Military Media Research Articles

The role of journalists of the State Border Guard Service in military journalism in Ukraine

Modern Ukrainian media and communicators pay great attention to military journalism. Today, this field is gaining popularity in Ukraine and the world, as more and more media representatives work in conditions that threaten their health and lives. The challenges of hybrid warfare make scientists more interested in military topics, as the war is waged on two fronts — military and informational. The article considers the stages of formation and development of Ukrainian military journalism, focusing on its current state. Attention is drawn to the state of scientific research of modern military journalism. The role of journalists in the uniform of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine (SBGSU) is actualized. We emphasized the need to popularize the military journalists, their contribution to the development of Ukrainian journalism. The main directions of activity of the SBGSU journalists are analyzed and determined their place and role in modern military media. The functions and tasks of military journalism, the rights and obligations of combatant journalists while serving both in the war zone and in peaceful areas of the Ukrainian border are separately considered. The main tasks include covering the activities of the SBGSU and preparing materials for the media; information support for the internal work of the service; prompt response to events; work with regional and national media; countering disinformation; coordination with other state structures. The results can be used in the development of educational programs in military and civilian educational institutions, as well as in retraining courses for civilian correspondents who plan to work in the war zone.

‘Despicable beauty’: the embedded sublime and the poetics of violence in Iraq war reportage

ABSTRACT This essay argues that Iraq war reportage participates in an embedded sublime that offers aestheticized and racialized spectacles of war at a distance. The US military media embedding program aimed to decisively shape the media’s representation of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. But embedding journalists within military units proved challenging, as the programme confronted both the ironies of framed narratives and a destabilising media and internet environment. Reading Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead, Evan Wright’s Generation Kill, and Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War, I argue that their hypermasculine representations of war show a powerful desire for poeticized violence and for scenes of despicable beauty. These scenes draw on classical formulations of the sublime in Kant, depending on racial hierarchies and imperial narratives as they represent the killing and suffering of people of colour in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Global South. Yet the embedded sublime often produces an ethical hesitation in readers and viewers allowing them to participate as spectators of war at a distance. I explore strategies that challenge this logic in Iraqi blogger Riverbend's Baghdad Burning and journalist Nick McDonell’s The End of Major Combat Operations, resisting this tendency to embed, aestheticize and normalise representations of violence in the ‘The Forever War’ era.

السياسات العسكرية في دمج وسائل الإعلام في نموذج الحروب الجديدة: القوات المسلحة البريطانية نموذجاً

Objectives: This study investigated the evolving relationship between the military and media in modern warfare and its implications on military media management policies. It aimed to answer the research question: How does the British armed forces integrate war correspondents into the country's war effort in accordance with the new wars paradigm? Method: Employing Grounded Theory, the study meticulously scrutinized current protocols used to integrate media into the British Armed Forces' war campaign. It involved unstructured interviews with British army officials and seasoned war correspondents from reputable British media establishments such as the BBC, The Guardian, and The Herald, between 2016 and 2018. Further, military documents related to media organization in warring situations were thoroughly scrutinized. Results: The study's findings revealed that the military and media hold specific interests and agendas related to armed conflicts, which may impact the power of media in educating people about war's reality. Conclusion: This study concludes that the rise of new wars and digital social networks have disrupted the military-media relationship and that coordination and collective work are necessary in the new form of war. An integration system can bring the military and media together in a respectful relationship.

