ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a comprehensive overview of studies in the subfield of mediatisation of war and military. While its beginnings can be traced back to McLuhan and Baudrillard, the concept of “mediatised war” became standard in the mid-2000s and developed during the 2010s. Key theoretical currents are preoccupied with how the military adapts to transformations of news media and how virality and connectivity challenged the military media management through the diffused war and made it morph into the arrested war. Mediatisation also informs a conceptual backdrop in many empirical war and media studies (often published in Media, War and Conflict). These can be grouped under six categories: (1) representation of war; (2) new versus legacy media in war; (3) new and social media use in war; (4) artistic mediation of war; (5) history of war mediatisation; and (6) digital war, which is also treated as a field of its own (concentrated around the eponymous journal). Despite three key deficits – of conceptual consensus and development, of dialogue with adjacent fields, and of on-the-ground studies, the field appears dynamic and capable of generating highly productive concepts and models.
