Speed, International Security, and “New War” Coverage in Cyberspace

Speed, International Security, and ‘‘NewWar’’Coverage in Cyberspace

Lucas WalshJulien Barbara

Institute for Citizenship & Globalization

Deakin University, Melbourne

AbstractMass media representations foster a view that the ‘‘War on Terror’’ is taking place both

everywhere and nowhere, presenting Western governments with an opportunity to

mobilize public support in new and ubiquitous ways. Starting with Virilio’s critique of

technology, speed, and de-territorialization, this article discusses the ways in which

mass support is mobilized by the state in conventional pursuit of geopolitical objectives.

Drawing on contemporary international relations theory, the authors introduce the con-

cept of ‘‘securitization’’ and discuss how war coverage in cyberspace has been used to

securitize international threats, such as ‘‘global terrorism,’’ to justify state intervention,

including war. It is concluded that one of the paradoxes of war coverage in cyberspace

is that whereas cyber-technologies should democratize the politics of war by liberating

access to information about war, the state has coopted information and communication

technologies to facilitate new forms of mass mobilization for war itself.

doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00321.x

Introduction

This article considers the ways in which Western states seek to benefit from warcoverage in cyberspace in the conduct of contemporary wars and, more broadly,

international relations. It has long been recognized that the state has sought to mani-pulate war coverage in support of its military objectives. War coverage in cyberspace,

by democratizing the media and de-centering the process of news coverage, raises im-portant questions about the state’s capacity to manage war coverage. Yet it also offers

the state new opportunities for shaping the discourse of war for strategic military ends.The significance of war coverage in cyberspace in framing the political consid-

eration of contemporary war, and the ways in which the state seeks to benefit from it,is most clearly evident in the ongoing ‘‘War on Terror.’’ Mass media representationsof the so-called ‘‘War on Terror’’ present a war taking place on a number of geo-

graphic fronts, from the Western ‘‘liberation’’ of Afghanistan and Iraq, to the bomb-ings in Bali, Madrid, New York, and more recently, London. These mass media

representations foster a view that the ‘‘War on Terror’’ is taking place both everywhere

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 189–208 ª 2006 International Communication Association 189

and nowhere in particular, and in doing so, present Western governments with anopportunity to mobilize public support in new and ubiquitous ways. Yet ‘‘terrorists’’

and independent reporters themselves have also proved most adept at utilizing warcoverage in cyberspace to challenge Western states and sap the confidence of for-

merly complacent Western societies.Using the theoretical work of Paul Virilio (1987, 1995a, 1995b, 1997, 1999), this

article begins by considering how convergent media technologies have facilitated a

speeding up of war coverage in cyberspace, creating a disoriented political dynamicthat warring protagonists, including the state, are struggling to control. The term con-

vergent media is used to describe both the technical integration of different forms ofinformation and communication technology (ICT) and the confluence of social, poli-

tical, economic, and cultural factors that accompany that integration on a mass scale.In terms of technical integration, the emphasis of this discussion is war coverage

in cyberspace, but it also includes technology feeding into that medium of coverage,such as satellite, televisual, radio, and mobile telephony. One feature of contempo-rary convergence is the capacity of these media to enable a diffusion of control over

who can make news and an acceleration of the news cycle. Interactive technologies,such as the Internet, mobile technologies, and interactive television, offer new pos-

sibilities for engagement in news-making by individuals and laypersons. A corollaryof this, however, remains the relative centralization of the primary architecture

underpinning this technology—the ultimate control and governance of satellitesystems and Internet root servers, for example, remains in the hands of relatively

few. Of particular relevance to this discussion is the blurring of information andentertainment that arises from the convergence of ICTs.

Within this context, we first consider the ways in which Western states seek tobenefit from war coverage in cyberspace in pursuit of geo-political goals. It is arguedthat while convergent media technologies potentially allow for the democratization

of war through the proliferation of anti-state views and perspectives, the blurring ofinformation and entertainment within contemporary coverage of war also affects

a kind of disorientation in its consumers in ways that are exploited by states andother centers of power. This has given rise to the emergence of war as ‘‘spectator

sport,’’ which provides a contemporary example of a much older political traditionof state control of the media in support of war goals. Drawing on contemporary

international relations theory, we then show how Western states have sought to usewar coverage in cyberspace to ‘‘securitize’’ external threats as a basis for interven-tionist foreign policy. Televised reporting of the ‘‘War on Terror’’ has been used by

Western states to place their populations on permanent war footing in pursuit ofnew militaristic forays in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other ‘‘failed states.’’

The use of war coverage in cyberspace to securitize threats as a basis for foreignintervention constitutes a traditional strategy on behalf of states; in this sense, there is

nothing particularly remarkable about it. We argue that the true significance of warcoverage in cyberspace lies in the ways in which such coverage has changed the way

war itself is understood in the Western mind. Contemporary wars are increasingly

190 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2006) 189–208 ª 2006 International Communication Association

understood as ‘‘new wars;’’ that is, as pathologies of under-development occurring inan anarchic, and seemingly distant Third World. Through grounded depictions of

life in Third World countries, convergent media technologies have facilitated adiscourse of contemporary war as something ‘‘new’’ and lying beyond traditional

state-based conflict, creating a new space in whichWestern states can pursue traditionalmilitaristic goals. For example, ‘‘new war’’ coverage in cyberspace has provided un-precedented opportunities for Western state intervention in the sovereign affairs of

other states (e.g., the invasion of Iraq) in the name of humanitarian objectives.We conclude by introducing a theoretical ‘‘paradox of proximity and distance’’

to explain how states seek to benefit from new war coverage in cyberspace. Accordingto this paradox, on the one hand, convergent media technologies help create an

image of contemporary war as something new and occurring in the distant ThirdWorld, necessitating benevolent Western state intervention along humanitarian

lines. On the other hand, contemporary war coverage in cyberspace often depictswar as more proximate by bringing war into the living room and generating uncriticalsupport for such ‘‘humanitarian’’ intervention. New war coverage in cyberspace has

thus allowed states to deploy discursive strategies that simultaneously distance thestate from culpability for aggressive war, while legitimating the necessity and urgency

of such intervention.

