Information Warfare and Military Propaganda

Information Warfare and Propaganda 

The discussion on the relationship between the United States government and Hollywood in this weeks reading was intriguing - particularly the examination of post-September 11 developments.

The construction of the Jessica Lynch story was shocking. It provides a stark example of how the war in Iraq "saw the military-entertainment complex move to an even more heightened level of information war" (Muir and Stockwell, 2003). The distortion of the facts surrounding her apparent capture and subsequent 'rescue' can only be described as blatant propaganda, aimed at glorifying the American 'heroes' in Iraq and demonizing the Iraqi people. A Washington Post story, "citing US officials" stated that Lynch "shot several enemy soldiers...firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition" (Kumar 2004). In reality her weapon was, in fact, jammed, and she "did not fight back" (Kumar 2004). The so called rescue of Lynch, which was incidentally filmed by the military, was apparently unnecessary, as "the US knew that the Iraqi military had fled the hospital the day before" (Kumar 2004).

A 2003 BBC report on the issue challenged many of the claims made by the US military, although it had little impact on the American media coverage (Kumar 2004).

References

Kumar, D 2004, 'War Propaganda and the (ab)uses of women: media constructions of the Jessica Lynch story', Feminist Media Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 297-313

Muir, A and Stephen Stockwell 2003,  'The Military Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information Warfare', Fibreculture Journal, vol. 1, no. 1.

Tutorial Questions

Has anybody responded to your questionnaire from last week?
I've had several responses to my questionnaire. 
 
What are the early indicators from your survey?
Early indicators suggest that Facebook remains the most popular social networking site. While a minority of those who replied are active on other social network sites such as Twitter, time spent on Facebook is still higher than on other sites. One of the questions I included in the survey was aimed at identifying whether time spent on social network sites has increased, decreased or remained the same over the past six months. The majority of respondents replied that their time spent on the sites has decreased minimally.
 
What do your musical choices say about your political choices? Are they related?
This is an interesting question. Does musical taste have any correlation with political leanings? While ideas such as country music fans being likely Republican voters doesn't sound overly surprising, it does seem like a stereotypical classification.

Is Wikileaks a force for good in the world?
In my opinion, organizations such as Wikileaks are good for the world. In the democratic sphere, transparency is a necessity. But in the current climate, what kind of longevity can these organizations maintain?


A few interesting articles and websites on internet censorship in Australia -

http://www.afr.com/p/technology/fears_rise_over_australian_government_m9S65GeyxBVtcIIxWpyojL

http://www.internetblackout.com.au/

https://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/cens1.html

Tutorial Activities 

Vote Compass: my results - http://www.abc.net.au/votecompass/?hash=9990f2e8406485229c8359267fd3885d364aae7015d1377752324


 National Broadband Network - according to the NBN Rollout website, the NBN will not reach my area until 2016.


Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message.

State representative: Jackie Trad (QLD ALP)
Federal representative: Kevin Rudd (ALP)


Obama speech on 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King speech

E-petition fro the Australian Greens website - http://greensmps.org.au/content/petition/support-our-children-boosting-number-qualified-early-childcare-teachers