In recognition of the importance of information and the media as tools in nation building, this programme has been designed to evaluate how these tools can be utilized to foster greater understanding among people of varied and different cultures and origins. It is essential to confront the many new challenges that beset today’s global information environment, not least those caused by the massive influx of information, misinformation and disinformation carried by old and new communications technologies.
Some of these challenges are positive, such as the ability to exchange information and ideas in order to foster mutual understanding. But many more are negative and life threatening, such as conflicts and wars, which create tensions at the national, regional and global levels. Apart from conventional conflicts, societies are also facing significant new challenges in new forms of ‘war’ waged within a postmodern era such as growing crime rates, worsening social ills as well as religious, ethnic, cultural, political and economic conflicts that demand urgent attention and remedies. Indeed this ‘new war’ requires a new kind of knowledge, methodology and strategies if it is to be effectively waged. This requires a multi-disciplinary approach since traditional stand alone academic disciplines have proved inadequate to meet the issues we now face.
Central to this remedial approach are the roles played by media and information warfare scholars and experts as agents of change and conflict prevention. Hence, the Centre for Media and Information Warfare Studies (CMIWS) was established in 2005 as a centre of excellence within the Faculty of Communications and Media Studies. Its role is to further the inter-disciplinary study of media and information warfare in order to produce versatile and strategically knowledgeable experts who are proficient in analyzing and addressing pertinent issues through the application of scholarship, knowledge, research, skills and strategies.
