Exploring the impact of an evolving war and terror blogosphere on traditional media coverage of conflict

Abstract

This article analyses the evolution of a war and terror blogosphere between 2001 and 2011. It identifies seven areas where blogs and related online genres could provide 'alternative' accounts to traditional media narratives of conflict. The article also assesses the challenges and opportunities of blogs in each area from the perspective of the working journalist in order to deepen our understanding of the changing influence of blogs on traditional media narratives of conflict. Parallel accounts and interpretations of conflict will collaborate and compete in a war and terror blogosphere in the future, but it has been significantly influenced by the adoption of blogging by military actors since 2008. The war and terror blogosphere is no longer a relatively unmonitored online space which is having an impact on both the production of 'alternative' accounts of conflict and the incorporation of these accounts into traditional journalism.

“Hero-Worship” or “Manipulative and Oversimplifying”: How America’s Current and Former Military Service Members Perceive Military-Related News Reporting

“…First, some studies have focused on the coverage of wars in which the US has been directly involved. For instance, notable studies have investigated the conflict between emotional attachment and objectivity in video news coverage (Cohen, 2010), the conflict between patriotism and objectivity (Murphy, Ward, & Donovan, 2006), the relationship between US news media coverage and government policy regarding the war on terror (Bahador, 2011;Bennett, 2013), TV news coverage of the second U.S.-Iraq war (Ellmers, 2018), newspaper coverage of the second US-Iraq war (Dimitrova, 2006), mainstream and new web-based coverage of the second US-Iraq war (Jordan, 2007), news media coverage of itself during both Iraq wars (Esser, 2009), political bias in news coverage of the justification of the second US-Iraq war (Greenwald, 2010), and coverage of anti-war protests or movements in the U.S. (Klein, Byerly, & McEachern, 2009).…”

Digitalization of Conflicts: An Analysis of Social Media Coverage of Palestine-Israel Conflict by Traditional News Organizations

“…A technological revolution in communication and the expansion of the internet marked the beginning of the 21st century. The advent of blogging was a form of alternative coverage of conflicts, developed during this period (Bennett, 2013). News and gatekeeping were contested by the new media, challenging the monopoly of traditional media.…”

Mediating the opponent’s news: A study of inter-media citations in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

“…The restrictions on movement, the dangers in the conflict zones, and the simultaneous need to cover events and developments on the other side of the conflict, require journalists to seek real-time information from as many sources as possible (Bennett, 2013; Bruno, 2011; Høiby and Ottosen, 2019). Therefore, we can expect media outlets to use the other side’s news reports as a source of information.…”