Mediatization of war. The state of the research field in the period 2018-2022

Abstract

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The mediatization of war represents one of many fields of mediatization research. In the face of numerous military crises and the dynamic development of media and digital technologies, the mediatization of armed conflicts is a key research area. At the same time, the relationship between media and war has been described as highly under-researched and in need of considerable investment in terms of concept development and empirical research. Also, the mediatization of war as a field of study is sometimes criticized. The aim of this research is to determine the state of the mediatization of war studies in the last five years. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The questions guiding the research were: 1) What is being specifically researched in the field?; 2) What are the main research questions and objectives of this research? A meta-analysis of publications from 2018–2022 available on Google Scholar was performed. ­Using strict selection criteria, 90 peer-reviewed publications from this period were extracted, coded and analyzed. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The geographical coverage of the examined issues and the places of research were defined. The specifics of research on the mediatization of war and methods used in this research field were determined. RESEARCH RESULTS: The results indicate that indexed contemporary studies that deal with the mediatization of war are highly interdisciplinary. At the same time, they are focused on specific parts of the world, on a peculiar catalog of problems, and they are dominated by qualitative methodology. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: War is an area in which key sub-processes are diagnosed, both those comprising mediatization in the broadest sense (included processes) and those generated by mediatization (induced processes). These sub-processes determine the extent and transformative power of the mediatization taking place.