Icons of War and Terror: Media Images in an Age of International Risk
About this ebook
Icons of War and Terror explores theories of iconic images of war and terror, not as received pieties but as challenging uncertainties; in doing so, it engages with both critical discourse and conventional image-making. The authors draw on these theories to re-investigate the media/global context of some of the most iconic representations of war and terror in the international ‘risk society’. Among these photojournalistic images are:
- Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of a naked girl, Kim Phuc, running burned from a napalm attack in Vietnam in June 1972;
- a quintessential ‘ethnic cleansing’ image of massacred Kosovar Albanian villagers at Racak on January 15, 1999, which finally propelled a hesitant Western alliance into the first of the ‘new humanitarian wars’;
- Luis Simco’s photograph of marine James Blake Miller, ‘the Marlboro Man’, at Fallujah, Iraq, 2004;
- the iconic toppling of the World Trade Centre towers in New York by planes on September 11, 2001; and the ‘Falling Man’ icon – one of the most controversial images of 9/11;
- the image of one of the authors of this book, as close-up victim of the 7/7 terrorist attack on London, which the media quickly labelled iconic.
This book will be of great interest to students of media and war, sociology, communications studies, cultural studies, terrorism studies and security studies in general.
About the author
John Tulloch is Professor of Communication, University of Newcastle, Australia. He is the author of 18 books in media and television studies, film history and theory, literary and theatre studies, and the sociology of risk. His books include the widely cited Risk and Everyday Life (with Deborah Lupton, Routledge, 2003) and monographs on Doctor Who (1984), A Country Practice (1986) and Trevor Griffiths (2007).
R. Warwick Blood is Professor of Communication, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra, Australia. Previously, he was a reporter, foreign correspondent and producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has published on risk, and news reporting and portrayal of health issues.
