Josef Seethaler is a senior scientist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.Matthias Karmasin is chair of media and communication sciences at the University of Klagenfurt.Gabriele Melischek is a consultant to the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, where Romy Wöhlert is a researcher.

• Preface: Perspectives on the Changing Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Confl icts – Matthias Karmasin, Gabriele Melischek, Josef Seethaler, Romy Wöhlert Introduction: Delivering War to the Public: Shaping the Public Sphere – Philip Seib PART I: ‘Never Such Innocence Again’: Propaganda and Total War War and the Public Sphere: European Examples from the Seven Years’ War to the World War I – Reinhard Stauber Discourses of War – Diego Lazzarich Between Indifference and News Hunger: Media Eff ects and the Public Sphere in Nazi Germany during Wartime – Jürgen Wilke Perception of Newspapers and Magazines in Field Post Correspondence during the World War II – Clemens Schwender PART II: Visual Turn, War PR and the Changing Relationships between Politics, Media and the Public Sphere Between Reporting and Propaganda: Power, Culture and War Reporting – Daniel C. Hallin Just Wars and Persuasive Communication: Analyzing Public Relations in Military Conflicts – Magnus-Sebastian Kutz An Iconography of Pity and a Rhetoric of Compassion: War and Humanitarian Crises in the Prism of American and French Newsmagazines (1967–95) – Valérie Gorin Women, the Media and War: The Representation of Women in German Broadsheets between 1980 and 2000 – Romy Fröhlich ‘Something Has Changed’: International Relations and the Media after the ‘Cold War’ – Josef Seethaler and Gabriele Melischek Surging Beyond Realism: How the US Media Promote War Again and Again – Robert M. Entman PART III: Globalization and the ‘Postmodern’ War of Images The Coverage of Terrorism and the Iraq War in the ‘Issue-Attention Cycle’ – Stephan Russ-Mohl The Media and Humanitarian Intervention – Philip Hammond Shifting Frames in a Deadlocked Conflict? News Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – Nel Ruigrok, Wouter van Atteveldt and Janet Takens Public Discourse on the Georgian War in Russia and the EU: A Content Analysis of the Coverage in Traditional Print Media and Emerging Online Media – Cordula Nitsch and Dennis Lichtenstein Limitations of Journalism in War Situations: A Case Study from Georgia – Roman Hummel Mass-Mediated Debate  about Torture in Post-9/11 America – Brigitte L. Nacos

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