War and Conflict Coverage

Abstract

The reporting of war and conflict displays many of the challenges of journalism at their most acute. War reporting is journalism widely perceived to matter for the security of the nation‐state, where the battle over public opinion can be fiercely contested across the mediascape, and is therefore surrounded both by romanticizing discourses and by the most intense of political criticism. Key questions in understanding the role of journalists in mediating conflict include the intense pressures on journalists from those waging wars, increasing risks to journalists' personal safety, the culture of war reporting, and the responses by journalists to the promises and limitations of emergent digital technologies.