Page 402 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Product Placement | 1

which often features digital graphics of high-tech weapons systems supplied by
the Pentagon.
Video games are now used by the military for recruitment and training. The
Department of Defense contracted with the company Ubisoft to help market
and distribute America’s Army. At a computer-gaming conference in early 2005,
Ubisoft deployed the Frag Dolls, a group of young women gamers with names
like Jinx and Eekers, to demonstrate America’s Army. The “booth babes” posed
for pictures as they played the games, inviting young men to enter and occupy
the gaming space. Eekers’s promotional blog about her Combat Convoy Experi-
ence can be found on the America’s Army Web site. These and the other points
of convergence between the media and the Department of Defense have led to
what some critics have called the military/entertainment complex.
The ongoing merger between the entertainment and military industries, to-
gether with the use of sophisticated media managing and stagecraft by the gov-
ernment, have raised serious issues for those concerned with the role of the
media in a democratic society, especially during times of war. The public relies
on the media to report the consequences of war, but when the industry is eco-
nomically and culturally invested in the technologies of war, critics question its
ability to be an independent source of information. Parents and educators worry
that young people, especially military recruits, will be unprepared for the actual
consequences of war. The audio-visual milieu that turns war into entertainment
also lessens the public’s ability to feel alarm and compassion for those who die in
wars carried out in its name.
see also Bias and Objectivity; Embedding Journalists; Government Censorship
and Freedom of Speech; Media Watch Groups; Nationalism and the Media; Pa-
parazzi and Photographic Ethics; Political Documentary; Political Entertain-
ment; Propaganda Model; Public Opinion; Reality Television; Representations
of Masculinity; Representations of Women; Sensationalism, Fear Mongering,
and Tabloid Media; Video Games.
Further reading: Andersen, Robin. A Century of Media, A Century of War. New York: Peter
Lang, 2006; Hedges, Chris. War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. New York: Anchor
Books, 2002; Robb, David L. Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Cen-
sors the Movies. New York: Prometheus Books, 2004; Solomon, Norman. War Made
Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 2005; Thussu, Daya Kishan, and Des Freedman, eds. War and the Media. Thou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003.

Robin Andersen

ProduCt PlaCeMent

Product placement is the intentional and strategic positioning of brand-
name products and services in various media for the purposes of advertising
and brand promotion. Examples include movies, TV shows, video and com-
puter games, comics, novels, theater productions, even news shows. Why has
this practice, sometimes called “branded entertainment,” grown into a $4 billion