ВИКОРИСТАННЯ ВІЙСЬКОВИХ МЕДІА ДЛЯ ПІДВИЩЕННЯ ПОЛІТИЧНОЇ ОБІЗНАНОСТІ УКРАЇНСЬКИХ ВІЙСЬКОВОСЛУЖБОВЦІВ У СИСТЕМІ ФОРМАЛЬНОЇ ТА НЕФОРМАЛЬНОЇ ОСВІТИ

B a c k g r o u n d . The political awareness of military personnel is the basis for the formation of ideological beliefs and motivation for the armed defense of Ukraine. Since 2014, Ukraine has been repelling the armed aggression of the Russian Federation (RF), and starting February 24, 2022, the country is in the phase of a large-scale military invasion. General mobilization increased the Ukrainian army with non-professional military personnel. Political awareness formed on pro-Ukrainian positions is able to neutralize the informational and psychological influences of the enemy. Until 2021, pro-Russian media were present in the information space of Ukraine, which actively formed a distorted political picture of the world. Military media are part of Ukraine's information space; they can be one of the elements forming the political awareness of military personnel. The purpose of the study is to determine a list of materials that can be used to increase the political awareness of military personnel. The task is to monitor the media resources of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (MoD) to identify materials that will expand the political awareness of military personnel. The object of the research is the websites of the Ministry of Defence and the Information Agency MoD "ArmiaInform". M e t h o d s . The methods of monitoring, thematic analysis, and content analysis of materials posted on the websites of the Ministry of Defence and the Information Agency ArmiaInform from February 24, 2022, to October 31, 2022, were used. 1237 materials were analysed. The materials were grouped by topic into categories to policy areas and, were applied a ranking method, where the quantity of publications was used as an indicator of rank. R e s u l t s . In the news of the Ministry of Defence, the topic of war is presented in the 1st place, foreign policy is in the 2nd place, domestic policy is in the 3rd place. In the Information Agency "ArmiaInform", the topic of foreign policy is in the 1st place, the war is in the 2nd place, the domestic policy is in the 3rd place, and analytical materials on historical topics are in the 4th place. Out of 1,237 monitoring materials, 32 can become additions to the thematic matrix of the formation of political awareness in military personnel. C o n c l u s i o n s . The key components of political awareness that influence the subject's political behaviour are political literacy, political competence, rationality, and objectivity of political choice. The media of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine can become part of a political awareness program by publishing materials that increase political literacy and political competence. News posted on the media resources of the Ministry of Defence can be used for political information.

Military Massmedia in the Context of the Information War

Relevance. The information sphere in the modern world has become the main system-forming factor of all spheres of public life. In recent years, the media has undergone a significant transformation. The change in the role and place of Russia in the world has intensified the struggle for a dominant role in the information space of our time, in which our country has become the main object of information wars. In this regard, the role of military mass media, which ensure the information security of Russia, form a positive image of the Russian army and strengthen its authority, is significantly increasing.The purpose is on the basis of scientific analysis to determine the role and place of military mass media in the conditions of increasing information confrontation of interested parties.Objectives: conceptually substantiate the use of socio-cultural methodology in the study of the nature and consequences of information wars and conflicts and outline the main directions for improving the Russian military mass media.Methodology. Socio-cultural methodology is defined as the initial theoretical matrix in explaining the role of military mass media in information wars that are generated by conflicts as a result of institutional, socio-political, socio-economic, socio-cultural and technological changes.Results. The main results of the study are defined as follows: the conceptual apparatus is characterized, which allows to reveal the role and place of military media in the information space of social communications; the current structure of the Russian military mass media, their tasks and functions are presented and the main ways of their improvement in the transformational dynamics of the information space are outlined.Conclusions. Military mass media is a fairly effective tool for information security of Russia. Maintaining a positive image of the army and navy in the interests of ensuring Russia's security is one of the priority areas of activity at all levels of civil and military and civil administration.

Linguistic Means of Introducing an Object into the Information Field Based on the Discourse of Military Media

The subject of the study is the linguistic resources of introducing a new object into the information (mass media) field. The object of the research is the process of interaction of the (mass media) author and the reader of the text and the linguistic specifics of this process. The author consider in detail such aspects of the topic as the interaction of the implicature and presuppositive information of the text with the political and historical situation. The research material was the discourse of military mass media, especially the use by these mass media of special linguistic means when introducing unprecedented phenomena and newly appeared objects. The main conclusions of the study are the formulation of ways and forms of introducing the new objects through the well-known in the discourse of military journalism. A special contribution of the authors to the study of the topic is the consideration of an object into the information field on the example of two diverse objects, the semiotization of which in both cases involves an appeal to a common apperceptive base, but using different vectors. The novelty of the research lies in the linguistic analysis of the means used in military mass media, the target audience of which are, first of all, military personnel, which affects the compositional and argumentative structure of the text covering a fundamentally new object or phenomenon.

