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5 - The Culture and Language of Contemporary Armed Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

Iulian Chifu  and
Greg Simons
By
Greg Simons
Iulian Chifu
Affiliation:
National Defence University, Bucharest
Greg Simons
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

Culture and language are crucial elements of the information realm to interpret and represent contemporary armed conflict in the cognitive realm. They set the tone for how different audiences perceive mediated conflict events, which engineers observers’ opinions, perceptions and responses to the physical realm event. Language and culture have been instrumentalised by Western countries to facilitate conflict and warfare, creating unneccessary wars of choice through creating simple binary stories of ’Us’ versus the ’Other’ that attempt to convince the audience of the moral and ethical superiority of ’Us’ over the ’Other’. The result has been the Endless Wars and the rapidly expanding New Cold War.

Keywords

culturelanguagearmed conflictjournalismmass mediameaningsymbolismintangibles
Type
Chapter
Information
Rethinking Warfare in the 21st Century
The Influence and Effects of the Politics, Information and Communication Mix
 , pp. 113 - 142
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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