Media, War and Conflict has published a new special issue, What Matters? The Politics of Narrating War. This follows our workshop at University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2024.

The workshop was kindly hosted by Adam Lerner, with support from Alister Miskimmon at Queen’s University Belfast. With NewPolCom’s Ben O’Loughlin they helped contributors finish articles which then went through anonymous peer review. Eventually a brilliant set of papers was accepted and are now out, with an editorial introduction conveying the themes of the special issue - click on the title to go to each article:

Lerner, Miskimmon and O’Loughlin: Thinking outside the box: From frames to strategic ontologies in the analysis of media, war, and conflict

Jessie Barton-Hronešová: Why and how victimhood matters? Between strategic ontological narratives and intersectional injustice in contemporary Serbia

Alexandra Homolar: Narrating future war: Reimagining enmity during the collapse of bipolarity

Hannah Partis-Jennings: Refusing the robot? Narrating the humanity of the future soldier

Minseon Ku: The digital reproduction of the state: Public diplomacy, digital entitativity, and strategic ontology

Pauline Sophie Heinrichs: Climate change and the imposition of strategic ontologies: Tracing International Relations and Media Studies between militarization, invincibility and vulnerability

Jessica Auchter: Visualizing War through Satellite Footage: Technological Capacity, Truth, and the View from Above

Jarrod Hayes and Adam B. Lerner: Chinese cinematic visions: Popular film, strategic ontology, and prospects for conflict

Zach Mondesire: Journalism without signature: News and rumor from South Sudan

A few more papers are in production and will be out soon.

We are indebted to the two anonymous reviewers who volunteered to take on a tremendous undertaking of reviewing thirteen articles.