Media and the Ukraine Crisis

"Offers us an excellent opportunity to reflect on and deepen our understanding of the complex ways in which today's media and communication ecology enter into contemporary conflicts. Notwithstanding the state power plays evident in the Ukrainian conflict and redolent perhaps of an earlier Cold War period, the surrounding terrain of media and communications has in fact moved on. New information technologies and evolving hybrid media (both 'old' and 'new' in dynamic interaction and increasing imbrication), argues Pantti, have reshaped both the conduct and space of modern wars. This has served to increase the range of views, voices and vantage points informing the narratives of conflict and their contending frames and counterframes; ... based on the original research of its contributors provides its own vantage point from which to better appraise the multiple and complex ways in which media and communications represented and entered into the Ukrainian conflict. Moreover, the questions that are posed and pursued have relevance not only for the Ukrainian conflict but the changing nature of war reporting globally. As Pantti astutely asks in her introduction, and invites us all to consider: What does 'information war, ' 'media propaganda' or 'media diplomacy' mean in the contemporary digital media environment? How are traditional mass media and new media forms and technologies involved in information war? How does media serve as a means by which various actors manage and communicate a conflict? What kinds of knowledge and understanding do the narratives and framings of conflict provide their audiences? The different studies and research insights offered by the contributing scholars to this timely volume help provide answers to these crucial questions and by so doing open up a new and necessary vantage point on the play of communication power in the Ukrainian conflict and in respect of today's fast-changing communication environment--Preface.