War as Spectator Sport

There is a long tradition of the use of mass media by states to support military goals.The construction and manipulation of media images is a key tool in this process.

Reportage in 1990 of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl’s testimony before the United StatesHouse of Representatives that invading Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait had killed babies byremoving them from hospital incubators proved to be a powerful (but fabricated)

mobilizer in the U.S. push to war. Even with the emergence of news coverage incyberspace, the state continues to use the media to mobilize mass support for war,

such as through control of official sources and access to war zones. This is not todevalue the capacity of the technology to empower journalists or laypersons in ways

that bypass such control, as we will discuss below. However, convergent mediatechnologies have provided the state with a greater range of visual and linguistic

devices through which it is able to make a case for war. What have shifted are thesubtlety, diffusion, and integration of entertainment into the way this case ismounted and presented. This is especially evident in the way that war has become

a ‘‘real-time’’ spectator sport (McInnes, 2002).Between August 1990 and February 1991, an audience of unprecedented magni-

tude gazed at the conflict in Kuwait and Iraq through themedium of global television.The U.S.-led alliance reflected a new global ‘‘humanitarian’’ sensibility—its reply to

the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and seizure of oil involved most Western states, inaddition to 18 other countries. In the post Cold-War world, former enemies fought

side by side in a market-driven conflict sanctified in the rhetoric of humanitarian


intervention and the ‘‘New World Order.’’ Much of the war was depicted in simu-lations that assisted in the minimization of casualties perceived by audiences. The

televised images of the war projected by CNN were sterile and centered on the appar-ently awesome surgical precision of modern technological warfare. The language of

death and destruction was shrouded and sanitized by jargon terms such as ‘‘collateraldamage’’ and ‘‘friendly fire.’’ The combined effect successfully disguised the compar-ative losses of a war that was described by a U.S. fighter pilot as ‘‘a turkey shoot.’’

The construction of these kinds of linguistic and semantic discourses is nowa familiar technique strategically employed by states, such as the U.S., across all

forms of media, to distance Western spectators from the inhumane, violent, andbloody realities of the battlefield. In recent years, these discourses have expanded in

vocabulary to include the evocation of jingoistic phrases such as the ‘‘War on Terror’’(which evokes the image and notion of an enemy that is omniscient, evasive, and

hidden at the same time), ‘‘democratization by force,’’ and ‘‘insurgent’’ (where othersmight prefer the term ‘‘freedom fighter’’). Hand in hand with these linguistic tech-niques is the use of evocative visual imagery, such as the toppling of Saddam

Hussein’s statue during the ‘‘liberation’’ of Baghdad, or the Pentagon’s Most-Wanted-Iraqi ‘‘Deck of Death’’ playing cards that receivedmajor coverage on theWeb.

Throughout modernity, mass media serviced the military and the media on aworldwide scale in both destroying and mythologizing the real life experiences of in-

dividuals, cultures, and nation states. Critical theorist Theodor Adorno remarked that:

The total obliteration of the war by information, propaganda, commentaries,

with cameramen in the first tanks and war reporters dying heroic deaths, themishmash of an enlightened manipulation of public opinion and oblivious

activity: All this is another expression for the withering of experience, thevacuum between men and their fate, in which their real fate lies. It is as if the

reified, hardened plaster-cast of events takes the place of events themselves.Men are reduced to walk-on parts in a monster documentary film. (1974, p. 55)

As a theatre of televised destruction, coverage of the first Gulf War intensifieda contemporary process in which warfare is sold as home entertainment. During this

conflict, control of coverage by CNN was visible but discreet. Eclipsing the geo-graphical barriers separating distinct political and cultural entities, the televised

coverage of the war represented a significant development in the portrayal of ‘‘eventsthat connect the most disparate sites of public action [so they] appear simultaneouslyas a private drama filled with familiar characters and moving stories,’’ using media to

transgress ‘‘borders between public and private spheres both on the home front andon the front line’’ (Wark, 1994, p. 71).

As a form of mass entertainment, integral to war coverage in cyberspace arefamiliar narratives of good and evil, heroes and villains. Said (1994) remarks that:

Some of the work done by critical theorists; in particular, Herbert Marcuse’snotion of one-dimensional society, Adorno and Enzensberger’s consciousness


industry—has clarified the nature of the mix of repression and tolerance used asinstruments of social pacification in Western societies.Yet before the media

go abroad.they are effective in representing strange and threatening foreigncultures for the home audience, rare with more success in creating an appetite

for hostility and violence against these cultural ‘‘Others’’ than during the Gulfcrisis and war of 1990-91. (p. 353)

War coverage seems, on one level, to draw people into the action of events usingjingoistic tropes or evocative imagery, such as the ‘‘Butcher of Bagdad,’’ while also

using the language of military ‘‘neutralization’’ to dehumanize the war and its con-sequences. A paradox of proximity is evident here as spectators feel engaged with warwhile being distanced from its consequences, or their complicity in it (however tacit).

In the context of contemporary war, this paradox has another more significantdimension, which will be explored in further detail below.

The information provided by CNN was to educate the public in the consump-tion of war coverage as a TV product, while its content was intended by the U.S.-

dominated alliance to mobilize bias on a global scale against a threat to its oil market.For the audience to remain seated in their living rooms was sufficient for theWestern

alliance to undertake the task of protecting its commercial interests in Kuwait usingbrute force beneath a technological veil.

During the Gulf War coverage, powers of all descriptions were ‘‘learning the newlanguage of force and terror that is the media’’ (Wark, 1994, p. 78). Wark observesthat during the Gulf War coverage, television no longer existed ‘‘in a relation to an

audience assumed to be a mass of consumers or a public to be educated. The eventturns television into part of a feedback loop connecting the spectator to the action via

the vagaries of ‘opinion’ and the pressures of the popular on political elites’’ (Wark,1994, p. 71). The mobilization of viewers and media technology by media cor-

porations and states alike were meshed in a loop between war simulations anda simulated consensus by a public believing itself to be ‘‘informed.’’

