et al. seek to quantify and construct ‘a meaningful measure of the loss associated with a terrorist attack’ (p. 92), it seems dubious that such a calculation is even possible. Can losses incurred by major terrorist attacks (including the suffering of individuals) be meaningfully quantified? While sensitive to the fact that such an idea is ‘cold’ (p. 93), they never address whether we should attempt to quantify such things in the first place. At the very least, it seems almost certain that something is lost in a quest for the certainty in numbers. Finally, the chapter by Cioffi-Revilla, without a case study, is little more than a research design that one might expect for a dissertation. So while the study by Dugan and Yang does offer interesting insights regarding the trajectories of terrorist groups, many of the papers in this section of the book offer little by way of innovation. Instead, the more useful findings are in the qualitative chapters. For example, the chapter by Passas on counter financing of terrorism provides an interesting look at some of the international and domestic policies that have been adopted. Passas presents a convincing critique of these policies, noting that many of the major terrorism plots carried out have cost far less than US

Information Overload, Paradigm Underload? The Internet and Political Disruption

10,000 – making them hard to identify under policies and laws that have been put in place. He also notes that few of these plots have used the Islamic hawala system of finance, despite the scrutiny of the system by the United States. As noted in the book, there were always going to be problems producing a book about ‘evidence’ when there is such a lack of evidence in the public domain. But, if the authors and editors were aiming their research at policy makers (and some explicitly do), they do not help themselves with essays largely full of technical language and complicated statistical formulas. It is more than likely that policymakers would find this book too full of jargon to be of much use. Instead, this book is probably best for new researchers aiming their ultimate product at such policy makers, not the policy makers themselves.