By Craig Hayden
Matt Armstrong recently posted a lengthy, thoughtful piece on the new media landscape and its implications for persuasion and mobilization in the “war of ideas.” Overall, I think it’s an important consideration of the multitude of factors that implicate the constraints of a medium with the objectives of information operations or public diplomacy. More to the point, Matt succinctly notes what the likes of Manuel Castells and other communication researchers have already observed. New media enables a new kind of legitimacy and credibility to communicators because it is often peer-to-peer and fast – thus making such media useful for social mobilization, organization, and political action. I want to revisit this post, because I think it raises a number of questions that continue to energize research in communication, political science, and argumentation studies. What I would like to do here is respond to some of his claims in order to further the dialogue. This is not meant as a criticism of Matt. Rather, I think we as a blog community need to push the boundaries of media’s significance in international conflict – and be inclusive of work not necessarily framed as PD or IO work, but nonetheless useful.