Conclusions

Abstract

Media power over political and military decision-making has emerged by looking at two case studies, crossing events and perceptions, using a radical definition of power, and by identifying all the actions that political actors would not undertake if the media were not present. If one considers all the situations in which the media interact with politics, all the actions that the agents undertake only due to the presence of the media, all the messages they exchange through the media, all the strategies they elaborate to attract or space the media out, all the definitions of other actors and situations they elaborate for the media consumers, then it is possible to reconstruct some interesting stories. This book does not argue for a determinant or deterministic role of the media in priming Kosovo or the post-9/11 crisis. It wants, instead, to clarify the role that the media played in US decision-making during the evolution of those crises, since to deny that the media forced politicians to intervene does not necessarily mean that the media did not have any power at all.

Not even all the lights of the show will put an end to the shadows of the world.¹

Jean-Louis Comolli, Voir et Povoir