With Us, or Against Us: a Critical Analysis of Official U.S. and Media Representations of Fallujah

Abstract

This thesis analyses official U.S. and media representations of the U.S. assaults on Fallujah between April 2004 and January 2005. The thesis demonstrates the effects of ideological power and the use of discursive controls on media representations of the assaults. Developing a framework of the ways power can be exercised in official and media discourse, the thesis analyses the construction of an 'other' in Fallujah. This 'other' was conceptually linked to the ideological constructions of the threat of global 'terror', invoking certain 'truths' and knowledges that supported the assumptions of the Bush Administration. The U.S. assaults on Fallujah reflected a 'crisis' for the U.S. Administration of maintaining the legitimacy of their military actions by reference to the 'war on terror', demonstrating the fragility of U.S. ideological appeals that shape this 'war'. The media's role in adopting and spreading this construction is analysed to show how official frames can be spread into general, public knowledge. The representations of Fallujah on the selected Internet media sites gave intermittent criticisms, but did not produce substantive counter-frames, thereby reproducing and naturalising official U.S. frames. The implication of this was to produce general knowledge on the Fallujah assaults which subverted or ignored legitimate resistance and legitimised U.S. actions by mystifying the assaults.