Recent Newpolcom PhD Dr. Mark Pope has published a new article entitled, Reporting Beyond the Pale: UK News Discourse on Drones in Pakistan, in the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism. How journalists cover the use and effects of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones has become a difficult practical and ethical dilemma in the past decade. Please find the abstract for Mark's article below and a link to the article here. (If you cannot acccess that, email Mark.Pope.2010@live.rhul.ac.uk for a copy.)

Abstract

This article on drone strikes in Pakistan offers a distinctive empirical case study for critical scholarship of counterterrorism. By asking how cosmopolitanism has developed through UK
news discourse, it also provides a constructivist contribution to the literature on drones. I argue that UK news discourse is not cosmopolitan because it focuses on risk and places the Other beyond comprehension. US–UK networked counterterrorism operations have complicated accountability, and while a drive for certainty promoted more scrutiny of policy, news media outlets, academics and activists turned to statistical and visual genres of communication that have inhibited understanding of the Other.