Arrested media: transforming the depiction of contemporary mediatized conflict

Abstract

This dissertation explains how the realignment of power between media, state, and society is transforming the media's depiction of war in contemporary mediatized conflict. Focusing on how media framing, advancements in technology, and iconization of images in different media environments alters how war is viewed by a public. Utilizing media ecology (1990s-2000s) and War in Syria from the arrested media ecology (2010s-present). Critical discourse analysis and semiotic analysis was conducted on articles and images from The Guardian and The Daily Mail to decipher if variation exists in a depiction of war from the broadcast media ecology to the arrested media ecology.
The findings showed that despite the saturation of amateur content depicting war, the mainstream recycles images derived from wire services to report conflict. Furthermore, as technological advancements remain a destabilizing force between the media-state relationship, the mainstream continues to exhibit the rearresting of agenda setting capabilities that were previously disrupted by emergence of unintended content. Exemplifying greater adaptation and reflexivity by media, which has yet to be demonstrated by the sovereign in the arrested media ecology.