War and its Mediation

Today I want to talk about viewpoint, mediation, and manipulation. 

When it comes to War, not many of us are there in person to witness and experience all that happens in a war zone or the surrounding areas of the said war zone. For information of this kind we rely on the media. 

When I say "media" I mean journalists, reporters, newspapers, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. And the media, being the media, has a tendency to mediate events or stories in order to draw out a certain reaction or nudge the general public into a certain kind of action. However, I would like to claim that the act of mediation is not just committed by those who work within the media. 

We as humans have a innate talent in mediating what we see or hear to convey our viewpoints onto others. I know we do this, because I myself can recall multiple times in which I have mediated things said to me. The instance that I can immediately recall is when I worked as a translator for my father's business. 

My father owns a landscaping business. While he can understand the English language when spoken, he himself is limited in conversing in English. This is where I come in: when it came to talking to clients both my father, the client, and I would set up an appointment in which I translated for both client and service provider. My father's mode of speaking becomes very repetitive when he is trying to make a point, because of this I often mediated his speech to the client so that my father's side of the conversation was more straight to the point and clear cut. 

Because of my own experiences in mediating conversations, I understand how easy it really is to manipulate other's words, images, videos, etc. And war is a huge issue that is often mediated.

At the beginning of this post there is a picture in which the original whole picture is in the middle with cropped versions of it flanking its sides. On the left there is a soldier held at gunpoint. This version of the image shows the violence of war and the lack of mercy. The version on the right is its counterpart. Here a soldier is giving another exhausted soldier water. Here the image connotes comradery and care. What the whole image essentially shows is how war images and videos can be manipulated by those who present them. This then brings me to viewpoint. 

Images, videos, an the news are presented to us in certain ways. They are either meant to call us to action, contemplate the actions of our leaders, criticize a course of action, etc. 

In war time, the most common form of media in circulation is propaganda. Propaganda is most commonly presented by the government at war or the military. Since the government and military are the source of this type of media, they present war in a light were it is necessary, heroic, and honorable. 

This viewpoint is quite different than that of those under siege. 

This poster was in circulation during
the time of Soviet Russia. Its aim was to
show the unification of man, woman, state,
and military under Communism.

Critique on how the United States may be
causing more harm than good with all
the "foreign" wars it has participated in. 

Here there is no majesty of war. Presented is the devastation that war can cause. 

The media is great at delivering only part of a story. They take a whole issue and present only facets of it. They may choose to show the horrific, the patriotic, the redeemable. It is up to us as the viewers and the audience to question and think critically; to seek out as much of the story as possible and decide for ourselves how to feel and how to act. 

Sources

• Media Manipulation  https://comm2302metafiction.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/media_manipulation.jpg