Philip Hammond & Holger Pötzsch (eds.)
War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
New... more Philip Hammond & Holger Pötzsch (eds.) War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
New York, Bloomsbury, 2020 ISBN: 9781501351150
This volume engages with the nexus between war, games and play from various disciplinary standpoints, bringing together perspectives from game studies, media studies, memory studies, history, sociology, political science, literary theory, and more. The chapters assembled here are inspired by work presented in earlier collections that have addressed similar themes and that still stand as seminal publications in the field-Nina Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne's Joystick Soldiers (2010), Gerald Voorhees, Joshua Call and Katie Whitlock's Guns, Grenades and Grunts (2012), and Pat Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum's Zones of Control (2016). To build on these important contributions, our anthology pays particular attention to areas of inquiry that, so far, have not been sufficiently explored. We focus on both digital and analogue games; critically assess the interplay and contingent relations between the military, militarism, players and politics; investigate the potential of war games as media of history and cultural memory; and look at predominantly European titles and themes. Our inquiries are underpinned by the conviction that games and play matter-that how we represent and playfully re-enact past and present wars has implications for how we see these wars, how we perceive our own role in them, how we remember them-and how we might react to future military engagements. We subscribe to Matthew Thomas Payne's (2016: 11, 4) view that 'the act of gaming is always inextricably connected to extant material forces', and that a 'complex but co-evolving dialectic' connects the physical world and virtual realm of play. The chapters in this volume adopt three distinct but interrelated vantage points. Firstly, attention is directed to connections between militarism and a subject of play who actively negotiates and selectively submits to
Climate Change and Post-Political Communication, 2018
For many years, the objective of environmental campaigners was to push climate change on to the a... more For many years, the objective of environmental campaigners was to push climate change on to the agenda of political leaders and to encourage media attention to the issue. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, it appeared that their efforts had been spectacularly successful. Yet just at the moment when the campaigners’ goals were being achieved, it seemed that the idea of getting the issue into mainstream discussion had been mistaken all along; that the consensus-building approach produced little or no meaningful action. That is the problem of climate change as a ‘post-political’ issue, which is the subject of this book.
Examining how climate change is communicated in politics, news media and celebrity culture, Climate Change and Post-Political Communication explores how the issue has been taken up by elites as potentially offering a sense of purpose or mission in the absence of political visions of the future, and considers the ways in which it provides a focus for much broader anxieties about a loss of modernist political agency and meaning. Drawing on a wide range of literature and case studies, and taking a critical and contextual approach to the analysis of climate change communication, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental studies, communication studies, and media and film studies.
‘In a period of upheaval and change for journalism, this is a timely examination of the role and ... more ‘In a period of upheaval and change for journalism, this is a timely examination of the role and relevance of journalism studies in the academy. Scholarly and knowledgeable, while engaging in its arguments and accessibly written, Calcutt and Hammond have delivered an original and important book, which will be of value to all those who study journalism in the academy.’ – Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
The media and cultural difference. Part 1 Questioning difference: is Japan different the making o... more The media and cultural difference. Part 1 Questioning difference: is Japan different the making of the yellow peril - pre-war Western views of Japan Nihonjinron - made in the USA. Part 2 Media memories: fear and loathing in the British press the image makers - British journalists on Japan orthodoxy and dissent - the American news media and the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, 1945-1995 history and the news media - the Smithsonian controversy Japanese war memories.
Journalism and Foreign Policy: How the US and UK Media Cover Official Enemies, 2023
This chapter examines portrayals of the Serbs during the conflicts of Yugoslavia’s breakup: Croat... more This chapter examines portrayals of the Serbs during the conflicts of Yugoslavia’s breakup: Croatia’s secession in 1991, the 1992–95 Bosnian war, and the 1999 Kosovo conflict. Attempts to make sense of post-Cold War conflicts involved a concern with the West’s self-image, defined through contrast with newly-designated enemies, in this case, the Serbs. The initial stages of Yugoslavia’s breakup prompted a revival of Balkanism – a view of the region as synonymous with barbarism and backwardness – which chimed with early 1990s ideas about a new ‘clash of civilisations'. Balkanist motifs persisted, but were overshadowed by the more significant theme of Nazification, which became prominent in coverage of the Bosnian war and dominated the later Kosovo conflict. In this framing, the Serbs were not just Othered as backward but demonised as evil perpetrators of genocide, in contrast to the good Western Self. These propaganda battles had lasting effects, helping to affirm a new post-Cold War role for Western military power and to exert pressure on Serbia as it ceased being an official enemy and came under Western tutelage. Within Serbia, a Western-oriented intellectual elite has internalised many of the negative perceptions of the country, a phenomenon described by Serbian critics as ‘auto-chauvinism’.
