Göteborg: Nordicom

This book is part of a bigger project called 'Journalism in the New World Order'. As part of this, the first volume - Gulf War, National News Discourses and Globalization, - was produced by members of the project, edited by Stig Arne Nohrstedt and Rune Ottosen, and published by Nordicom in early 2001. The core questions addressed in that volume concerned globalization of the media world - using the Gulf War as a central example - and processes of localization and domestication that in various countries ensure that media content remains, to a large extent, heterogeneous and based on local, national and regional cultures.

If the emphasis of the first volume was mainly empirical and linked to the Gulf War, the present volume tries to touch more upon theoretical, historical and methodological problems of war reporting and war propaganda. Our aim is that this book could be used as a textbook, for instance in institutions educating future journalists.

The first part of the book deals with the role of the media in conflicts and provides conceptual and theoretical tools for the analysis of conflict coverage and war reporting. Under the title 'How Did We Get Here?', the second part of the volume provides the historical background needed in order to understand the present situation of journalism in war. The third part presents different methodological approaches to the study of war and the media, applying both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysing media discourse. The fourth part of is dedicated to studies of the Gulf War and the Bosnia conflict and demonstrates the application of the theoretical models and methodological approaches described before. Finally, 'Beyond Wishful Thinking', the closing part of the volume, summarizes the implications of this kind of research in terms of practical journalism.

With contributions by Johan Galtung (Norway), Wilhelm Kempf (Germany), Heikki Luostarinen (Finland), Stig A. Nohrstedt (Sweden), Rune Ottosen (Norway), Michael Reimann (Germany) and Oddgeir Tveiten (Norway).