ABSTRACT
We have seen in the previous chapters how the media have emerged as participants in events, largely at what might be regarded a strategic level-in other words as willing communicators of information and images from scenes of war and peace to a wider civilian populace which constitutes ‘the audience’ beyond those zones. In this way, to borrow an analogy from T.E.Lawrence, information flows as ‘circle beyond circle’,1 or perhaps we should say wave upon wave. We now turn to the role of communications within crisis situations and combat theatres at what might be seen as the tactical or operational level, namely within the very first circle itself. As such, this involves the communication of information by military organisations to support their objectives on the ground in ways quite different from the kind of media management arrangements made by government press departments and their Public Affairs, or Public Information, Officers out in the field.