Within this loop, the spectator ‘‘becomes vague and quixotic’’ in its relation tothe abstract worlds of disembodied visual media (Wark, 1994, p. 71). The virtual gazeof the spectator is no longer a direct perception but instead is ‘‘received perception

mediated through representation’’ (Friedberg, 1993, p. 2). According to Haraway(1983), ‘‘It is not an exaggeration to say that modern states, multinational corpo-

rations, strategic alliances, military power, bureaucracies of the welfare state, satellitesystems, political processes, fabrication of our imaginations. depend intimately

upon electronics,’’ which break down the distinction between image and reality,and represent life in digitized codes of ones and zeros. The coverage of the Gulf

War illustrates a permeation of the boundaries between material and symbolicreality, ‘‘i.e., between production, reproduction, and interpretation in the political

struggle for the constitution of daily life’’ (Haraway, 1983, 1991). Today, war cov-erage in cyberspace has intensified the impression of a worldwide theatre of warin which conventional demarcations of fact and fiction, real and imagined, and


entertainment and education are dissolved and infused by the weight, power, andimmediacy of convergent mass media.

In a sense, cyberspace enhances this somewhat illusory function of being ‘‘edu-cative’’ about war. Emotive dramas have accompanied recent reports of Western

Alliance activities in the Middle East. From the fabricated drama of U.S. soldierJessica Lynch, to the heroic travails of embedded journalists such as BBC reporterJohn Simpson, to the ‘‘countdown’’ to the second Iraq War on U.S. prime time TV

and the staged announcement of ‘‘Mission Accomplished’’ by George W. Bushaboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in 2003 (CNN.com, 2003), coverage of war in

cyberspace has become an integral part of waging war on the home front.This is not to say that it is only the state that benefits from using the media to

shape and manipulate opinion. On the contrary, technological applications of theInternet (such as blogging) enable individuals and groups to shift the loci of power

away from state/militaristic discourses. The coverage of war in cyberspace represents,on one level, a more diffuse and decentered mode of information dissemination.This is most visible in the difference between the coverage of the first Iraq incursion

and the coverage of the 2003 invasion by theWestern Alliance. Where coverage of the1990-91 incursion was tightly controlled by the U.S. military and disseminated

through few media outlets (namely, CNN), the range of sources and access toinformation about the more recent military occupation of Iraq has multiplied con-

siderably. In the broader ‘‘War on Terror,’’ the sources of information are dispersedand innumerable. This is evident in independent newsgathering, such as Reporters

Without Frontiers, bloggers such as Salam Pax (2006), and podcasting by individualsof events such as the London bombings on July 7, 2005. Internet-based technology is

consequently viewed as empowering by enabling individuals and groups to engagepolitics and participate in the coverage of war in new ways.

Globalizing flows of information are typically associated also with the erosion of

the nation state and other conventional geopolitical boundaries. Whereas the tradi-tional view of media in war is as a propaganda tool controlled by states in the

contemporary context, war coverage through Internet-based technologies is reflex-ively associated with the democratization of access to and provision of information

about war. Examples of this include the podcast images of the 2005 London bomb-ings and the leaked photos of tortured inmates in Abu Ghraib in 2004 and 2006.

However, this dimension of war coverage in cyberspace represents but a small com-ponent of mass media coverage, whose control is still largely centralized in the handsof relatively few states and corporate interests. Personalizations of the news, such as

blogging, may be a distinctive new feature of war coverage. However, bloggingrepresents a minor and self-referential form of media dissemination. It also goes

without saying that malevolent interests have benefited from the same modes oftechnology, such as insurgents (e.g., al-Zarqawi), terrorists (e.g., Osama Bin Laden),

and transnational criminals (for discussion, see Castells, 2000).In this context, the following discussion will focus on what we consider to be

the more important dimension of war coverage in cyberspace: The way in which


Western states use and benefit from the speed and disorienting features of conver-gent technology.

Technology, Speed, Disorientation, and the State

The ways that Western governments represent war to domestic populations and seekto establish the frame of discourse in which war is understood continues to be

a central preoccupation of media theorists and commentators. The work of theoristPaul Virilio provides a useful starting point for critiquing the relationship between

contemporary technology, politics, and war coverage in cyberspace. His critiquehighlights how the acceleration and intensification of war coverage in cyberspace

produces political effects of disorientation, which, as will be explored below, havebeen utilized by states to justify new foreign policy directions.

Virilio raises some important questions about the political implications of speedthat arise from intensive use of ICTs. Virilio does not present a systematic theory oftechnology per se (Wark, 1988), but rather a dystopian vision in which cyberspace

and instantaneous globalized information flows effect a collapse of territorial dis-tance and compromise state sovereignty (Virilio, 1995a). Arguing that cyberspace is

a new form of perspective free of any previous spatial reference, Virilio (1995b)suggests that the sheer speed of information flows arising from mass ICTs impact

how people engage with the world around them in profoundly political ways. Virilioevokes the geometric idea of a vector—a line of fixed length and direction but with

no fixed position—to convey the notion of a trajectory along which bodies orinformation, with the potential to traverse a given territory, pass (Wark, 1988).

Manuel Castells describes a similar view of the information society, wherein thespaces in which humans interact are increasingly shifting according to the ‘‘variablegeometry’’ created by electronic networks, ‘‘where the meaning of each locale escapes

its history, culture or institutions, to be constantly redefined by an abstract networkof information strategies and decisions’’ (Castells, 1985, pp. 15, 23). By collapsing

territorial distance, Virilio argues, ICTs compromise political sovereignty byenabling ‘‘a parallel information market’’ of propaganda and illusion. According

to Virilio (1995a, p. 57) ‘‘[t]erritorial distance and media proximity make an explo-sive cocktail’’ with important political consequences.

