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Articles

Uplifting Manhood to Wonderful Heights? News Coverage of the Human Costs of Military Conflict From World War I to Gulf War Two

Pages 193-217
Published online: 16 Apr 2014
 
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Domestic political support is an important factor constraining the use of American military power around the world. Although the dynamics of war support are thought to reflect a cost-benefit calculus, with costs represented by numbers of friendly war deaths, no previous study has examined how information about friendly, enemy, and civilian casualties is routinely presented to domestic audiences. This article establishes a baseline measure of historical casualty reporting by examining New York Times coverage of five major wars that occurred over the past century. Despite important between-war differences in the scale of casualties, the use of conscription, the type of warfare, and the use of censorship, the frequency of casualty reporting and the framing of casualty reports have remained fairly consistent over the past 100 years. Casualties are rarely mentioned in American war coverage. When casualties are reported, it is often in ways that minimize or downplay the human costs of war.

Additional author information

Scott L. Althaus

Scott L. Althaus is Professor, Department of Political Science and Department of Communication, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Nathaniel Swigger is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Ohio State University. Svitlana Chernykh is a postdoctoral research fellow, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. David J. Hendry is a postdoctoral research associate, Center for the Study of American Politics, Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University. Sergio C. Wals is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Institute for Ethnic Studies, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Christopher Tiwald is a Technical Operations Engineer at Conductor, Inc.

Nathaniel Swigger

Svitlana Chernykh

David J. Hendry

Sergio C. Wals

Christopher Tiwald


 

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