Heroic anxieties: the figure of the British soldier in contemporary print media

Capability in the digital: institutional media management and its dis/contents

“…Instead, what we see is a physically able, mentally strong and culturally capable recruit. This is in keeping with the underlying principles of the military institution as comprising a capable fighting force and long-standing representational strategies of soldiers who are battle ready or in various stages of preparation (Woodward, Winter, & Jenkings, 2009). Whilst Joseph's post was authored through an 'Institutional' account rather than an individual one -a point that we return to later -similar narratives of capability were evident in the personal Facebook accounts of serving military members.…”

“…In their deliberate distancing of the soldier's behaviour from his service career, and by positioning him as an errant individual these tweets both defended the military institution -particularly in relation to notions of capability -but also closed down wider discussions (or concerns) about the culture of the military body per se (Woodward et al, 2009), particularly in relation to issues of mental health. This closing down is, of course, in keeping with the specificities of the Twitter platform which, like other forms of web interactivity, as many theorists have noted, is more conducive to statements and monologic communication unless users are called upon to protect their own relative (or organizational, institutional) position (Van Dijck, 2013;Coombs, 2007).…”

Beyond ‘pseudonymity’: The sociotechnical structure of online military forums

“…Indeed, although military forums are relatively unique in terms of the particular culture of the military (see for example Woodward et al, 2009;Woodward & Winter 2007;Barrett 1996;Goldstein 2001;Hale 2008;Silvestri 2013), we find our examples have a much wider resonance particularly for social media -that we need to consider.…”

Geography, military geography, and critical military studies

“…This research draws on geographies of literature, the geographies of reading and consumption, and work within popular geopolitics. It is in this vein that military geographers have studied, for example, the figure of the soldier in UK print media and newspapers (Woodward, Winter, and Jenkings 2009), and the scripting of the war in Afghanistan in and through popular military memoirs . In the case of the latter, reading memoirs through a critical lens has involved explicit focus on these texts as representational, carrying with them singly and as part of a genre a politics and intentionality in the ways in which Afghanistan is portrayed, in contrast to a more traditional military studies approach, which sees their value primarily in the recording (or re-ordering) of historical "fact" or the demonstration of the utility (or otherwise) of specific strategies or tactics.…”