Rather than engendering proximity, these information vectors have the potentialto transform political relations entirely. In Virilio’s terms, ICTs are transformingsocial and political relations by facilitating vectors with increasing acceleration in

which the boundaries between entertainment, information, communication, andhuman/computer interaction are eroded and reconstituted by technological change.

For Virilio, the speed and intensity of instantaneous information and communicationflows promotes an overwhelming loss of orientation that influences political forma-

tion. ‘‘With acceleration there is no more here and there, only the mental confusionof near and far, present and future, real and unreal—a mix of history, stories, and

the hallucinatory utopia of communication technologies’’ (Virilio, 1995a, p. 35).


The convergence of news and entertainment media conjures a seamless integrationof communication, entertainment, commerce, and politics, through which the

viewer is visually bombarded by a disorienting array of choice between news, fiction,‘‘edutainment,’’ and ‘‘infotainment’’—all of which are delivered instantaneously in

the ‘‘here and now.’’ As news, ‘‘reality television,’’ fictions, and various levels ofhuman and computer-mediated interaction take place through this electronicportal, the social and political impacts of the proliferation of virtual environments

and multiple realities intensify.Historically, human activity has taken place within local frames, times, regions,

and nation states. In the face of instantaneous communication and informationflows, however, globalization and convergent mass media are transforming people’s

sense of space and distance, inaugurating a global technological time characterizedby new cultural forms, social networks, and instantaneity. Traditional political rela-

tions within this emergent temporal order are being disorganized by ICTs that‘‘abolish’’ conventional boundaries of time and space (Virilio, 1987, p. 19). Spatialdifference is superseded by temporal difference (Wark, 1988). For Virilio, the new

information society is prefigured by a dominant new form of social time. Techno-logical innovations in transportation (such as commercial air travel) and ICTs are

altering awareness and perception of distance (Virilio, 1995a).Virilio argues that the kind of politics to emerge from a reliance on technology

amounts to a cathodic democracy, in which there is a shift of representation to the‘‘virtual theatricalization of the real world’’ (Virilio, 1995a, p. 33). Virilio warns of

‘‘de-realization’’ involving a generalized breakdown of individual and social relation-ships to time, space, and movement (Wilson, 1994). Technologies promoting instan-

taneous transmission, such as satellites, may actually restrict mobility by recastingthe scale of human environment and human perception of reality itself. The conse-quence, Virilio argues, is a ‘‘catastrophic sense of incarceration now that humanity is

literally deprived of horizon’’ (Virilio, 1997, p. 41). What emerges is a ‘‘montage oftemporalities which are the product not only of the powers that be but of the

technologies that organize time.’’ (Virilio, cited in Wark, 1988). Elsewhere, Viriliowrites that ‘‘[w]here the polis once inaugurated a political theater, with the agora and

the forum, today there remains nothing but the cathode ray screen, with its shadowsand specters of a community in the process of disappearing’’ (Virilio, 1987, p. 23).

Warning of a ‘‘loss of orientation in matters political,’’ Virilio (1999) suggests thatthis shift has vast implications for the way that we relate to our environments andeach other. Recent developments in telecommunications and other technological

breakthroughs thus impose simultaneity, immediacy, and ubiquity upon everyonein a way that Virilio likens to an ‘‘information bomb.just about to explode’’

(Oliveira, 1996).The emergence of a cathodic democracy has implications for the quality of

democracy and the relationship between citizens and the state. The speed withwhich information circulates clouds political relations and desensitizes citizens’

political sensibilities. One interpretation of Virilio’s work would therefore be that


this heightened speed and disorientation threatens conventional power bases,including state authority. The erosion of conventional boundaries of time, geo-

politics, and the multiplicity of information available to citizens could be seen tochallenge not only political subjectivity, but also to undermine the state’s authority

and legitimacy. On the other hand, such speed and disorientation potentially ob-fuscate political reality, providing the state with political cover behind which itcan pursue its goals.

Virilio’s perspective, while perhaps extreme, thus provides a useful basis forconsidering the impact of contemporary war coverage in cyberspace on political

relations within Western states. Specifically, it sheds light on the ways in whichWestern states (and, for that matter, other actors such as terrorists) might seek to

exploit this disorientation for political ends. What is of particular interest to thisdiscussion is how the state employs convergent ICTs to mobilize popular support

through traditional propaganda, and perhaps more insidiously, to propagate fear as abasis for action. States can benefit from the cumulative effect of speed, de-realization,and other impacts of globalized information flows by creating a permanent state of

disorientation predicated on fear, urgency, and omniscience (the ‘‘War on Terror’’ is‘‘everywhere’’). Virilio and Lotringer (1997) evoke the idea of ‘‘pure war’’ to describe

the ways in which states cultivate ever-present fear of the possibility for absolutedestruction, thus providing the basis for perpetual mobilization. A characteristic of

pure war psychology, as Borg (2003) points out, ‘‘is not the technological capacityfor destruction (that is, for example, the existence of nuclear armaments) that im-

poses the dread characteristic of a pure war psychology but the belief systems thatthis capacity sets up’’ (p. 57). Pure war ‘‘obliterates the distinction between soldier

and citizen. We have all been drafted’’ (Borg, 2003, p. 58). Virilio and Lotringer(1997) suggest that ‘‘[a]ll of us are already civilian soldiers, without knowing it.Warhappens everywhere, but we no longer have the means of recognizing it’’ (p. 42).

