ABOUT
The thinking
behind Virtual-Security.Net
The projects on Virtual-Security.Net are, in their various
ways, and through their various topics, concerned with the new problematics
of war, media, security, peace, rights, humanitarianism and government
raised by the techno-scientific, economic and political features now
distinguishing the early years of the 21st century.
Included amongst these features are rapid socio-technical
developments, changes in media technologies, the sciences of virtualisation,
connectivity and complex interdependence, together with the radically
interrelated character of political, economic and religio-cultural
conflicts that traverse traditional territories and spaces.
A particular concern of the projects on Virtual-Security.Net
is the pivotal place of new information strategies and media practices
in the conduct of contemporary war – the way these strategies
and practices have become integral to the military doctrines of the
major military powers in the wake of ‘the revolution in military
affairs’, as well as the opportunities afforded by these strategies
and practices to alternative and resistant movements.
The philosophy that underpins this project is a simple
one: forms of security and war and forms of subjectivity and identity
are correlated. Changing understanding of security, peace and order
are closely allied to changing understandings of danger, conflict
and war, and each, in turn, refigures the political in an increasingly
mediatized global environment.
The partners in Virtual-Security.Net
Reflecting the spatially dispersed yet substantively
linked nature of network society, Virtual-Security.Net is allied with
a number of global partners whose agendas contribute to the new approaches
and concerns presented here. These partners include:
The Human Rights
Project , Bard College, Annandale, New York, USA
The
Information Technology, War and Peace Project at the Watson Institute
for International Studies, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island,
USA
The New Security Forum, Department of Politics and International
Relations, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
The structure of Virtual-Security.Net
The purpose of Virtual-Security.Net is to present projects
that address the thinking behind the network through empirically rich
research on specific issues, as well as commentaries on contemporary
events.
Each project will be made available in a web version
with hypertext links to images, videos and other sources that illustrate
the work. In addition, there will be printable versions that can be
down loaded.
The projects on Virtual-Security.Net
Atrocity, Memory, Photography
The controversy surrounding the 1992 television reports
that first revealed the presence of concentration camps in Bosnia
has become a landmark issue involving an iconic image. Much cited
by critics who argue it was the foundational moment in the development
of a post-Cold War propaganda strategy by the US and NATO, the story
of how these reports were constructed and received is an instructive
example of the complex relationships of media, politics and war.
