Television and Terror

The advent of the twenty-first century was marked by a succession of conflicts and catastrophes that demanded unrestrained journalism. Yet, the principle mass news medium of television has become torn between strategies of containment and the amplification of security threats. Hoskins and O’Loughlin demonstrate that television, tarnished by its economy of liveness and its default impositions of immediacy, brevity and simultaneity, fails to deliver a critical and consistent exposition adequate to our conflicting times.

ANDREW HOSKINS is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. His Televising War: From Vietnam to Iraq (2004) develops his concept of ‘new memory’ in relation to conflict. He is founding Editor-in-Chief of Memory Studies and founding Co-Editor of Media, War & Conflict, new international and interdisciplinary journals being launched in 2008. His current work includes: Media and Memory (2007). BEN O’LOUGHLIN is Lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He completed his doctorate in Politics at the University of Oxford in 2005 and has worked since 2004 on the Economic and Social Research Council’s New Security Challenges programme. He is Reviews Editor for the journal Media, War and Conflict.

Introduction: Televising Terror * New(s) Times: The Interaction Order and Disorder of Television * Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of the ‘CNN Effect’ * Talking Terror: Political Discourses and the 2003 Iraq War * (Un)forgotten War: Television and the Shaping of History * The Distant Body * Drama and Documentary: The Power of Nightmares * The 2005 London Bombings: Terrorised Publics? * The Conflict Medium: The Irresolution of Television