Thinking outside the box: From frames to strategic ontologies in the analysis of media,war,and conflict

Introduction

This special issue focuses on the politics of narrating war – a politics that extends beyond the halls of power and implicates diverse actors involved in making sense of otherwise senseless political violence. Despite war’s complexity, mainstream International Relations (IR) scholarship often reverts to an overly simplistic understanding of war as a totemic interstate clash of rational self-interested actors attempting to force one another into submission – a political chess match with bloody stakes. This interpretation may make sense from the perspective of Western political leaders moving troops on their maps, but it does not reflect the experiences of numerous others.

By contrast, we begin from the premise that war must be narrated to be understood. We do not look out of the window and identify war as a pre-existing material ‘thing’, as readily identifiable as a mountain, lake, or chess piece. Rather, for disparate acts of organized and unorganized violence to be grouped under a common label, war must be narrated, and these narrations must be ontologically productive. These narrations cannot merely represent a pre-existing conflict ‘out there’ to their audience, as war has no intrinsic boundaries. Narratives constitute war into a politically meaningful event. They take a series of violent events and interactions, and contain them in time and space, endowing them with a specific purposive logic that propels a war forward despite its horrific costs.

This analytical focus emerged through extensive dialogue, both between the Special Issue’s editors and with its contributors. The initial idea began with a workshop entitled ‘What Matters? The Politics of Narrating War’, held at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and co-sponsored by Queen’s University Belfast and Media, War & Conflict. We, the workshop’s three convenors, had all written previously about narrative’s productive power in international politics, including its ability to inform logics of conflict and reframe worldviews (Lerner, 2022; Lerner and O’Loughlin, 2023; Miskimmon et al., 2013, 2017; Roselle et al., 2014). We were inspired by informal discussions in London about how to make sense of two conflicts – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza. Both proved undeniably world-shaking, but they were primarily accessible to scholars in the UK and US indirectly, via media narratives and public discourse, which were both heavily influenced by state governments. Given these limitations, how were we to discern what was going on and its significance? How were we to know what matters?

We organized the workshop with these limitations in mind, seeking papers that challenged entrenched worldviews, including our own. Over two days in May 2024, approximately two dozen scholars from both sides of IR’s Atlantic divide examined war’s constitution across media, geographic regions and time periods, drawing on sources ranging from popular films to satellite imagery, YouTube videos to archival documents, and Instagram and TikTok reels. The result was a vibrant debate over what war means to the varied communities it impacts and why, as well as the political implications of these different conceptions for both IR and practitioners. What brought the discussion together was that no paper took the concept of ‘war’ for granted – all were interested in how this central pillar of IR morphs over time both in response to the messy reality it attempts to capture and the political motives of those employing the term.

This introduction lays out the core arguments underlying the Special Issue’s diverse contributions. First, it introduces Lerner and O’Loughlin’s (2023) strategic ontologies framework, which serves as a theoretical backdrop for the Special Issue’s contributions. This framework emphasizes the politics underlying different scientific ontologies of the international system. Contrary to IR’s traditional rigid ‘paradigms’ dictating interpretation, it understands scholars’ and practitioners’ mental maps as subject to continual revision and this revision as a deeply political process. This implies that war is not a sacrosanct ‘thing’, but rather a label continually adapted and recast to meet new political priorities. Second, we provide an overview of the Special Issue’s contents, highlighting their contributions, linkages and divergences. Third, we end by setting out how the authors in this Special Issue considered how they used both empirical and normative modes of analysis.

Paradigms lost? A turn to strategic ontologies

In classrooms across the globe, students of IR are typically introduced to their subject matter via the lens of paradigms. A week on realism; one on liberalism; one on constructivism; and so on. Ironically, students often encounter a field beset by ‘paradigm wars’ before turning to real-world wars that, historically, have been the IR discipline’s empirical raison d’être. What is worse: all this theoretical priming typically takes place before any metatheoretical critical reflection on the use and limitations of scholarly concepts. The result is war’s reification, in both theory and practice, as a sacrosanct element of international politics, with little accompanying critical reflection.