in Culture, Communication & Critique 2014 This article examines the emotional rhetorical strategi... more in Culture, Communication & Critique 2014 This article examines the emotional rhetorical strategies of 3 films—The Day After Tomorrow (2004), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and The Age of Stupid (2009)—that attempt to create engagements with the “postpolitical” problem of climate change. In all 3 films the experience of personal loss, the potential for future loss, and the emotions associated with loss are fundamental to affective engagement. The emotional loading of representations of environmental problems derives partly from concerns about human political agency and subjectivity. It is not so much that emotional or moral appeals are simply added on in order to bolster a political message, but rather that autobiographical narratives of loss and morality occupy the space once dominated by modernist forms of politics.
This special issue of Media, War & Conflict marks 25 years since Robert Entman's seminal 1993 ess... more This special issue of Media, War & Conflict marks 25 years since Robert Entman's seminal 1993 essay, 'Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm', sought to 'constitute framing as a research paradigm' for the field of communication. In the intervening quarter century, framing analysis has been widely taken up as a key method for investigating news coverage of war and conflict, and this special issue aims to initiate a fresh discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of framing as a method for analysing contemporary war coverage, of how and why the method has been refined and modified over the years, and of how it might be developed further. The development and increasing use of framing analysis has been neither straightforward nor unquestioned. One legitimate concern is that, as Kevin Carragee and Wim Roefs (2004: 214) argue, researchers have sometimes 'neglected the relationship between media frames and broader issues of political and social power'. This is-or should bean important focus of framing analysis, since as Entman (1993: 55) argued, 'Framing … plays a major role in the exertion of political power, and the frame in a news text is really the imprint of power-it registers the identity of actors or interests that competed to dominate the text.' Indeed, it is difficult to see how work on news coverage of war and conflict can justifiably avoid engaging with wider contextual questions of political power. Another concern is that-notwithstanding efforts to unify it-framing remains a 'fractured paradigm' to the extent that there are still no settled and standardized rules for operationalizing the method. In practice, individual framing analyses sometimes differ sharply in their procedures, emphases and assumptions. Some have pointed to 'significant inconsistency' in the application of framing analysis (
ABSTRACT This article proposes that the concept of simulation can provide an alternative framewor... more ABSTRACT This article proposes that the concept of simulation can provide an alternative framework for understanding contemporary trends in the media representation of war, and that the concept can usefully be extended to encompass the rationale for and conduct of war itself in the post-Cold War era. Rather than war being the pursuit of politics by other means, it now seems that western elites use war and intervention as a way to simulate a sense of political purpose and mission. Equally, the media presentation of war is less concerned with the dissimulation of hidden interests than with display and spectacle, although the very absence of clearly defined interests and values also means that this presentation is often incoherent and self-conscious. Examples discussed include both the conventional wars launched since 9/11 and the operations other than war undertaken in the name of humanitarianism or human rights in the 1990s.
Philip Hammond & Holger Pötzsch (eds.)