As the next section argues, Western states have proved most adept at usingICTs—and the disorientation that follows in their wake—to consolidate their polit-

ical position and maintain their authority. One consequence of the increasing speedand disorientation with which citizens now engage with political ‘‘reality’’ has been

their atomization as individualized, virtual citizens. While individuals now enjoyunparalleled opportunities for obtaining diverse information and expressing con-

trary political opinions through ICTs, their capacity to use this information effec-tively and constructively (in the sense of directly affecting real political changethrough decision-making processes) has arguably been weakened. By providing

individuals with a false sense of political empowerment, ICTs may in effect providea political vent in which the polity can let off steam while the state continues to

pursue its own agendas. While claiming to enjoy new possibilities for enactingpolitical change, virtual citizens have arguably disengaged from the state and thus

become less relevant to it. In the U.S., and around the Western world, this is mostevident in the disengagement of citizens from formal party political processes. The


virtual Web-based opposition to the Bush regime has generated lots of politicalfriction with little practical political change on Capitol Hill.

War Coverage, Fear, and International Insecurity

Virilio’s conceptual approach to speed and proximity is particularly relevant tointernational relations and the ‘‘War on Terror.’’ In recent years, we have seen very

clear examples of the state using war coverage in cyberspace to mobilize groups andindividuals for war, using the standard linguistic/semantic techniques described

above. These techniques are enmeshed with a broader strategy of mass media thatis far more traditional in nature, and which is used by states to mobilize opinion and

support, notably, through what international relations scholars have called the‘‘securitization’’ of looming international issues.

Security is a foundation concept in international relations. Traditionally under-stood as security from and between states, through, for example, policies of balanceof power and mutually assured destruction, the concept has since the end of the Cold

War been progressively expanded to include threats to human security such asenvironmental, economic, and resource security. An important preoccupation for

international relations scholars has been the way in which international challengeshave been constructed as ‘‘security’’ threats requiring state action. ‘‘Securitization’’ is

a discursive technique whereby policy makers, states, and governments seek toconstruct a given issue as a security threat to mobilize responsive action (McDonald,

2005). The securitization process aims to change the nature of political reality asa motivating factor in the development of actual policy directions by elites. As

McDonald argues, ‘‘In creating support for particular security conceptions andpractices, actors engage (relatively constantly) in a range of representational strate-gies that serve to position the group in need of being protected and to contest or

marginalize other security discourses and the voices to advance them’’ (McDonald,2005, p. 301). By changing the discourse of security, one can change the logic and

practice of security policy. Lipschutz (1995) suggests that ‘‘[w]inning the right todefine security provides not just access to resources but also the authority to arti-

culate new definitions and discourses of security, as well’’ (p. 8).As a political technique, securitization can be highly effective in generating new

political terrain from which securitizers can benefit, providing the basis for radicaldepartures from prevailing norms of international behavior. For example, by castingits response to the September 11 terrorist attacks as a ‘‘War on Terror,’’ the Bush

Administration was able to open up a global front on a war that can arguably neverbe won, and thus can be used as a justification for U.S. intervention in perpetuity

(i.e., pure war):

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming tothreaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, theseregimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to


terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack ourallies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price

of indifference would be catastrophic. Our war on terror is well begun, but itis only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch—yet it must be

and it will be waged on our watch. (Bush, 2002)

Casting the terrorist threat as a ‘‘war’’ requiring mass mobilization has provided

the Bush Administration with a justification for radical action in international rela-tions and domestic affairs. The ‘‘need’’ to attack terrorists at home and abroad led to

the invasion of Iraq without Security Council approval and the trampling ofpreviously unassailable human rights conventions, leading most memorably to thenotorious incidents of torture in Abu Grahib. This is not to deny the significance

of global jihad and international terrorism as a security challenge; rather, it is toillustrate how the securitized framing of the issue has cast the Bush administration

on a particular policy trajectory centered on combating terrorists rather than engag-ing societies.

War coverage in cyberspace has opened up new possibilities for states to engagein the securitization process. The state already enjoys significant discursive power

through its capacity to marshal material resources over other actors and its underly-ing institutional legitimacy. As suggested above, convergent ICTs increase this power

and the state’s ability to construct what constitutes ‘‘common sense’’ (McDonald,2005, p. 300) by multiplying the discursive tools available to governments to con-struct deliberate and manipulative discourses of mobilization. This is most apparent

in the use of images as a propaganda tool. Whereas much of the internationalrelations literature engages with securitization as a semantic issue, reflected in a pre-

occupation with more traditional print-based media and the censorship of informa-tion, war coverage in cyberspace has emphasized the importance of imagery in the

construction of fear. For example, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s (2003)famous multimedia presentation to the United Nations Security Council, in which

he presented compelling, graphic satellite evidence of Hussein’s weapons of massdestruction (WMD) program, bringing home the power of satellite imagery. Simi-larly, the use of embedded journalists in the Iraq war provided compelling images of

the front-line struggle while obfuscating more cerebral considerations of the geo-politics of the campaign. Governments, having unique control of privileged infor-

mation and satellite technologies, are thus well placed to manage the discursiveprocess in order to securitize disparate ‘‘threats.’’ This is particularly so in the context

of highly complex ‘‘new’’ security threats—terrorism, WMD, cyber-crime—all ofwhich are highly abstract and therefore muchmore difficult to understand than tradi-

tional, state-based threats (reminiscent of the ‘‘red menace’’ of the Soviet Union).Fed into the 24-hour news cycle, the selective release of classified information by the

American and British governments in the lead-up to the Iraq war was decisive inbuilding momentum behind the case for war—particularly given the opaque natureof intelligence gathering and the public’s inability to verify such information.


However, it should be recognized that as a political tactic, securitization isa contingent one. Buzan (1991) notes that security is an ‘‘essentially contested con-

cept’’ (p. 7). While securitizers have scope to problematize policy issues in particularways, this process is also bounded in that it must resonate with and thus not stray too

far beyond a particular community’s accepted reality. Governments occupy a power-ful position in leading the process but are constrained by a range of domestic andinternational forces in their capacity to successfully securitize specific issues. These

include conceptions of history, culture, and identity, and to some extent, indepen-dent access to mass media. Balzacq (2005) notes that securitization ‘‘is a nexus of

congruent forces’’ such that ‘‘every securitization is a historical process that occursbetween an antecedent influential set of events and their impact on interactions’’

(p. 193). Securitization is an evolving temporal concept in that, over time, govern-ments can build up a particular securitized understanding.