From the perspective of the IR discipline, tasked with producing knowledge to guide political praxis, the primacy of IR’s ‘paradigms’ in understanding war’s contours and purposes raises multiple issues. First, IR’s ‘paradigms’ have never really been paradigms, at least not in the Kuhnian sense of the term, and their depiction as such often proves blinding (Walker, 2010). Realism, liberalism, and constructivism in IR are not incommensurable totalizing worldviews that rise and fall via scientific revolutions (Kuhn, 2012). Rather, as Jackson and Nexon (2013) have argued, they are sets of ontological commitments that inform how scholars interpret global politics. They are ‘catalog[s] of the basic substances and processes that constitute world politics’ that serve simplifying purposes – highlighting certain aspects of political reality as salient and others as epiphenomenal or chimeric (p. 545). In this sense, IR’s paradigms are, in fact, eminently comparable and contrastable in terms of their empirical accuracy, logical coherence and explanatory value. Each ‘paradigm’ offers a limited set of variables with which to justify and explain war. These catalogues should be subject to continual critical comparison and amendment, but, instead, their depiction as radically separate research programs creates scholarly siloes. This inspires incommensurable shoehorning, rather than fruitful debate and theoretical eclecticism.

Downstream issues arise from this initial fallacy. A second problem with IR’s paradigm framing is not merely stifled comparative research, but inhibited critical reflexivity. This reflexivity is vital to crafting a dynamic conceptualization of war, its causes and consequences, responsive to changes in real-world politics. Students and scholars who treat war as an ontologically primitive variable in their models often fail to consider that wars are not pre-existing phenomena to be explained, but rather are constituted for political purposes. In this sense, dogged adherence to limited scientific ontologies can inhibit critical reflection on the role of power in shaping theory (Levine, 2012). It can reinforce the false conclusion that world politics consists of natural kinds, when, in reality, states, the state system and war itself are all social constructs made and remade for political purposes.

To address these limitations, Lerner and O’Loughlin (2023) developed a framework suited to metatheoretical reflection on the politics of IR theory. They coined the term ‘strategic ontologies’ to highlight how limited scientific ontologies of world politics (including those represented by IR’s ‘paradigms’) are political constructs and thus subject to amendment, often for political purposes. Political actors interested in achieving a set of objectives use ontology to forward their claims. They highlight certain phenomena as salient and pressing, describing them in strategic ways, while occluding, downplaying, or forgetting other phenomena that might undermine this depiction. By narrating political events as caused and constituted by one set of variables, while neglecting others, political actors – including both theorists and practitioners –impose their preferred vision of world politics on the messy complexity of political reality. For example, state leaders interested in securing their power over a given territory depict socially constructed borders as inviolable, justifying violence to defend sovereignty. Likewise, leaders interested in naturalizing firm distinctions in diverse forms of political organization depict a world divided between spheres – for example, the West versus the East, liberal states versus authoritarian, or vulnerable states versus powerful. When considering the concept of war, scholars must be aware of how these depictions justify rivalry and even violence by naturalizing socially constructed divisions and stirring up public sentiments accordingly.

The strategic ontologies framework serves as a unifying backdrop for the Special Issue’s contributions. Participants in the workshop and Special Issue were encouraged to reflect on how diverse media representations portray war in one way and not another, but also to critically reflect on why they forwarded this theoretical agenda. Whose interests did one strategic ontology of war further and whose did they counteract? What resources or factors enabled a strategic ontology to convince its audience and what might have inhibited its reach? In this way, the strategic ontologies framework serves as a meeting point for critical reflexivity, encouraging dialogue between scholars interested in related empirical phenomena separated by geography and time. The Special Issue’s contributions span millennia and all corners of the globe but are unified by their efforts to highlight the politics inherent to depicting war as one thing and not another, and exposing the political agendas behind such depictions.

