Abstract
Observing that modern wars are ever more mediatized, Sarah Maltby examines how the British military manage information for the media. The analysis is based on ethnographic research with the British military and British broadcasters, and uses a scaled-up version of Goffman’s dramaturgical approach to interpersonal relations. According to this perspective, relationships between the military and the media are seen as ‘impression management’, which means that the military conduct war through the media in ways that allow them to influence the perception of various audiences by showing and hiding specific aspects of events. Military Media Management thus clarifies how the military use media for conducting war with regard to the different audiences they need to influence: both internal (military personnel and the families of service people) and external (enemy service personnel, the enemy government and its allies). The book is a reference for researchers, students and professionals interested in war reporting and military communications.
The book’s 10 chapters are organised into three main sections. The first includes chapters 2 to 5 and provides the readers with the three main concepts necessary for understanding information management by the military: ‘Media Operations’, ‘Information Strategy’ and ‘impression management’. The second section, chapters 6 to 9, analyses military Media Operations through Goffman’s theory of strategic interaction. The last, chapter 10, comes back to the notion of ‘mediatized war’ according to Goffman’s theories of impression management, and demonstrates the role of the media, which are also engaged in image management.
The military interact with the media through Media Operations which, along with Information Operations, are part of the military’s Information Strategy. Media Operations are the messages that military officers disseminate through the media with the purpose of generating political and public support. Their aim is to project a positive image of the military and its activities, and to manage adverse media coverage of those activities. The aim of Information Operations, on the other hand, is to destroy the enemy’s will to fight through editorially controlled messages distributed through political or military-owned media and they are conducted in the battle space. Thus Media Operations are conducted as part of a mediated relationship with the audience. In this relationship the media play a translating and interpretative role. However, for the British military, the media are only a means to an end. The military believe that they are interacting with their audiences through and with the media, and correlate the success of Media Operations with the amount of coverage they receive.
In the second part of the book, Maltby applies Goffman’s theoretical framework and examines military attempts to influence audiences by defining situations through Media Operations. Defining situations consists of choosing specific expressions, images and narratives which are intended to generate a positive image of the military and their activities. The military’s face-to-face impression management strategies include situations where they can better control access to information about their activities, such as press information centres, media facilities, escorting and embedding. However, the military do not always succeed in defining situations on their own terms. The fact is that, with increased and amplified patterns of access to information about military activities, media observers are no longer exclusively reliant on the military as an information source. In these cases, the military engage in a distanciated form of impression management that includes diversionary tactics as well as reactive and defensive techniques such as denial, discrediting and re-defining.
Furthermore, Maltby notes that, in order to retain audiences, the media are also engaged in their own process of impression management. Thus the media is more than simply a means to conduct war, and war can no longer be considered an activity that takes place outside the media. Instead, media both provide the context for, and have a distinct influence on, the way in which war is performed. It is this that Maltby terms ‘mediatized war’: the way in which the practice of war is enacted through, involves, and is dependent upon media reportage, which is in turn a dynamic process of cooperation, competition, manipulation and resistance.
In conclusion, although the book is based specifically on the case of the British military, it provides an understanding of the war communication practices of armies in Western societies and helps to make readers aware of the professionalization of army communications. The book does not cover the extent to which journalists have professionalized the reporting of war and the strategies (proactive and reactive) they use in response to the military’s impression management, but it encourages scholars to engage in further research on this topic. Military Media Management provides a framework through which this wider sociological investigation can be conducted.