The Falklands War and the media: popular and elite understandings of the conflict

Ross, Alexander Nicholas Barney (2016). The Falklands War and the media: popular and elite understandings of the conflict. University of Birmingham. M.Res.

Preview

Ross15MRes_Redacted.pdf
PDF - Redacted Version
Download (4MB)

Abstract

This dissertation aims to illustrate that certain narratives of the Falklands War were the products of a failure to account for a public that think in ways that cannot be classified in to simple categories. It will argue that the Falklands War remains an area of contested history within British discourse, not everyone understood the conflict as the noble crusade that Thatcher and newspapers such as the Sun thought it was.
It will look at how the presentation of the conflict shaped public perception and vice versa, how perception of public opinion shaped presentation. It will counter the view that the public are easily manipulated, rather people are free-thinking individuals. It will illustrate how relationships between the public, the military, the government and the media interacted to develop certain understandings of the conflict. Finally it will assess how the variety of different narratives have manifested themselves in later representations of the conflict. It will ask what impact memory of the Falklands War has had in the thirty years since it occurred.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Masters by Research > M.Res.)

Award Type:

Masters by Research > M.Res.

Supervisor(s):