Nationalism, gender and the multivocality of war discourse in television news

War discourse is typically characterized by a confluence of nationalist and sexist discourses, and tends to reduce the multiple identities and affiliations of human beings to a black-and-white contrast of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Yet, as argued in this article, we should be wary of over-emphasizing the homogeneity and monovocality of war discourse. While the onset of conflict certainly narrows the range of collective identities and narratives on offer in the public domain, it does not impose a total closure on the negotiation and contestation of meanings. Rather, mediated war discourse retains a measure of ambiguity and multivocality, which can be of vital importance to its appeal. We demonstrate this by examining a sample of war-time news bulletins broadcast in Yugoslavia in 1991, focusing on representations of women.