Cori E. Dauber

“ But there is also the air war, meaning the war as it exists on the nation’s front pages and television screens. For a democracy, winning one and not the other will always mean losing, and losing in a very real sense, because the loss of public support means that the war will come to an end, period.
This means that the terrorist attack is a media event in the sense that it is designed to attract the attention of the media, to gain the media’s attention, the same way that a political campaign event is a media event, designed to attract the media’s attention and thus garner coverage. ”

“ As in the case of the presidential campaign, when we discuss media attention we are really first and foremost talking about television. When we are talking about gaining television’s attention, we are really talking about gaining the attention of the cameras—and the way to do that, of course, is to provide good visuals, however those are defined in a particular context. ”

“ Waging war against terrorists (or insurgents using a terrorist playbook) is a qualitatively different enterprise from earlier, or different, wars. By definition, terrorists are too weak to fight conventional battles. ”

“ The question here is what the impact of new communication and information technologies in the hands of civilian forces—some of whom are combatants—will be on the environment in which the force will be used. This monograph argues that the impact of these new technologies has been, and will be, enormous; certainly great enough that the way they are shaping the battlefield needs to be understood. ”

“ Their true target, in other words, is not actually that which is blown up or destroyed—that item, or those people—for that is merely a stage prop. What is really being targeted is those who are watching at home. ”