The Influence of Japanese Colonialism on Post-Independence Indonesian Radio

This paper revisits the history of Indonesian broadcasting, focusing particularly on the broadcasting model implemented during the Japanese occupation (1942–1945) and its influence on broadcast organizations in the post-independence era. Taking into consideration four elements of broadcast governance—remit, structure, ownership, and funding—this study examines how the Japanese colonial model of radio became the model used by the Radio of the Republic of Indonesia. Examining the broadcast policies of colonial Japan and post-independence Indonesia, this paper finds policy connections between these countries’ broadcast systems. Japanese colonial policy remained evident in the management of Indonesia’s radio in the early independence era, particularly in the use of autocratic political propaganda and centralized control of media content. Even today, the military media of colonial Japan continues to influence how broadcasters serve Indonesia’s national interests. This paper fills the gap in the literature on how Japanese colonialism has affected broadcast systems of Asia.

The place of military media among the sources of information for servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Introduction. In the conditions of external aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the source of official information for servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are the state media which were founded by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. In the period since 2014, the system of military media has undergone significant changes, as well as the transformation of the public relations and strategic communicatios in the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine has continued. At the present stage, it remains significant to clarify the current position of the military media as a source of information. Relevance of the study. The purpose of the article is to determine the place of military media among the sources of official information for servicemen, as well as the degree of need in specialized media of the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Methodology, results, conclusions. According to a questionnaire survey of servicemen of one of the units of the Marine Corps of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it was found that at the level of this separate military unit the leading role in informing personnel is played by internal communications. About 40% of servicemen use military media as source of information. The Internet is the most common source of information for military personnel. The military often uses several types of media, but if they use only one source to receive news, it is usually social networks. All military media from which respondents receive information are presented on the Internet. This may indicate the impact of the development of the Internet and information and communication technologies on the functioning of traditional media of the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The results of the questionnaire indicate the need for structural and functional transformation of the existing system of military media. To confirm this, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive study on the scale of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In the future, this will provide an opportunity to develop proposals for improving the processes of socio-communication interaction of the army with society and information and media support of troops (forces).

ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF INFORMATION AND MEDIA STRUCTURES OF THE ARMED FORCES OF UKRAINE IN 1991-2014

The article considers the process of formation and transformation of public relations structures in a system of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine: press centers in commands of families and types of troops (forces) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, press services of operational commands, positions of divisional (brigade), as well as the accompanying process of optimizing the number of military printed periodicals in 1991–2014. The main focus is on the study of the source complex of departmental organizational and administrative acts on the activities of public relations structures and documents stored in the personal archives of former employees of the press services of operational commands for the period determined by the chronological framework of scientific intelligence. Most sources were introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. It has been investigated that Ukraine was one of the first countries of the former USSR to create a system of public relations in its own armed forces, which is evidence of the democratic path of development of our state. It is proved that despite the significant reduction in the number of military media and the constant search for the optimal model of information and media support of military construction activities in Ukraine managed to retain highly qualified journalists and further ensure the implementation of assigned tasks. Keywords Armed Forces of Ukraine, mass media, public relations, military press, media, information war, press service.