The contingent nature of the securitization process is particularly significant inthe case of war coverage in cyberspace. On the one hand, convergent ICTs enablesocieties to be better informed about the world abroad and thus less susceptible to

government manipulation of wartime imagery. This is best reflected in China’sdetermination to censor the Web by collaborating with Google to prevent internal

political unrest (BBC News, 2006). Similarly, the Chinese government has used datastored by Yahoo to silence political protest (CNN.com, 2006). On the other hand,

the ready accessibility of convergent media technologies means that the securitizedthreat or enemy can also mobilize technology to retaliate or indeed open new fronts

in contemporary wars. Al-Qaeda’s successful use of the internet as a basis for mobi-lising Arab opposition to ‘‘Western imperialism’’ in the Middle East, including the

deliberate use of visual terrorism (the design of terrorist events as publicity stunts,such as the 2004 video footage showing the beheading of U.S. contractor Nick Bergin Iraq), emphasizes the new organizing powers afforded to ‘‘resistance’’ groups by

cyberspace. Most notable here was the Madrid bombings, which led to the downfallof the Aznar government, which was vocally supportive of the war in Iraq in 2003.

Virilio and Lotringer’s (1997) concept of ‘‘pure war’’ is therefore useful in rela-tion to our understanding of the state‘s capacity to securitize ‘‘new’’ security threats,

such as terrorism or WMD, by capitalizing on the speed and de-territorializingeffects of convergent ICTs. States have an interest in portraying an enemy that is

fluid and ill-defined to mobilize fear that war could happen anywhere at once(Taliban, al-Qaeda, Islamic fundamentalism, or whatever ‘‘enemy’’ is appropriate).While securitization is a contested process, war coverage in cyberspace has the

potential to make the securitization process more effective for states. Its privilegedcontrol of information, including cyber-contingent information such as satellite

imagery and secret intelligence, gives the state added power to disorient citizensand build the case for wars based on increasingly vague security threats. Thus, while

convergent media technologies have increased the capacity of ‘‘enemies’’ to open upnew wars across a cyber-front, they have also reinforced the state’s already privileged

capacity to securitize threats as a basis for intervention.


As Castells (2000) observes, the U.S. government’s use of media coverage tojustify the Iraq war illustrates this capacity to securitize in the U.S. context. Between

the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq war, the U.S. government improved upon theways in which it manipulated public opinion through improved management of

information, moving from control-oriented techniques (e.g., news blackouts), toones fostering co-optation based on a more positive image of the war (e.g., self-censoring embedded journalists). Castells writes that:

This policy of shaping public opinion in favour of the war was thus particularly

effective in the US, where there were few alternative sources of audiovisualinformation to the mainstream American media that had, by and large,accepted embedded journalism. In Europe, and in the world at large,

broadcasting from Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi Television, and a number ofEuropean networks provided a much more diversified source of information.

Yet there was an obvious priority given to shaping public opinion about the warin the United States, and, in this case, the Bush administration won the

propaganda war, another critical success in preparing the country for thepursuit of a new security policy. (2000, p. 350)

The Changing Nature of War and ’New War‘ Coverage in Cyberspace

As the previous sections have shown, war coverage in cyberspace has allowed West-

ern states to securitize a host of ‘‘new’’ transnational threats as a basis for mobilizingpopulations for war in more effective but nonetheless traditional ways, not the least

by reinforcing the ‘‘pure war’’ threat of global terrorism. This suggests that warcoverage in cyberspace has underscored a traditional relationship between theWestern state and the Western media in the propagation of war. But there are other,

more innovative ways in which Virilio’s concepts of speed and de-territorializationcan be seen in the profoundly reconstituted relationships between convergent media

technologies, war coverage, and the state. Specifically, war coverage in cyberspacehas helped to change the very image of contemporary war, and through this, notions

of Western state culpability and accountability for its conduct and resolution.War in international relations has historically been understood as a phenomena

conducted between states. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end ofthe Cold War, international relations scholars were struck by the apparent prolifer-ation of localized wars and the demise of the state-based international order and its

replacement by a seemingly more anarchical regime. According to some scholars,post-Cold War warfare is distinctive insofar as it occurs outside traditional state-

based parameters. ‘‘New wars’’ (Kaldor, 1999), such as those waged in Africa (Liberiaand the Congo) and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, are predominantly

ethnically based and intra-state or civil in nature. New wars correlate with processesof state failure and fragmentation. They emerge from social transformations ‘‘driven

by globalization and liberal economic forces’’ which give ‘‘rise to competition over


natural resources and illegal commercial entrepreneurship, private armies, and crim-inal warlords, often organized according to some form of identity’’ (Newman, 2004,

p. 175). One example of this economic dimension to contemporary war is the rela-tionship between Afghan warlords and their control of the illicit drug trade. From

a Western perspective, new wars are distinctive, as they no longer center on impe-rialistic attempts by powerful states to gain control of foreign territory. (State-basedwar, such as the conflict in Iraq, has arguably become the exception rather than the rule.)

Local protagonists seeking to monopolize control of power and resources withina particular territory fight them. New wars are a consequence of state fragility, rather

than a product of state ambition, driven by a dynamic of globalization leading to thebreakdown of political, economic, and social processes within developing countries.

