Security communication in democracies
Project management: Prof. Dr. Gunther Hellmann
The unpredictability of global security dynamics poses fundamental challenges for policymakers. It must answer the questions of who or what is considered a security threat, how it should be countered and what concrete measures need to be taken. The concept of security communication allows these questions to be explored as a legitimization and order-building process. The focus is on the question of what influence different types of legitimation have on the stability of security orders in (post-)modern democracies and whether security communication can be designed in a participatory manner. The project initially investigated how security and humanitarian interventions are communicated in the media and which images of humanity are used in the process. The research increasingly focused on the question of the reflexivity of security communication: how security policy can and should communicate its framework concerns in a democracy.
By empirically analyzing types of legitimation within security communication in the face of current challenges, the project contributes important insights into the narrative nature of current security policy to the field of research. The (de-)stabilizing effects of normative security orders are related to the content and form of their communication, their reception by the democratic public and the perception of their horizon of possibilities. The forms of normative justification of security policy influence the basis of legitimacy and thus the scope for security policy decisions. The project thus enriches the field of research with the important dimension of normative legitimization strategies of state actors in one of their core areas.
During a consolidation phase of the project in 2013, the field of research was defined in a framework paper and presented at a workshop and a major international IB conference. A group of authors was also recruited for an anthology. The research into security communication was dedicated to its medial communication. In the course of the investigation, the focus shifted to reference objects of security communication. The results of this sub-project are to be published in an English-language anthology, which will be submitted to Cambridge University Press for review towards the end of 2017 in consultation with and at the request of the editor responsible for the subject. Research findings on the reflexivity of security communication were presented at numerous conferences. Finally, project member Daniel Jacobi devoted himself to writing a monograph summarizing the most important aspects of democratic security communication.
First, the media representation of security policy and the reference points used by security policy to legitimize security policy were examined. With regard to the field of research, it was above all possible to work out the extent to which communicative forms are used that break down complex issues into a vocabulary oriented towards specific images of humanity. Against the background of the discrepancy between the complexity of global political security situations and the relative simplicity of these concepts, the question of the reflexivity of security communication increasingly came to the fore. In other words, the question of the extent to which security policy decision-makers reflect on their own vocabulary and the form in which security policy issues are presented. The parallel discussion about a change in German foreign and security policy produced numerous important documents in this regard (e.g. “Review 2014” and a White Paper by the Foreign Ministry), which were used to empirically address these questions. It became apparent that the ‘structural reflexivity’ in particular, i.e. the logical forms of thought on which these processes are based, no longer correspond to the challenges of current security policy, as they lack the ability to question and, if necessary, replace already established assumptions (concepts, sub-formulas and decision-making formulas).
The most important events in the research project:
Presentations at all annual conferences of the International Studies Association, by Gunther Hellmann and Daniel Jacobi.
Workshop: Communicating Security, SAIS John’s Hopkins University Europe, Bologna (Italy), October 26-29, 2016.
Workshop: Security Communication in Democracies: Security, Order, and Legitimacy in World Politics, Bad Homburg, November 05-07, 2015.
Lecture: “Shaping Powers and Leadership Challenges in Contemporary Europe: Germany and its Partners in a World out of Joint, by Gunther Hellmann as part of the symposium Germany as Model. Germany as Partner. Global Germany Georgetown University, BMW Center for German and European Studies, Washington D.C., December 13-14, 2015.
Keynote: Normative Powers and European Foreign Policy in a Minilateralist World, by Gunther Hellmann, 36th Annual Conference of the European Union Studies Association-Japan, Kansai University, Osaka, November 21, 2015.
The most important publications in this project:
*Hellmann, Gunther and Morten Valbjørn: “The Forum: Problematizing Global Challenges: Recalibrating the ‘Inter’ in IR-Theory”, in: International Studies Review ‘The Forum’, therein: “Introduction” (together with Morten Valbjørn) as well as the essay “Interpreting International Relations”, 2017.
*Jacobi, Daniel: “Über die Beobachtung von Souveränität und Sicherheit”, in: Volk, Christian and Friederike Kuntz, (eds.), Der Begriff der Souveränität in der transnationalen Konstellation, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2015.
*Hellmann, Gunther/Daniel Jacobi/Ursula Stark Urrestarazu (eds.): Earlier, more decisive and more substantial? The new debate on Germany’s foreign policy , Wiesbaden: Springer-VS, 2015.
*Jacobi, Daniel and Annette Freyberg-Inan (eds.): Human Beings in International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
*Jacobi, Daniel: Sicherheitskommunikation in Demokratien, monograph, ed.
people in this project:
Project management / contact person
Hellmann, Gunther, Prof. Dr.
Project staff
Jacobi, Daniel, M.A.