Outline of contributions

We have assembled a diverse set of perspectives engaging on how war is narrated in different settings. Many of the articles focus on how actors look forward to an uncertain future and examine how they strategically narrate preferred outcomes. Others examine how narratives are used to reinterpret the past to surface grievances and justify policies in the present.

Alexandra Homolar’s article argues that, during the collapse of the Cold War order, US defence elites reimagined future war by assembling familiar narrative elements into new security stories that justified continued military dominance amid uncertainty, even before new threats fully emerged. Homolar maintains that the narration of future war is not merely reactive to global events but is a discursive process shaped by political agents who reassemble existing narrative elements to form new security imaginaries. The collapse of bipolarity (that is, the Cold War order) did not automatically lead to new threat perceptions; rather, these were constructed through narrative practices.

Hannah Partis-Jennings outlines how contemporary military recruitment campaigns in the UK and US strategically emphasize the emotional, diverse and vulnerable humanity of future soldiers to counterbalance techno-centric visions of warfare, thereby shaping public perceptions of war and soldiering through carefully crafted narratives. Partis-Jennings argues that military recruitment campaigns are not just about enlisting soldiers – they are strategic narratives that inform public understanding of war and soldiering. These narratives often decentre technology (such as robots and AI) and instead emphasize the human qualities of soldiers: their emotions, diversity and physical vulnerability.

Pauline Sophie Heinrichs’ article explores how framing climate change through a militarized strategic ontology distorts responsibility, reinforces global inequalities and naturalizes future conflict by portraying security actors as protectors rather than contributors to climate harm. Climate change is increasingly interpreted through a militarized ontology of war, which frames it as a threat to be managed by security actors (militaries, border forces, etc.). This framing inverts responsibility, portraying those most responsible for climate harm (e.g. major emitters) as protectors, while those most affected (e.g. the Global South) are depicted as inherently vulnerable or threatening. Such ontologies obscure accountability, normalize harm and reinforce conflictual structures in international politics.

Jessie Barton Hronešová details how, in contemporary Serbia, political elites strategically deploy narratives of past national victimhood to consolidate power, while university students adopt victimhood as a lived, intersectional experience to make sense of their socio-political marginalization. Victimhood in Serbia is not merely a nationalist tool wielded by elites – it is also a lived, intersectional experience for many young people. The article argues that Serbian political elites use victimhood as a strategic ontological narrative to justify foreign policy, obscure domestic failures and consolidate power. Serbian university students, by contrast, adopt victimhood to articulate intersectional marginalization – across political, economic, generational and geopolitical lines.

Jarrod Hayes and Adam B. Lerner contend that popular Chinese films are not just entertainment; they are part of a broader system of meaning-making that reflects and reinforces how China sees itself and others in global politics. These films reveal a strategic ontology in which China views itself as a status quo power, respectful of sovereignty and international law, but also as a nation with deep grievances about historical foreign interference. In considering prospects for superpower conflict, these grievances, informed by media-supported strategic ontologies, are of vital importance.

In her article, Minseon Ku suggests that states, in this case China, use digital diplomacy – especially through curated social media content – to construct themselves as unified, intentional actors in global politics. She terms this process digital entitativity – a central part of their broader strategic ontology. She finds that digital diplomacy is not just about communication – it’s about ontological construction of the state. Social media enables states to curate a singular diplomatic face, countering the fragmented nature of traditional diplomacy. Despite these efforts, China’s global image remains largely negative, at least in industrialized democracies, suggesting limits to the effectiveness of digital strategic ontology.

Christopher McIntosh advocates for the abolition of war as a concept, term and practice by drawing on abolitionist politics – particularly the anti-nuclear weapons movement – to challenge the normalization of war in International Relations. He critiques how war is framed and narrated, emphasizing its temporal and representational nature, and proposes alternative ways of understanding and describing political violence that resist the hegemonic logic of war. Through lessons from nuclear disarmament activism, the article advocates for a reimagining of global politics that denaturalizes war and opens space for more just and humane futures.

