Weapons of War and Peace

“Weapons are news but news are also weapons of war.” This is what the Italian expert in semiotics, Paolo Fabbri, said some days ago in Madrid (Spain). To him, each party of a conflict uses media as military equipment — what turns news into a “war of lies.” He claims that media are a vital tool in the current pre-war atmosphere and points out the increasing relevance of public opinion. His powerful sentences push some thinking.

On the Internet, as we all know, traditional media online sits side by side with new sources of information. In Spain — the European country that feels strongest against a possible Iraq war (as demonstrated in this survey) — the Web is being used as a social platform of peace. Some examples are the initiatives coming from very different areas. Actors lead the way in the cultural world, which has launched a website to collect signatures against the war. Four big NGOs (Médicos Sin Fronteras, Greenpeace, Intermón Oxfam, and Amnistía Internacional) have joined efforts to create a web in which users can send an e-mail to Spanish president José María Aznar. As a last example, the site Nodo 50 (more than 600 social organizations represented) gives tones of news, events, and links to show the arguments to stop the conflict before it begins. These Internet voices and many others make it worth thinking about the role of the Internet as alternative media.