Book Review: Icons of War and Terror: Media Images in an Age of International Risk

As the established intention of this collection was to explore televangelism in a variety of cultures, including some the editors claimed have been under-represented in previous academic works, the collection succeeds in its goal. Looking to the future, Thomas predicts that televangelism will continue to rise in popularity, and may even become a space where religions ‘compete’ for members, thereby exacerbating current tensions between religious groups (p. 242). Thus, it is argued, more research needs to be conducted regarding the political and economic motivations of televangelists, as well as the social trend toward having more female and minority evangelists on the global scene (p. 245). – Evie Kendall Tulloch, John and Blood, R. Warwick, Icons of War and Terror: Media Images in an Age of International Risk, Routledge, New York, 2012, ISBN 9 7804 1569 8054, 226 pp., A$50.95. It is challenging to review a work that seems to be so intimately connected to the personal stories of its authors. In the case of Icons of War and Terror, one has difficulty shaking off the image of the wounded John Tulloch after the 7 July 2005 London bombings. The unauthorised publication of his injuries by British tabloids quickly turned him into an unwitting and unwilling icon of the risks and uncertainty that have underpinned the practices of our everyday life since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Drawing on this experience, the book offers a thoughtful exploration of media’s own complicity in the active creation of icons – emblematic images that haunt both our recollection and our political debates. To begin with, the book is about the changed and changing role of media – and public communication in general – in the post-9/11 world. Yet one should not expect a conventional account of recent times or a mere compendium of images. Instead, the book offers an evocative and passionate study of the mutually reinforcing interaction between new technologies and popular culture, and their redefinition of the meaning and practices of politics. In this respect, the mediated representations of global events play a contingent yet undeniably prominent role in shaping our collective understanding of political history and international relations. More importantly, owing to the democratisation of technology, the mediated ‘visual icons work at a continuing point of tension between convention and subversion’ (p. 47). Icons of War and Terror carefully interrogates the impact and meanings of the photojournalistic representation of world affairs. In particular, it examines the ways in which images construct political messages and communicate them to their audiences. The contention is that media provides a potent repository of representation of global politics. In particular, the suggestion is that ‘the iconic photograph is an aesthetically familiar form of civic performance coordinating an array of semiotic transcriptions that project an emotional scenario to manage a basic contradiction or recurrent crisis’ (p. 49). Images, in other words, uncover the fundamental assumptions underlying the ways in which theories and practices of world politics are represented. At the same time, iconic photographs assist in generating consent for foreign policies and for particular visions of world affairs, just as they sometimes resist, undermine, subvert and launch challenges against them. While discussing the experience of the post-9/11 world, Icons of War and Terror offers useful contextualisation by comparing iconic images of European colonialism, the Spanish Civil War and the Vietnam War. Such parallel assessment demonstrate that aesthetic judgements are not inconsequential, but frame particular political discourses. Accordingly, Icons of War and Terror would benefit immensely all those interested in the confluence between media and politics. The book’s exploration also lends itself as a supplementary reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on communication studies and international politics. – Emilian Kavalski, University of Western Sydney Waisbord, Silvio, Reinventing Professionalism: Journalism and News in Global Perspective, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013, ISBN 9 7807 4565 1927, x+280 pp., A$32.95. Distributor: Wiley. In Reinventing Professionalism, Silvio Waisbord sets out to provide a theoretically informed, historically contextualised account No. 149 — November 2013 203