NPSIA PhD grad (2020) Rachel Schmidt has recently published a new book with Cambridge University Press about the complexities surrounding how conflict and
revolutions are framed.
Rhetorical contests about how to frame a war run alongside many armed conflicts. With the rise of internet access, social media, and cyber operations, these propaganda battles have a wider audience than ever before. Yet, such framing contests have attracted little attention in scholarly literature. What are the effects of gendered and strategic framing in civil war? How do different types of individuals – victims, combatants, women, commanders – utilize the frames created around them and about them? Who benefits from these contests, and who loses?
Following the lives of eleven ex-combatants from non-state armed groups and supplemented by over one hundred interviews conducted across Colombia, Framing a Revolution opens a window into this crucial part of civil war. Their testimonies demonstrate the importance of these contests for combatants’ commitments to their armed groups during fighting and the Colombian peace process, while also drawing implications for the concept of civil war worldwide.