“Contemporary warfare is a media spectacle driven by the search for meaning in the West rather than by strategic aims on the ground.”

In his latest book, Media, War and Postmodernity, Dr Phillip Hammond argues that Western military operations are now conducted as high-tech media spectacles, more important for their propaganda value than for any more tangible strategic aims. Tracing the development of conflict and the way it has been reported since the end of the Cold War, through the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s to the current War on Terror, Hammond draws together debates from a variety of theoretical perspectives to make a convincing case for understanding contemporary military intervention as an attempt to recapture a sense of purpose and meaning for Western societies.

Dr Philip Hammond is Reader in Media and Communications at London South Bank University. He is the author of Media, War and Postmodernity (Routledge, 2007) and Framing post-Cold War conflicts (Manchester University Press, 2007) and is co-editor, with Edward S. Herman, of Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto Press, 2000).

Media, War and Postmodernity" available at Amazon, investigates how conflict and international intervention have changed since the end of the Cold War, asking why Western military operations are now conducted as high-tech media spectacles, apparently more important for their propaganda value than for any strategic aims. Discussing the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s and the War on Terror, the book analyzes the rise of a postmodern sensibility in domestic and international politics, and explores how the projection of power abroad is undermined by a lack of cohesion and purpose at home. Drawing together debates from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, Phil Hammond argues that contemporary warfare may be understood as 'postmodern' in that it is driven by the collapse of grand narratives in Western societies and constitutes an attempt to recapture a sense of purpose and meaning.