Female images in the movies of the 2010s about the World War I

The subject of this research is the yet poorly studied topic of representation of the female images in military media sources, namely movies and TV series of the 2010s. The choice of sources is substantiated by the new approaches towards delivery of information, new characters and patterns that correspond to the modern media trends; as well as by a wide range of projects timed to the centenary of the World War I. The key tasks of this article lie in determination of the role of women and characteristics of female images in a number of movies and TV shows of the 2010s about the World War I. The author carries out a comparative analysis of reflection of the Western and Russian cinematography associated with the representations on the gender hierarchy that is seen through interaction between men and women in the material under review. The article reveals the main patterns that are most commonly used for describing the role of women in war. The conclusion is made that a certain variety of female images that have recently appeared in cinematography indicates the interest of historians and researchers dealing with memory, gender, media and visual culture. The comparative analysis of sources demonstrated that the representation of female images in movies of the 2010s about the World War I reflects a certain difference in the officially broadcasted sociocultural and ideological perception of women and their role characteristic to modern Russian and Western society. The Russian movies are oriented towards expressing the official state concept of traditional values and women's affiliation to family and the country; while Western movies create the images typical for their cultural reality, which do not neglect the role of wives and mothers, however allow the heroines to transcend family interests.

Religion as Source Domain of Metaphors in World War II Media Discourse

The article studies the English-language media discourses of the World War II period from a retrospective point of view. The aim is to identify the patterns of modeling the images of war and peace in British, American and Australian media discourses. The definition of military media discourse as an institutional form of communication is proposed, its essential characteristics are highlighted. The source of the material was the authoritative digitized archives of the UK, the USA and Australia. The material was extracted using corpus linguistics tools. The qualitative analysis was carried out within the framework of the cognitive-discourse methodology using the method of metaphorical modeling. The object of the research is the dominant metaphor used when representing the images of war and peace in the three discourses. The authors show common and specific features of the use of the religious metaphor, conditioned by cultural and extra-linguistic factors, and conclude that the religious metaphor places war and peace at different poles of the scale of values and actualizes the binary axiological opposition “good — evil”, “light — darkness”.

IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE MILITARY MEDIA

IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE MILITARY MEDIA

Military Media Discourse of Newspapers during Siege of Sevastopol in 1941-1942

The article presents the results of a research into military discourse via media texts about the Siege of Sevastopol. The topicality is determined by the insufficiency of studies of newspaper discourse of that period due to scarcity of available original materials. The novelty of the research is explained by introduction of new academic data about the characteristics of «The Krasnyi Chernomorets» paper, whose reporters worked at the battle-lines of Sevastopol offensive till the end of the siege. The characteristics in the focus of the authors’ interest are the spirit and the ideological implications of the media texts, as well as methods of all-out mobilization via the newspapers, and stylistic means of heroics in descriptions of the fighters’ and homefront workers’ behavior. The key method of study is a content analysis of the available original newspaper publications photocopied in the archive of rare editions. The aim was to select articles describing feats or heroic achievements of the military men and citizens of Sevastopol. Having studied hundreds of texts, the authors have also found differences in the set of expressive means used by journalists and reporters of the local newspapers and other media. One of the inferences suggests that periodical press as a social institute features a mechanism of mild self-regulation that enables journalists, in the time of a crisis, to reprogram their functions in order to produce heroics and encourage public consolidation.

Functional Features of Onomastic Units in the Military Discourse of the Donbass Conflict

The article explores the modalities and features of onomastic units in the media coverage of the Eastern Ukraine military conflict in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Based on large empirical data of printed and online publications in Russian and Ukrainian media reporting on the hostilities in Donbass extensively for several years, the author has collected, classified, and analyzed the corpus of onomastic units of the military media discourse. These include place names, such as Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), Luganda, Donbabwe, Debaltsevo pocket, Ilovaysk pocket, ORDLO (“separate districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions”), Novorossiya, “Odessa Khatyn,” as well as the nicknames of field commanders that have become deeply associated with the conflict — Motorola, Bes, Givi. The study examines functional aspects of proper names usage in the media, and their role in shaping a general picture of the Donbass armed conflict for the readers. A special emphasis is made on the weight of onomastic units (militaronyms, toponyms, and anthroponyms) as constructive elements of the military discourse in Eastern Ukraine. In this regard, the presented analysis and its results can contribute to further studies of the media discourse related to armed conflicts of various etiologies and intensities.

