The Elite Media and the Military-Civilian Culture Gap

Abstract

Even though some thoughtful studies exist on relations between the media and the military, most of them focus on the conflict over information security and control during wars, military operations, and entanglements abroad. What is missing is a detailed empirical study of whether the civilian and military media convey distinctive perspectives of and opinions about the military's attitudes and actions. Our purpose is to compare and contrast the depictions of military culture and any gaps with civilian culture by contentanalyzing three civilian and three military newspapers over the last six months of 1998. Overall, we find that both the civilian and the military newspapers are less monolithic and more diverse than we expected. Actually, each newspaper provides distinctive perspectives on and attitudes toward the military, which do not necessarily contribute to a civilian-military culture gap.