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This article is a book review of Beyond Confrontation: Globalists, Nationalists and Their Discontents by Phil Mullan. Like other writers, Mullan warns of the danger of rising global tensions, but what marks out his contribution is a demystifying historical analysis which identifies the underlying sources of conflict and offers an optimistic and forward-looking vision. The first part of the book examines the emergence of the current rules-based international order in the aftermath of the Second World War, uncovers its inherent flaws, and draws out how it has now become a source of conflict rather than stability. Part two is devoted to debunking myths about trade and trade agreements—particularly the idea that these are central to economic dynamism. Arguing that the relationship between trade and economic growth has been turned upside down, Mullan aims to put it back on its feet. The concluding part sets out some positive proposals for how to reimagine economic policy approaches in ways that could enable root-and-branch renewal and to think afresh about what type of political culture would facilitate such necessary changes.

This chapter places the concept of sustainability in the context of recent debates about the environment, particularly climate change, as a ‘post-political’ issue. Exploring this concept, especially in relation to contemporary discussions of climate communication, the chapter suggests that the broad acceptance of sustainability can be understood as exemplifying the post-political condition identified by critics as foreclosing debate about possible alternative futures. The chapter argues that at the core of the problem of the post-political is a failure of agency – that the apparent difficulty of imagining large-scale social and political transformation results from a diminished view of the human subject. Ecological perspectives, whether advanced by conservatives or radicals, are hostile to attempts to master or control nature rather than respecting natural limits, and therefore tend to give expression to this anti-humanist viewpoint rather than challenging it.

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.

Since 2011, the international media have done much to highlight the suffering of civilians in the on-going war in Syria, including through innovative forms of reporting such as VR journalism and news games. However, by the end of 2016, questions were being raised about a number of high-profile news stories, such as the use of chemical weapons, the role of the ‘White Helmets’ relief workers, and the bombing of Aleppo and other cities. Amid the claims and counter-claims of propaganda and ‘fake news’, news audiences glimpsed shifting and clashing explanatory framings of the Syrian war. A conflict that had initially been understood against the background of the ‘Arab Spring’ began to be seen as complicated by sectarian religious tensions, the rise of Islamic State, opaque factional and regional alliances, and international tensions reminiscent of the Cold War. An imperative to establish a moral framework for the story seemed to preclude more complex and searching questions about the motivations and actions of local and international actors.

This chapter reviews the key claims of the long tradition of critical scholarship analysing the role of the media in Western democracies, and assesses how far this radical tradition remains useful for understanding news coverage of contemporary conflicts.

(2000). Reporting 'Humanitarian' Warfare: propaganda, moralism and NATO's Kosovo war. Journalism Studies: Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 365-386.

Journalism in Russia is being shaped by new forms of regulation, ownership and economic organization as well as new conceptions of the role of the journalist in relation to authorities and audiences. While centralized broadcasting and communications in the Russian Federation continue to have a dominant role, the centrifugal tendencies of the post-Soviet period have enhanced the autonomy and importance of the provincial media. Using data from research interviews, supported by documentary and statistical sources on the media in Tatarstan, this article examines journalists' perceptions of their role and how it is changing. Key issues include the distinction between `information' and `presentation', the search for a new ethos among the younger generation of journalists, and orientations towards the audience. In a republic with an ethnically and religiously mixed population, often taken to be a model of stable political evolution, journalists are finding ways to accommodate to, rather than challenge, new structures.

As discussed in Chapter 16, contemporary justifications for Western military action tend to emphasize the ‘principles’ and ‘values’ that such action is frequently held to embody. Altruistic concern for the suffering of ‘distant others’ and a determination to uphold normative standards of human rights and humanitarianism have frequently been offered as reasons for the sort of ‘ethical foreign policy’ espoused by Western governments in recent years. At the same time, however, in the post-Cold War era military intervention is also often presented as a purely pragmatic matter of risk-assessment: military action is justified as a precautionary measure against threats such as terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.

A striking feature of media coverage of post-Cold War conflicts has been the emergence of a ‘journalism of attachment’, or ‘advocacy journalism’, which explicitly rejects neutral and dispassionate reporting in favour of moral engagement and seeks to influence Western public opinion and policy. This chapter first outlines the claims of advocacy journalists, examining how they view their work as an improvement on past practice. It then considers the examples of Bosnia and Rwanda — both key conflicts for the development of this style of journalism — which suggest that it can have disastrous consequences. Our understanding of these conflicts has been distorted by simplistic narratives of good versus evil, and the sympathies developed by some reporters have led them to welcome attacks on those designated as unworthy victims. It is argued that the journalism of attachment should be viewed in the context of broader political changes during the post-Cold War era. Although often presented as a critical and oppositional stance, its real significance lies in the promotion of a morally loaded, human rights-based discourse which has echoed and encouraged the development of similar themes by powerful Western governments. Journalism which advocates tough military intervention by Western powers has often left the consequences of actual Western involvement largely unexamined.