{"title":"Are propagandists combatants? Analysing the ethical status of propagandists in warfare","authors":"Marie Robin","doi":"10.1017/s0260210524000044","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Belligerents increasingly rely on media manipulation, propaganda, and communication to attain strategic advantages in conflict. Given the civilian propagandists’ clear role in creating tactical or strategic advantages for one side in the conflict, should these propagandists be considered combatants, and can they therefore be legitimately targeted because of their activities? This article overcomes traditional binary frameworks of distinction to argue that propagandists are indirectly participating civilians, i.e. participants who cannot be intentionally or directly killed in conflict. Because of their activities, propagandists, it argues, are liable to less-than-lethal harm, of which it identifies three types (destruction of property, privation of liberty, isolation). The article then proposes a necessary criterion – necessity – to decide if less-than-lethal harm is warranted against propagandists. It then creates four new criteria – denial of agency, falsehood, influence, gratification – to serve as assessment criteria able to decide what degree of harm a propagandist may maximally face. In making this argument, the article contributes to just war literature by proposing a novel way to evaluate the ethical status of a highly diverse, yet undoubtedly influential, category of war participants: those who undertake the ‘media battle’, outside of the military.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of International Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210524000044","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Belligerents increasingly rely on media manipulation, propaganda, and communication to attain strategic advantages in conflict. Given the civilian propagandists’ clear role in creating tactical or strategic advantages for one side in the conflict, should these propagandists be considered combatants, and can they therefore be legitimately targeted because of their activities? This article overcomes traditional binary frameworks of distinction to argue that propagandists are indirectly participating civilians, i.e. participants who cannot be intentionally or directly killed in conflict. Because of their activities, propagandists, it argues, are liable to less-than-lethal harm, of which it identifies three types (destruction of property, privation of liberty, isolation). The article then proposes a necessary criterion – necessity – to decide if less-than-lethal harm is warranted against propagandists. It then creates four new criteria – denial of agency, falsehood, influence, gratification – to serve as assessment criteria able to decide what degree of harm a propagandist may maximally face. In making this argument, the article contributes to just war literature by proposing a novel way to evaluate the ethical status of a highly diverse, yet undoubtedly influential, category of war participants: those who undertake the ‘media battle’, outside of the military.
期刊介绍:
Review of International Studies serves the needs of scholars in international relations and related fields such as politics, history, law, and sociology. The Review publishes a significant number of high quality research articles, review articles which survey new contributions to the field, a forum section to accommodate debates and replies, and occasional interviews with leading scholars.