ЗАСОБИ МАСОВОЇ КОМУНІКАЦІЇ У ЗОНІ БОЙОВИХ ДІЙ: ІСТОРИЧНИЙ ДОСВІД І СУЧАСНІСТЬ

The article reveals the importance of modern military media for the formation of patriotism and motivation of a military man to fight for independence and territorial integrity of the state, to counter the information intervention of the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian historical experience of using print media in а combat zone and the current activities of foreign information departments are described in the article.

Constructing the Ideal Future in Foreign Military Media Discourses of The World War II Period

The major objective of the paper is to establish functions of modeling the ideal future in the British, American and French military media discourses of World War II period. The authors argue that military media discourse is a hybrid type that combines the components of military, political, military-political, and media discourses whose concentration and interpenetration can vary greatly. The military media discourse is a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience of war that are rooted in the media and influenced by historical, geopolitical, social, and cultural context. The approach taken in this study is a mixed methodology of linguistic political prognostics that integrates fundamentals of philosophy, future studies, cognitive linguistics, and political linguistics. The samples from the digitized archives of the UK, the USA, and France (24 695 samples) are investigated through a number of methods: corpus, descriptive, cognitive and discourse analyses, cultural, metaphorical modeling, and comparative analyses. Being a basic value of military media discourse, the ideal future is determined by its nature: the idea of a better world inherent in human nature is intensified in transformative moments, war being one of them; representing the present, the media model both the past and the future. The ideal future integrates the key features of utopia and prognosis differing from them in certain specific characteristics. Its basic functions are prognostic, constructive, modeling, critical, provocative, and visualizing ones that complement one another in con-structing an ideal projection of the postwar world and the future of the USSR as a geopolitical ally of Great Britain, the USA, and France.

Ukrainian military press: correspondence to lifetime

Since 2014, materials and publications have become extremely popular in Ukraine, the content of which is connected with the armed conflict in the east of Ukraine. According to the results of sociological polls in 2018 – respondents named the conflict in the Donbas and Luhansk region the main problem of modern Ukraine. It’s not the first time when the history of the development of military journalism and the military media have attracted the attention of scientists, but it is still early to consider all issues relating to military buildings, in particular those that appeared during the armed conflict in the east of Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to characterize the content and image features of the public and private military media of Ukraine. To achieve this goal, it is supposed to analyze the most replicated and influential modern military media of Ukraine, as well as to consider the newly created edition of military subjects of the ATO / EP period and compare the features of their content during the information war.The object of the study: the central print edition of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine “People’s Army” and the newspaper of the special purpose regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine “Azov” “Black Sun”. Comparing the two editions, we have come to the conclusion that both newspapers, first of all, are striving to widely and objectively cover the current problems of the Ukrainian army, its reform issues, talk about current events in the ATO / OOS zone, and also – and most importantly – take care of the formation of the reader’s audience of a positive image for the fatherland shield.The newspapers mentioned above have various circulations, different form their own content, different in lexical features, but adequately fulfill their main purpose: to provide the citizens of Ukraine with the information about the life of the modern army, which meets the requirements of the time.

Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above by Caren Kaplan

Reviewed by: Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above by Caren Kaplan Grace Aldridge Foster (bio) Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above by Caren Kaplan. Duke University Press. 2018. $99.95 hardcover; $27.95 paperback; also available in e-book. 312 pages. Drones lurk at the periphery of Caren Kaplan's new book on the history of aerial imagery; their presence is felt rather than seen. The structure of the book reinforces this feeling, as the introduction situates us in the present by diving into aerial photographs of 9/11, and the afterword discusses the questions the book raises about aerial views in modernity in the context of unmanned aerial vehicles (known as UAVs), or drones. The author even professes that the "entire project of this book is a prologue to considering the observational and sensing capacities of machines like drones."1 But what one realizes after reading Aerial Aftermaths is that even if Kaplan never mentioned drones, a contemporary reader would weave them into the book's narrative anyway. I, the reader, am always already created by and of wartime aftermaths, the author less argues than points out. In other words, targeted killings, drone imagery, and perpetual war are indelibly familiar to me; as a recipient of the twenty-first-century military media I cannot unsee the videos of drone strikes that pervade contemporary visual culture or the aerial views I have seen on television—and from plane windows—my whole life. To ask better questions about modern-day aerial imaging and surveillance, Kaplan looks back to the beginning of aerial imagery: the First Military Survey of Scotland, conducted between the years 1747 and 1755. In chapter 1, the author deftly dispels the myth that aerial views of geography—or even geography itself—are "empirically knowable, objectively real."2 She argues eloquently that we must consider "not only the ways in which aerial views are deeply entangled in the formation of modern geographical knowledge as a quantifiable [End Page 190] science but also the ways in which that knowledge is repeatedly limited or undone by affective forces."3 What are those affective forces? The violence, trauma, and grief of wartime aftermath, says Kaplan. Although the Military Survey is often lauded for its systematic and scientific approach to mapping from a distance, one must not forget that "the surveyors traversed a terrain marked by warfare: burned villages, sites of executions, new prisons and garrisons under construction, and a population undergoing deprivation and displacement."4 The surveyors rendered their map in an allegedly objective format that appeared as though it were a view from above, but they relied on sensory information from their walks through the Scottish Highlands to do so. In addition to the gruesome sights they saw and the resentment they likely encountered, the surveyors were also affected by the embodied experience of wandering across difficult terrain for a long time. Their physical experience, as well as the "unruly intensities"—a term Kaplan borrows from what Kathleen Stewart calls "rogue intensities"—produced by wartime, were thus embodied in the Military Survey itself. "The map they created," the author writes, "vibrated with conflicting affective forces and intensities even as it was intentionally formatted to produce a more universal, scientific standard."5 The survey was conducted by the British, the victors, in their recently conquered land. It was a wartime project, intended to map a relatively unknown locale and enable the British to occupy it more wholly and effectively, but it also became a scientific one by creating a new, more comprehensive, more accurate standard for mapmaking. The two projects were inextricably intertwined; the one affected the other. Although it seems clear that this type of surveying was an imperfect science, one that was likely subject to the emotions of wartime aftermaths and the physical conditions of the people surveying the ground, I was left wondering, how exactly did these emotions manifest themselves in the map? How do we differentiate between the emotions and "unruly intensities" of the people doing the surveying and the people ordering the survey? How much agency did they have, and how can we attempt to prove it? The survey "disseminate[d] an emotional disposition through the production of definitive...

Communicative strategies and tactics of Ukraine military media in information aggression countering

Communicative strategies and tactics of Ukraine military media in information aggression countering

Examining the military–media nexus in ISIS’s provincial photography campaign

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) views military action and media operations as two equally important, reinforcing components of its campaign. With provinces disseminating 95% of ISIS’s media output, provincial media play a central role in achieving appearance shifts in the contested balance of power. Yet, scholars have not fully examined the interactions between the media and military components of ISIS’s campaign at the provincial level. To understand how enhanced coalition military operations impact the quantity and content of provincial media output, this study examines all 1643 photographs that Ninawa province disseminated before and during intense battles in the east Mosul operation. Unlike the common views in earlier studies, our study reveals that Ninawa’s use of still imagery, in particular, tripled following the launch of the Mosul operation, and the depiction of the state-building campaign remained intact. ISIS also used about-to-die images as its image weaponry of choice during intensified military pressure. Here, we use the case of Ninawa province to explore how ISIS can create nuanced photographic campaigns to help offset losses on the contested media battlefield and facilitate future repackaging of content. Finally, we highlight the importance of operationalization for a better understanding of the military–media nexus in future studies.