War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
New... more Philip Hammond & Holger Pötzsch (eds.) War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
New York, Bloomsbury, 2020 ISBN: 9781501351150
This volume engages with the nexus between war, games and play from various disciplinary standpoints, bringing together perspectives from game studies, media studies, memory studies, history, sociology, political science, literary theory, and more. The chapters assembled here are inspired by work presented in earlier collections that have addressed similar themes and that still stand as seminal publications in the field-Nina Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne's Joystick Soldiers (2010), Gerald Voorhees, Joshua Call and Katie Whitlock's Guns, Grenades and Grunts (2012), and Pat Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum's Zones of Control (2016). To build on these important contributions, our anthology pays particular attention to areas of inquiry that, so far, have not been sufficiently explored. We focus on both digital and analogue games; critically assess the interplay and contingent relations between the military, militarism, players and politics; investigate the potential of war games as media of history and cultural memory; and look at predominantly European titles and themes. Our inquiries are underpinned by the conviction that games and play matter-that how we represent and playfully re-enact past and present wars has implications for how we see these wars, how we perceive our own role in them, how we remember them-and how we might react to future military engagements. We subscribe to Matthew Thomas Payne's (2016: 11, 4) view that 'the act of gaming is always inextricably connected to extant material forces', and that a 'complex but co-evolving dialectic' connects the physical world and virtual realm of play. The chapters in this volume adopt three distinct but interrelated vantage points. Firstly, attention is directed to connections between militarism and a subject of play who actively negotiates and selectively submits to
Climate Change and Post-Political Communication, 2018
For many years, the objective of environmental campaigners was to push climate change on to the a... more For many years, the objective of environmental campaigners was to push climate change on to the agenda of political leaders and to encourage media attention to the issue. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, it appeared that their efforts had been spectacularly successful. Yet just at the moment when the campaigners’ goals were being achieved, it seemed that the idea of getting the issue into mainstream discussion had been mistaken all along; that the consensus-building approach produced little or no meaningful action. That is the problem of climate change as a ‘post-political’ issue, which is the subject of this book.
Examining how climate change is communicated in politics, news media and celebrity culture, Climate Change and Post-Political Communication explores how the issue has been taken up by elites as potentially offering a sense of purpose or mission in the absence of political visions of the future, and considers the ways in which it provides a focus for much broader anxieties about a loss of modernist political agency and meaning. Drawing on a wide range of literature and case studies, and taking a critical and contextual approach to the analysis of climate change communication, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental studies, communication studies, and media and film studies.
‘In a period of upheaval and change for journalism, this is a timely examination of the role and ... more ‘In a period of upheaval and change for journalism, this is a timely examination of the role and relevance of journalism studies in the academy. Scholarly and knowledgeable, while engaging in its arguments and accessibly written, Calcutt and Hammond have delivered an original and important book, which will be of value to all those who study journalism in the academy.’ – Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
The media and cultural difference. Part 1 Questioning difference: is Japan different the making o... more The media and cultural difference. Part 1 Questioning difference: is Japan different the making of the yellow peril - pre-war Western views of Japan Nihonjinron - made in the USA. Part 2 Media memories: fear and loathing in the British press the image makers - British journalists on Japan orthodoxy and dissent - the American news media and the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, 1945-1995 history and the news media - the Smithsonian controversy Japanese war memories.
Journalism and Foreign Policy: How the US and UK Media Cover Official Enemies, 2023
This chapter examines portrayals of the Serbs during the conflicts of Yugoslavia’s breakup: Croat... more This chapter examines portrayals of the Serbs during the conflicts of Yugoslavia’s breakup: Croatia’s secession in 1991, the 1992–95 Bosnian war, and the 1999 Kosovo conflict. Attempts to make sense of post-Cold War conflicts involved a concern with the West’s self-image, defined through contrast with newly-designated enemies, in this case, the Serbs. The initial stages of Yugoslavia’s breakup prompted a revival of Balkanism – a view of the region as synonymous with barbarism and backwardness – which chimed with early 1990s ideas about a new ‘clash of civilisations'. Balkanist motifs persisted, but were overshadowed by the more significant theme of Nazification, which became prominent in coverage of the Bosnian war and dominated the later Kosovo conflict. In this framing, the Serbs were not just Othered as backward but demonised as evil perpetrators of genocide, in contrast to the good Western Self. These propaganda battles had lasting effects, helping to affirm a new post-Cold War role for Western military power and to exert pressure on Serbia as it ceased being an official enemy and came under Western tutelage. Within Serbia, a Western-oriented intellectual elite has internalised many of the negative perceptions of the country, a phenomenon described by Serbian critics as ‘auto-chauvinism’.
in Culture, Communication & Critique 2014 This article examines the emotional rhetorical strategi... more in Culture, Communication & Critique 2014 This article examines the emotional rhetorical strategies of 3 films—The Day After Tomorrow (2004), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and The Age of Stupid (2009)—that attempt to create engagements with the “postpolitical” problem of climate change. In all 3 films the experience of personal loss, the potential for future loss, and the emotions associated with loss are fundamental to affective engagement. The emotional loading of representations of environmental problems derives partly from concerns about human political agency and subjectivity. It is not so much that emotional or moral appeals are simply added on in order to bolster a political message, but rather that autobiographical narratives of loss and morality occupy the space once dominated by modernist forms of politics.
