Media Commemoration in Britain

In contemporary societies, ‘the media play an active role in shaping our understanding of the past, in “mediating” between us (as readers, viewers, listeners) and past experiences, and hence in setting the agenda for future acts of remembrance within society’ (Erll and Rigney, 2009, p. 3). The media is particularly influential in many Western countries, where ‘the legitimising, the contesting, and the waging of warfare have become shaped much more by the media “production” of warfare than any discernible “original” or “authentic” experience’ (Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010, p. 4). This point is particularly relevant in the context of British society, in which only a relatively small number of the population are exposed to the dangers of wars and military profession. This chapter explores the representations of British fatalities from the Falklands War through to the Gulf War, and to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The coverage of these conflicts reveals a series of shifts in war commemoration. The campaign for the Falkland Islands led to the legitimation of repatriation as a new military tradition; the Gulf War problematised the deaths of soldiers in friendly fire incidents; and the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan saw the ‘mediatisation’ of deaths and a shift towards a military service-based commemoration.