The Military Scandal: Its Definition, Dynamics, and Significance

• Author: James Connor,Dia Jade Andrews,Ben Wadham
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19864136
• Date: 01 October 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Military Scandal: Its

Definition, Dynamics,

and Significance

Dia Jade Andrews

1

, James Connor

2

, and Ben Wadham

3

Abstract

Military scandals are disruptive episodes that can have long-lasting organizational

consequences for military institutions. Recently, scholars who study military insti-

tutions have sought to understand this phenomenon and its significance. However,

given their complexity and empirically opaque nature, military scandals are difficult

to study, and a general account of this phenomenon has remained elusive. This

article addresses this problem by drawing upon the growing field of scandal research

to present a definition and account of the military scandal. We argue that military

scandals are episodes of mediatized public moral conflict concerning transgressions

involving the military institution, its members, and/or associated actors. We employ Ari

Adut’s theory of public attention as a core explanation of scandal dynamics and effects

and use this to argue that the military scandal phenomenon can be employed to

simultaneously examine interactions and relationships between the military, the

state, news media organizations, and civil society.

1

Public Service Research Group, School of Business, University of New South Wales Canberra,

Campbell, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

2

School of Business, University of New South Wales Canberra, Campbell, Australian Capital Territory,

Australia

3

College of Education, Psych ology and Social Work, Flinde rs University, Adelaide, S outh Australia,

Australia

Corresponding Author:

Dia Jade Andrews, Public Service Research Group, School of Business, University of New South Wales

Canberra, Room 107, Building 36, 1 Northcott Drive, Ca mpbell, Australian Capital Territory 2612,

Australia.

Email: dia.andrews@unsw.edu.au

Armed Forces & Society

2020, Vol. 46(4) 716-734

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19864136

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs

Keywords

sociology, media, civil–military relations, scandals, scandalogy, scandal studies,

military scandals

From the Athenian General Alcibiades’s sacrilege scandal (Thucydides, 1972, 6.27–

6.29, 6.60–6.61), to the nation-dividing furore of Lieutenant Dreyfus’ framing (Har-

ris, 2010; Read, 2012), and the horrors exposed by My Lai (Rowling, Sheets, &

Jones, 2015) and Abu Ghraib (Entman, 2006), a high magnitude military scandal is a

caesural moment in civil–military relations that can profoundly affect how a military

operates, is perceived, and is overseen. Military scandals can have manifold effects

(Crosbie & Sass, 2017, p. 128), from perceptible consequences such as inquiries,

sanctions, and reforms to imperceptible ones such as the loss of public trust, changed

patterns of internal reporting, and informal norm enforcement (Travis, 2018, p. 736).

Because scandals can have such effects, they can disturb relationships within the

military institution as well as those it maintains with the state, news media organi-

zations, civil society, and the public more broadly. Through scandals, state author-

ities and civil society can try to regulate the military institution while the latter works

to maintain institutional autonomy by resisting external interventions and trying to

control outcomes. Herein, a strong account of the military scandal is important for

understanding modern military institutions and how they are reproduced and

reformed in mediatized societies (Johnson, 2017; Maltby, 2012a, 2012b; Wadham,

2016).

Yet for a phenomenon that can have such significant effects, the military scandal

remains poorly defined. Military scandals, as with scandals generally, occupy an

uneasy theoretical territory and resist ordinary empirical analysis. They are neither

wholly of a military’s making (Crosbie & Sass, 2017)—thus they tend to be exam-

ined only on the fringes of military sociology and civil–military relations studies—

but nor are they simply chalked up as the excesses of scurrilous news media orga-

nizations. Hence, they sometimes serve as uncommon case studies for media

and communications research. Recently though, scholars such as Crosbie (2015),

Wadham (2016), Habiba (2017), Crosbie and Sass (2017), and Johnson (2017) have

sought to clarify and articulate the significance of military scandals. These valuable

contributions go some way toward demystifying this phenomenon, but the accounts

presented are brief and mainly focus on specific episodes. Consequently, while they

advance our understanding of particular aspects of military scandals, a more general

and systematic account is required.

This article develops a definition and account of the military scandal via consid-

eration of the growing field of scandal research, that is, referred to as scandal studies

(Andrews, 2017; Tumber & Waisbord, 2019) or scandalogy (Haller, Michael, &

Kraus, 2018). The article will clarify the nature, dynamics, and significance of

Andrews et al. 717