Shoot & capture: media representions of US military operations in Somalia 1992-93 and Fallujah 2004

Abstract

Mass media images and narratives have an important role to play in the workings of international and domestic politics. Technological developments, particularly in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have enabled a rapidly- growing 'economy' of images, information and means of communicating. These new commodities are circulated in an international sphere defined by shifting and unequal power relations. With this context in mind, this work undertakes an analysis of media representations of place and people in selected coverage of the Somalia intervention of 1992-1993 and the American sieges of Fallujah, Iraq in 2004, looking at both media narrative and imagery. Despite technological changes and differences in political context, coverage content for each case study illustrates many similarities in representations of places and people. Both case studies highlight the continuing resonance and use of long-standing racial and colonial stereotypes to describe, or to 'disappear', 'other' people and places. The aim of this project has been to recognise and problematize these powerful dichotomizations between a primarily Western 'us' and Others', illustrating the political nature of such attempts, their failings, and the consequences of these efforts at division. Exploration and exposure of the political nature of categorizations can assist in provoking a re-thinking not only of how 'others' are seen but of how 'we' construct our own identities.