Crucially, just as convergent media technologies have facilitated a de-territorial-ization of international politics, they have also underwritten a de-territorialization of

contemporary war, in the sense of contributing to an image in the Western mind ofnew warfare as a pathology of under-development. New wars emerge in developingcountries struggling to come to terms with the challenges of modernity and global-

ization, and which are consumed by ‘‘irrational,’’ pre-modern tribal conflicts. Thisimage has been reinforced by convergent media technologies that allow for un-

precedented ‘‘real time’’ coverage of the human costs of state failure and civil warfrom distant corners of the globe. Representations of contemporary wars ranging

from the conflict in Darfur to the haunting genocide in Rwanda (where the holo-caust was graphically filmed on hand-held video cameras), to the return of civil

violence in the newly built state of East Timor, portray an inexplicable, tribal, evenatavistic image of contemporary violent conflict in which Western states are largely

absent as complicit protagonists.‘‘New war’’ coverage in cyberspace has arguably had profound implications on

the way war is understood in theWestern mind. New wars, in which modern states as

we know them have partial or no control (as in the case of Somalia which is a col-lapsed state with no extant state to speak of) over the theatre of war and in which

non-state actors such as warlords and mercenaries have become important protag-onists, have impacted upon the modalities of war coverage in interesting ways.

Where convergent media technologies have provided strong Western states withnew discursive opportunities to mobilize the home front, new war coverage, in which

war itself is the result of state failure and where the state is consequently absent,provides much less opportunity for state control of the imagery of war or the pro-duction of news. In such circumstances, Western opportunities for media agenda

setting and gatekeeping become limited. Instead, war coverage is often generatedindependently at a point in the news process prior to the news production meeting.

In the case of Rwanda, the compelling images of the genocide that appeared on theWeb shamed a reluctant international community into eventual—but regrettably

late—action.Ostensibly, new war coverage in cyberspace, through Virilio’s dynamic of speed

and de-territorialization, points to an undermining of the capacity of Western states


to control the terms of debate in which the push to war is made. It represents animportant use of global media to decentralize power and shift the loci of influence

away from government and military agendas. But in other ways, new war coverage incyberspace may have crucially underwritten new imperial opportunities for Western

states. By contributing to the framing of contemporary war as a pathology of under-development, new war coverage in cyberspace has allowed Western governments toengage with wars in significantly different ways, most notably through humanitarian

interventionist warfare and subsequent peace building and state building. Globalizedinitiatives, such as the 2005 Live-8 music concerts, act to responsibilize this under-

development and the conflict arising from it, encouraging the Western public todemand political action from their own states (and the international community),

to mitigate conflict and address looming humanitarian disasters. When war isframed as a consequence of poverty, under-development, and ethnic barbarism,

Western engagement by necessity centers on humanitarian interventions that areperceived as legitimate and morally necessary.

Compelling images of human suffering on a global scale have thus helped create

new vectors within whichWestern states can act. New war coverage in cyberspace hascreated powerful political and moral imperatives for Western intervention in the

sovereign affairs of Third World states to restore global order. Moreover, Westernstates themselves have been quick to capitalize on the opportunities provided by new

war coverage in cyberspace through the securitization of under-development.Western states now proffer state failure as a major international security challenge,

warranting benign intervention to stop failed states from becoming Petri dishes fortransnational security risks, terrorism, and organized crime. State building and

development in general has been identified as a ‘‘form of bio-politics concernedwith addressing the putative threats posed to effective states by trans-border migra-tory flows, shadow economies, illicit networks, and the global insurgent networks

of the ineffective states’’ (Cooper, 2005, p. 471). Recent interventions in Afghanistanand Iraq have relied heavily on the securitization of under-development as a jus-

tification for ongoing intervention, with increasingly cynical publics asked to staythe course for fear that, if abandoned, both countries will become havens for

al- Qaeda and international terrorist networks.In this context, the securitization of under-development has provided a new

basis for the re-territorialization of contemporary war. U.N.-endorsed peace build-ing and state-building initiatives have given Western states unprecedented powersto re-shape state structures in the developing world. The powerful state-building

imperative underwritten by new war coverage in cyberspace provides unparalleledopportunities for the re-moulding of developing states along Western lines. State

building provides new opportunities for the imposition of neo-liberal governanceframeworks on weak or failed states to be democratized and re-integrated into the

global economy. In this context, Cooper (2005) notes the emergence of a ‘‘liberalpeace’’ aid/development paradigm focused on buttressing weak states by imposing

on them democratic, neo-liberal frameworks. Western humanitarian intervention


in the wake of natural disasters and contemporary wars is a form of ‘‘disastercapitalism’’ that provides more opportunities for transnational super-profits

through outsourced aid budgets (Klein, 2005). Indeed, both the war and recon-struction in Iraq has been largely privatized, providing unprecedented oppor-

tunities for transnational private sector profiteering. According to Singer (2005),Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root won an estimated $13 billion(U.S.) contract to provide supplies for troops and maintenance for equipment in

Iraq—a figure Singer notes is two and a half times what the United States paid forthe entire Persian Gulf War in 1991, and approximately the same as the U.S. spent

on the American Revolutionary War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and theSpanish-American War combined.

Thus, the powerful image of selfless humanitarian intervention that underpinsWestern public perceptions of the ‘‘new world order’’ has come to obfuscate the

quite traditional, geo-political motives that continue to inform Western state inter-vention in the sovereign affairs of the developing world. Furthermore, by creating animage of war as a consequence of under-development, which Third World states

bring upon themselves, war coverage in cyberspace has downplayed Western cul-pability for war. This includes the ways in which the global economy itself has been

structured by Western states to benefit Western capitalist economies at the expenseof developing states, in turn exacerbating Third World under-development leading

to new war conflict. Through Western humanitarian intervention and state build-ing, the reality of invasion is submerged both literally in the language of ‘‘liberation’’

evoked by the U.S. in the invasion of Afghanistan, and metaphorically in the(staged) evocation of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Iraq. In this

context, President Bush was able to transform the chaos in Iraq into an exercisein freedom and democracy building: ‘‘America, our Coalition, and Iraqi leaders areworking towards the same goal—a democratic Iraq that can defend itself. that will

never again be a safe haven for terrorists . and that will serve as a model forfreedom for the Middle East’’ (Bush, 2005, p. 2). Seen in this light, Western

‘‘humanitarian’’ intervention begins to take on a more sinister, even imperialistictone. New war, the securitization of under-development, and subsequent demands

for Western-led state building assume a more familiar form, where state buildinghas arguably become the twenty-first century’s version of nineteenth century

Europe’s rush to empire.We are not arguing that humanitarian intervention is unwarranted in certain

cases. We do, however, argue that the speed and de-territorialized nature of new war

coverage in cyberspace has contributed to a changed perception of contemporarywar itself. The ensuing imagery of war as a pathology of under-development has in

turn created cover for traditional, territorialized forms of state-based geo-politics.In effect, new war coverage in cyberspace has underwritten what may be crudely

called a ‘‘blame the victim’’ approach to contemporary war in the developing world.There, wars occur and states fail because developing countries have failed to grasp the

opportunities provided by post-colonial independence and globalization. The role of


Western states in contributing to processes of state decline and failure is often left outof this story. Ironically, Western states are implored to intervene once more in the

affairs of Third World states as peacekeepers and state builders.