Renee Marlin-Bennett seeks to extend Lerner and O’Loughlin’s concept of strategic ontology, originally applied to meso-level diplomacy, to a hostile, wartime setting. She suggests that war talk is a form of ontological contestation, where actors seek to define reality for themselves and their enemies through control of narratives and information flows. This article suggests that ‘war talk’ functions as a form of strategic ontology, where adversaries manipulate information flows – through content, velocity and access – to shape perceptions of reality and power. She explores how this impacts war talk through a novel reading of the Assyria–Judah conflict in 701 BCE.

Jessica Auchter interrogates how satellite imagery has come to be seen as a truth-telling technology in the representation of war. She argues that, while satellite images are framed as objective and scientific, they are in reality deeply embedded in discursive, political and ethical frameworks that shape how we see and understand conflict. Auchter demonstrates that this narrative authority is socially constructed and context-dependent, often obscuring the political and ethical dimensions of conflict while privileging distant, dehumanized perspectives over situated, lived experiences.

In the final article in the issue, Zachary Mondesire views narratives of war through an anthropological lens. His article explores how South Sudanese journalists use anonymity, termed ‘journalism without signature’, to critique the post-independence governance while protecting themselves from state surveillance and ethnic discrimination. Through ethnographic research and case studies of media platforms like Radio Tamazuj and Wajuma News, the article shows how rumour and unsigned reporting offer enough ontological agreement with audiences on what is happening to function as vital tools of civic engagement and resistance in a fragile media landscape.

Concluding thoughts: Thinking outside the frame

Discussion among workshop participants challenged the artificial distinction between normative and positive modes of analysis in multiple ways. Here, the strategic ontologies approach was contrasted with traditional analysis of frames – often defined in IR and political communication literature as normative valences applied to objective sets of facts. Although the separation of fact and value has a long history in Western social science, a strategic ontologies approach emphasizes that it is merely an analytical one, introduced by researchers to control for biases when engaging the complexities of the world. Scientific ontologies are not merely reflective of an external reality, but also play a role in actively constituting that reality. The world underdetermines social interpretations of it and, for this reason, any discussion of scientific ontology must take seriously processes of social construction.

In this way, the Special Issue emphasizes the value added of the strategic ontologies approach over a more limited discussion of frames. The central question with which strategic ontologies are concerned – ‘what matters’ in the context of a given problem – is at once normative and strategic. By including some elements or processes within an analysis and neglecting others, scholars and practitioners alike are casting normative judgments on their import. This insight illuminates the politics behind varied conceptualizations of war, which highlight national militaries’ plight, while occluding unspeakable violence impacting colonial subjects (Barkawi, 2016), women (Sjoberg, 2013), and even the psyches of its victims (Lerner, 2023). The strategic ontologies framework’s emphasis on the politics underlying scientific ontologies of the international system highlights these underlying judgments, providing a potentially useful meeting point for positive and normative analysis of how they are made.

Though the language of frames is perhaps unavoidable in contemporary research (we refer to ours as a strategic ontology framework, after all!), the contributions to this Special Issue are motivated to move beyond facile assumptions that actors know ‘what matters’ intuitively in the context of a given issue and merely redescribe it using differing normative language. Prior to engaging framings of a problem, they explore how powerful actors employing diverse media constitute that problem, highlighting certain elements in certain ways while downplaying others. This is a particularly fruitful move when examining the relationship between media and war, given war’s inherent spatiotemporal ambiguities. Although the term ‘war’ may equally be applied by differently positioned actors, underlying ontological questions related to who is engaged in a conflict, where it is taking place, what technologies are being deployed and the political importance of these elements cannot be assumed prior to analysis. Rather, by exploring the role of media in narrating conflicts, this Special Issue emphasizes the dynamism of war’s constitution, as well as the ability of powerful actors to manipulate its constitution to their advantage.