A strategic narrative is a narrative forged by a state with the express purpose of influencing the foreign policy behavior of other actors. This communicative work is particularly critical in periods of transition in the international system when challengers to hegemonic powers emerge, such as the challenge of China, India and the EU to the existing US-led world order. Over the past 12 months a research programme on strategic narratives has been initiated by the NPCU, Centre for European Politics at Royal Holloway, and Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex. This programme has been recognised by the International Studies Association, which will host two panels on the theme on Saturday 20 February 2010 at the ISA Annual Convention in New Orleans. The first panel presents recent studies of the strategic narrative work undertaken by major powers (and some non-state actors). The second brings together leading figures with experience of policy, media and academia for a roundtable discussion on the ‘battle for influence’ in international affairs.

Research Panel: Identity, Persuasion and Strategic Narratives (10.30am)

Papers:

• Laura Roselle: Communicating Strategic Narratives: Constructing the Post-Cold War International System
• Alister Miskimmon: The European Security Strategy as a Strategic Narrative: Projecting European Union influence?
• Karin Fierke: The Body as Strategic Narrative: Self Sacrifice and Power in International Relations
• Cristina Archetti: Constructing the Al-Qaida Narrative: Media and Communication in the Radicalization process
• Ben O'Loughlin: Media Diplomacy, Non-Linear Narratives and Digital Emergence
• Discussant: Andreas Antoniades, University of Sussex

Roundtable: The Battle for Influence: Great Powers in the 21st Century (3.45pm)

Participants:

• Parag Khanna, New America Foundation
• Philip Seib, University of Southern California
• Jeffrey Legro, University of Virginia
• Laura Roselle, Elon University
• Fabio Petito, University of Sussex
• Ben O'Loughlin, NPCU
• Alister Miskimmon, Royal Holloway, University of London

For further information please contact Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk.

Ben O'Loughlin (NPCU) and Andrew Hoskins (Warwick) will speak at Chatham House on 11th February 2010 to a closed meeting focusing on the future of counter-terrorism, ahead of the launch on 7 July - five years since the 7/7 London bombings - of a special issue of International Affairs.

The paper will focus on the role of media in counter-terrorism, especially the issue of how 'extremist' materials are translated and remediated for Western publics. Click here for their extended abstract. 

‘The Future(s) of Photojournalism in Wartime’ 

Stuart Allan

Dept. of Politics and International Relations, FW101

5pm - 6.30pm, Wednesday 3 February 2010

Visual imagery of warfare is a routine, everyday feature of our news media. For the photographer confronted with the challenge of bearing witness to conflict on our behalf, the effort to record its human consequences raises important issues of interpretation. This paper seeks to show how familiar assumptions about photojournalism’s capacity to represent violence in an impartial manner are being decisively recast by the ‘digital revolution’ in photographic technologies. In examining ‘our camera-mediated knowledge of war,’ to use Susan Sontag’s phrase, it explores a number of questions confronting the photojournalist – both professional and amateur alike – committed to ‘making real’ the horrors of human suffering. Evidence is drawn from several case studies in order to assess the implications of digitalization for the future of photojournalism in wartime, with particular attention devoted to photojournalism’s moral responsibilities where visual truth-telling is concerned.

Stuart Allan is Professor of Journalism at Bournemouth University, UK. His recent books include Digital War Reporting (co-authored with Donald Matheson) and Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives (co-edited with Einar Thorsen). He is a book series editor, and serves on the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals.

The NPCU will run a workshop on 30 November and 1 December 2009 at the University of Western Sydney examining how news and drama contribute to multicultural life, based on audience research in the UK and Australia. The workshop includes a special focus on the acclaimed SBS drama, East West 101.

The event is in partnership with SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), CCR (Centre for Cultural Research) and CRESC (Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change), and funded by Royal Holloway's Research Strategy Fund. For further information contact Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk.

Professor Andrew Chadwick will be speaking at UCL's School of Public Policy on November 26, 2009 at 5pm. The location is the Council Room, School of Public Policy, UCL, 29/30 Tavistock Square, London WC1.

The title of his talk is "Theorizing the Internet and Democracy Now."

Andrew will be a guest on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze tonight at 8pm. The theme is the internet and protest. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nkcfk

On Tuesday 15th September 2009 Royal Holloway will host a one-day symposium on the theme 'Media and Radicalisation'. Final findings will be presented from the two-year study, Legitimising the Discourses of Radicalisation: Political Violence in the New Media Ecology. The project investigates how violence is legitimated by Jihadist groups through internet and other media, how these communications are picked up and re-broadcast by mainstream Western and Arabic media, and how audiences and citizens come to understand 'radicalisation'. The event will feature contributions from the worlds of policy, academia, media and civil society.

Where: Royal Holloway Bedford Square buildings, Gower Street, London

When: 15 Sept 2009, 10am - 6pm

Contact details: Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk

The NPCU is holding a one-day workshop on 14 September 2009 to launch our focus on web metrics. The purpose of the workshop is to establish a research theme of Web metrics and political behaviour that will enable both academics and practitioners to debate and to shape an interdisciplinary research agenda that will:

1) Examine the increasing degree to which Web metrics can be used to measure and potentially predict such political behaviour from election voting to terrorism.

2) Bring together the combined expertise and opinions of academics, government and private sector actors to advance research in this field and inform debate.

3) Attract further support and interest from other people to form a community that is at the forefront at the nexus of Web metrics and political behaviour.

Speakers include:

Simon Collister: Head of Consumer Digital, Weber Shandwick

Rob Pearson: Digital Diplomacy, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Simon Bergman: Information Options

Carrie Baker and Dominic Campbell: FutureGov

Dr Maura Conway and Lisa McInery: Department of Law & Government, Dublin City University

Darren Lilleker: Department of Media and Communications, Bournemouth University

Claire Spencer: I to I Research

Andrew Chadwick will be presenting a paper to the American Sociological Association's Annual Conference in San Francisco in August. Details below.

Chadwick, A. (2009) 'The Internet and Democratic Engagement: Granularity, Informational Exuberance, and Political Learning' Presentation to the American Sociological Association Annual Conference (Thematic Session on 'Democracy 2.0?: Participation and Politics in New Media') San Francisco, August 8-11.

Ben O'Loughlin will participate in a two-day workshop Governing Through the Future this week in London, presenting a paper with Andrew Hoskins (Warwick) exploring how the recording and digitization of our lives disrupts the linearity of the politics of past-present-future. The meaning of events becomes impossible to settle for good because of growing awareness of the potential for new shattering images to emerge. Governance must live with this, and we discuss how new strategies of anticipation and definition are becoming clear, namely premediation and postmediation. Ultimately, what is being governed is not the future, but an extended present (Nowotny, 1994), a continually emergent and adapting set of strategies and foci within which all eventualities are not so much controlled but smoothed and nudged along.