Conclusion

This article has considered the implications of war coverage in cyberspace for the role

of contemporary Western states as protagonists of war. Proponents of the Internet asan emancipatory tool would argue that the possibilities for independent journalism

in cyberspace could undermine and challenge the authority of the state and itscapacity to manipulate and mobilize opinion in support of war. However, the

authors contend that it also may result in the atomization of citizens, making iteasier for the state to divide and rule. It has been argued that convergent media

technologies also provide Western states with new opportunities and spaces tomanipulate discourses in furtherance of military objectives.

This discussion began with a review of the ways in which war coverage in

cyberspace has led to the representation of war viewed by Western publics as some-thing akin to a spectator sport. We described how this has provided a political

context amenable to continued state use of war as an international political tool.We then introduced Virilio’s theoretical insights regarding the political impact of

speed and de-territorialization arising from intense mass information flows gener-ated by convergent media technologies. Such technologies have reinforced the image

of war as spectator sport, creating a contemporary ‘‘fog of war’’ beneath which statescan mobilize citizens in pursuit of traditional geo-political goals. War coverage in

cyberspace was then linked explicitly with the securitization discourse of interna-tional relations. Securitization was illustrated with practical examples of the ways inwhich war coverage in cyberspace has been used by states to construct transnational

security risks as a basis for interventionist foreign policy. While it is tempting toargue that war coverage in cyberspace has had profound implications for the capa-

city of Western states to use the media in support of war, what is more remarkableare the continuities that exist between pre- and post-cyberspace state media control

strategies. War coverage in cyberspace has broadened the techniques available tostates to try to shape public opinion, but the process of seeking to control war

coverage remains fundamentally the same.We argue, however, that war coverage in cyberspace has had a significant impact

on the capacity of Western states to wage war through other indirect means. Spe-

cifically, ‘‘new war’’ coverage in cyberspace has shifted how Western publics under-stand contemporary war, and the relationship of Western states to its conduct.

Coverage of ‘‘new wars’’ in cyberspace has contributed to a misleading representationof contemporary war as a pathology of underdevelopment. Ubiquitous and intense,

this depiction of war has a reflexive effect, in which war is seen as an anarchicalpathology of underdevelopment to which Western states benevolently respond

with ‘‘necessary force.’’ In the process, Western states are absolved of direct


culpability for war, while simultaneously benefiting new opportunities for legitimateintervention in the affairs of developing states. New war coverage in cyberspace has

underwritten an emergent New World Order in which powerful Western states havea humanitarian obligation to undertake humanitarian wars and post-conflict state

building in furtherance of human rights.New war coverage in cyberspace has thus come to play a crucial but very complex

role in underpinning contemporary international relations and the interventionist

ambitions of powerful Western states. This role can best be explained through a kindof paradox of proximity and distance, which needs to be understood at two levels.

On one level, we have a geographical paradox of distance, in which new war coveragein cyberspace shifts the very notion of war itself as something new and taking place in

distant locations beyond prosperous Western borders. Here, Western states benefitfrom war coverage in cyberspace, which frames war itself as a pathology of under-

development for which Western states are not culpable. On another, proximate level,war becomes a spectator sport, offered to the news consuming public as a form ofentertainment to be consumed domestically. At this proximate level, a passive sense

of engagement is fostered whereby Western citizens become mobilized througha feeling of responsibility for the distant ‘‘Other.’’ Here, new war coverage in cyber-

space gives rise to a humanitarian political dynamic on the home front that drawsWestern citizens into the representation and ‘‘action’’ of a just, humanitarian warfare

and demands and mandates Western humanitarian intervention to stop such wars.At this point the discourse of Western intervention shifts from that of imperial

aggressor to selfless humanitarian champion and state builder.New war coverage in cyberspace therefore comes to echo an old process in which

states seek to exploit and benefit from the mobilizing capacity of mass media tech-nologies. Contrary to Virilio’s concerns about the de-territorializing effects of ICTs,what is in fact occurring at present is a re-territorialization, in which populations are

mobilized for seemingly selfless humanitarian ends. Western state authority isasserted within the complex process of increasing proximity, while at the same time

defining new distant boundaries of influence and culpability. Convergent mediatechnology is being coopted as part of a political dynamic that creates an audience

more receptive to the securitization of war and underdevelopment. The spectacularpresentation of war functions to co-opt audiences at home, while Western states

continue to wage (traditional) forms of aggressive war abroad.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Emma Rujevic for her feedback. We are also gratefulto the anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

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About the Authors

Lucas Walsh is a research fellow in the Citizenship and Globalisation Research

Priority Area at Deakin University. A theme of his recent research has been thetheoretical and applied issues arising from the nexus of technology, culture, citizen-

ship, and governance in contemporary society.Address: Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood, VIC 3125

Australia

Julien Barbara is a research fellow within the Citizenship and Globalisation Research

Priority Area at Deakin University. His current research interests include the privat-ization of war, the role of the private sector in peace building and development, and

processes of state failure and state formation.Address: Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood, VIC 3125

Australia


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Speed, International Security, and “New War” Coverage in Cyberspace

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