This special issue of Media, War & Conflict marks 25 years since Robert Entman's seminal 1993 ess... more This special issue of Media, War & Conflict marks 25 years since Robert Entman's seminal 1993 essay, 'Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm', sought to 'constitute framing as a research paradigm' for the field of communication. In the intervening quarter century, framing analysis has been widely taken up as a key method for investigating news coverage of war and conflict, and this special issue aims to initiate a fresh discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of framing as a method for analysing contemporary war coverage, of how and why the method has been refined and modified over the years, and of how it might be developed further. The development and increasing use of framing analysis has been neither straightforward nor unquestioned. One legitimate concern is that, as Kevin Carragee and Wim Roefs (2004: 214) argue, researchers have sometimes 'neglected the relationship between media frames and broader issues of political and social power'. This is-or should bean important focus of framing analysis, since as Entman (1993: 55) argued, 'Framing … plays a major role in the exertion of political power, and the frame in a news text is really the imprint of power-it registers the identity of actors or interests that competed to dominate the text.' Indeed, it is difficult to see how work on news coverage of war and conflict can justifiably avoid engaging with wider contextual questions of political power. Another concern is that-notwithstanding efforts to unify it-framing remains a 'fractured paradigm' to the extent that there are still no settled and standardized rules for operationalizing the method. In practice, individual framing analyses sometimes differ sharply in their procedures, emphases and assumptions. Some have pointed to 'significant inconsistency' in the application of framing analysis (
ABSTRACT This article proposes that the concept of simulation can provide an alternative framewor... more ABSTRACT This article proposes that the concept of simulation can provide an alternative framework for understanding contemporary trends in the media representation of war, and that the concept can usefully be extended to encompass the rationale for and conduct of war itself in the post-Cold War era. Rather than war being the pursuit of politics by other means, it now seems that western elites use war and intervention as a way to simulate a sense of political purpose and mission. Equally, the media presentation of war is less concerned with the dissimulation of hidden interests than with display and spectacle, although the very absence of clearly defined interests and values also means that this presentation is often incoherent and self-conscious. Examples discussed include both the conventional wars launched since 9/11 and the operations other than war undertaken in the name of humanitarianism or human rights in the 1990s.
... Re-visioning Terrorism. Presentation Title. Jihad Satire: The Case of Four Lions (2010). Pres... more ... Re-visioning Terrorism. Presentation Title. Jihad Satire: The Case of Four Lions (2010). Presenter Information. Phil Hammond, London South Bank University. Location. Stewart Center 313. Session Number. Session 05: TERRORISM ...
The politics of national identity in the Republic of Tatarstan are complex and often contradictor... more The politics of national identity in the Republic of Tatarstan are complex and often contradictory. Although sometimes posed in terms of an historical legacy, claims to nationhood are also strongly shaped by more pragmatic contemporary concerns. In addition to more conventional forms of political mobilisation, national identity is also contested in cultural arenas. Examining policies on language reform and media development, for example, sheds light on the processes through which a sense of national identity is currently being renegotiated in Tatarstan. The Republic's official multicultural policy is situated in the context of a range of distinct conceptions of Tatarstan's identity, from radical Islamic nationalism to a view of the republic as a Russian province.
... to prevent news coming out of Yugoslavia, while pumping as much western media into the ... It... more ... to prevent news coming out of Yugoslavia, while pumping as much western media into the ... It was undoubtedly difficult to impose a news blackout on the Kosovo war (as in Panama ... Correspondents in Belgrade had access to the Yugoslav version of events, and the Internet made ...
DAVIS, HAMMOND & NIZAMOVA: POST-SOVIET JOURNALISM laid the foundations for what emerged after... more DAVIS, HAMMOND & NIZAMOVA: POST-SOVIET JOURNALISM laid the foundations for what emerged after the fall of the Communist Party. In the period 1989-91 there was unprecedented journalistic freedom and experimentation made possible by the inertia of the state system ...
