Modes of War and Modes of Social Address: The Text of SDI

Abstract

A detailed a d y & of a tekwision report exphres the conjunction of the techwhgks o f wa$are and of communication that reveals &ralptotypes and creates a muster nurrm've for the strategic defme program.Journalists know they write "stories," and we know that we watch "stories" and read them, but we are not sufficiently attentive to the consequences of these acts. For "news" occurs where texts and events come together, at that place where the reporter puts a name to things, tells a story about them, and thereby gives them a structure. Narrative conventions bring order to events by making them something that can be told about; by organizing experience, they exert a powerful pull on journalists and publics alike. As individuals and as a people, we tell the stories we need to hear to make sense of the world. Reality appears to us, but we grasp it through the tales we choose to tell to ourselves, our way (30).Journalists grasp the world by making a text of it, and for those who seek to understand the journalistic act, this textualization of the world thus becomes a primary object of study. This article takes a single television news report and inquires into the strategies that governed the way it made its subject into a story, the way it transformed the world into a text. It does so in a sphere of textual and cultural studies loosely circumscribed by the work of such writers as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault ( 4 ,22, 27,44). But it is in no sense a systematic application of their work. It is rather a provisional attempt to describe the logic according to which meaning is created, an effort to describe how truth-effects are produced, to open up a space of possibility for regarding the discourse of television journalism in the nuclear era.

Content Analysis of New York Times Coverage of Space Issues for the Year 2000

“…For example, Lule (1991) addressed the rhetoric used in news coverage of Sputnik. Media coverage of Kennedy's and Khrushchev's space policies is discussed in studies by Whelan (1968), Ostman and Babcock (1983), and Kay (1998), while Manoff's (1989) study of the Strategic Defense Initiative provides insight into television coverage of a space-related topic during the Reagan era. The relationship between NASA and the press has attracted the attention of a number of researchers, including Alexander (1966), Sherrod (1973), Boot (1986, Kauffman (1991Kauffman ( , 1994Kauffman ( , 1997, Lewenstein (1993), Nelkin (1995aNelkin ( , 1995b, Arvai (2000), and Kiernan (2001).…”

“…Broad is the author of Teller's War: The Top Secret Story behind the Star Wars Deception (1992) and Star Warriors: A Penetrating Look into the Lives of the Young Scientists behind Our Space Age Weaponry (1985). Stories have also been provided by reporters covering the Pentagon and national security issues more generally, as shown by Manoff's (1989) study of television coverage of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. However, as Manoff noted, journalists on such beats may feel that the scientific and technical components of missile defense lie outside their areas of expertise, with the result that relatively little attention is paid to these issues.…”

Nuclear weapons and communication studies: A review essay

“…For example, Hogan and Dorsey (1991) focused exclusively on deliberation of the Freeze resolution in the House of Representatives as a case-study of rhetorical invention of "the people." Other critics (Goodnight, 1986;Manoff, 1989;Mosco, 1987;Rushing, 1986) have focused on SDI as a paradoxical vision that drew for its legitimation on compelling cultural myths (e.g., about the restorative powers of Science and the Frontier), that disguised its limited function as a missile-not population-defense, that encouraged the misrecognition of technological possibilities as actualities, that perpetuated the strategic conditions it claimed to transcend, and that indirectly restructured relationships among economic, political, and military spheres. While the relationship between SDI and the Freeze is implicit in all of these studies, two studies have emphasized their interaction (King & Petress, 1990), although they focus more broadly on official de-legitimation of the Freeze, examine the counterinsurgency rhetoric that contributed to SDI and that undermined 306…”