This article examines the problem of how to interpret competing, clashing or contradictory news f... more This article examines the problem of how to interpret competing, clashing or contradictory news frames in coverage of war and conflict, focusing on the reporting of the 1992–1995 Bosnian war. ‘Ethnic war’ and ‘genocide’ featured as competing news frames in news coverage of Bosnia and several subsequent conflicts, and are often understood to be contradictory in terms of their implied explanations, moral evaluations and policy prescriptions. The author questions the assumptions that many journalists and academics have made about these frames and the relationship between them. He asks how we can make sense of clashing or contradictory scholarly analyses of these competing frames and considers a number of broader issues for framing analysis: the significance of historical context for understanding the meaning of particular framing devices, the importance of quantification in framing analysis and the role of influential sources in prompting journalists to adopt particular frames.
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Books by Philip Hammond
War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
New York, Bloomsbury, 2020
ISBN: 9781501351150
This volume engages with the nexus between war, games and play from various disciplinary standpoints, bringing together perspectives from game studies, media studies, memory studies, history, sociology, political science, literary theory, and more. The chapters assembled here are inspired by work presented in earlier collections that have addressed similar themes and that still stand as seminal publications in the field-Nina Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne's Joystick Soldiers (2010), Gerald Voorhees, Joshua Call and Katie Whitlock's Guns, Grenades and Grunts (2012), and Pat Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum's Zones of Control (2016). To build on these important contributions, our anthology pays particular attention to areas of inquiry that, so far, have not been sufficiently explored. We focus on both digital and analogue games; critically assess the interplay and contingent relations between the military, militarism, players and politics; investigate the potential of war games as media of history and cultural memory; and look at predominantly European titles and themes. Our inquiries are underpinned by the conviction that games and play matter-that how we represent and playfully re-enact past and present wars has implications for how we see these wars, how we perceive our own role in them, how we remember them-and how we might react to future military engagements. We subscribe to Matthew Thomas Payne's (2016: 11, 4) view that 'the act of gaming is always inextricably connected to extant material forces', and that a 'complex but co-evolving dialectic' connects the physical world and virtual realm of play. The chapters in this volume adopt three distinct but interrelated vantage points. Firstly, attention is directed to connections between militarism and a subject of play who actively negotiates and selectively submits to
Examining how climate change is communicated in politics, news media and celebrity culture, Climate Change and Post-Political Communication explores how the issue has been taken up by elites as potentially offering a sense of purpose or mission in the absence of political visions of the future, and considers the ways in which it provides a focus for much broader anxieties about a loss of modernist political agency and meaning. Drawing on a wide range of literature and case studies, and taking a critical and contextual approach to the analysis of climate change communication, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental studies, communication studies, and media and film studies.
– Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Papers by Philip Hammond
War Games: Memory, Militarism and the Subject of Play
New York, Bloomsbury, 2020
ISBN: 9781501351150
This volume engages with the nexus between war, games and play from various disciplinary standpoints, bringing together perspectives from game studies, media studies, memory studies, history, sociology, political science, literary theory, and more. The chapters assembled here are inspired by work presented in earlier collections that have addressed similar themes and that still stand as seminal publications in the field-Nina Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne's Joystick Soldiers (2010), Gerald Voorhees, Joshua Call and Katie Whitlock's Guns, Grenades and Grunts (2012), and Pat Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum's Zones of Control (2016). To build on these important contributions, our anthology pays particular attention to areas of inquiry that, so far, have not been sufficiently explored. We focus on both digital and analogue games; critically assess the interplay and contingent relations between the military, militarism, players and politics; investigate the potential of war games as media of history and cultural memory; and look at predominantly European titles and themes. Our inquiries are underpinned by the conviction that games and play matter-that how we represent and playfully re-enact past and present wars has implications for how we see these wars, how we perceive our own role in them, how we remember them-and how we might react to future military engagements. We subscribe to Matthew Thomas Payne's (2016: 11, 4) view that 'the act of gaming is always inextricably connected to extant material forces', and that a 'complex but co-evolving dialectic' connects the physical world and virtual realm of play. The chapters in this volume adopt three distinct but interrelated vantage points. Firstly, attention is directed to connections between militarism and a subject of play who actively negotiates and selectively submits to
Examining how climate change is communicated in politics, news media and celebrity culture, Climate Change and Post-Political Communication explores how the issue has been taken up by elites as potentially offering a sense of purpose or mission in the absence of political visions of the future, and considers the ways in which it provides a focus for much broader anxieties about a loss of modernist political agency and meaning. Drawing on a wide range of literature and case studies, and taking a critical and contextual approach to the analysis of climate change communication, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental studies, communication studies, and media and film studies.
– Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
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