WWS309

April 25, 2005

Media Framing in the War Against Terror

On September 11, 2001, the paradigm of US foreign policy changed forever. This paradigm shift allowed for influential individuals in government and the media to have a tremendous impact on the conceptual framework by which the American public would consider issues of terrorism, domestic security, war and humanitarian assistance. When it became known that the United States faced an enemy in Al-Qaeda, an international terrorist group based in Afghanistan, it became clear that the United States would have to seek out and

either capture or kill the perpetrators of the attack on the World Trade Center. This blog focuses on the subsequent characterization of the so-called War against Terror, as demonstrated by the incursion in Afghanistan and the US War on Iraq – considered the first “battlegrounds� in this new war. America-centric news framing has often not matched international conceptions of terrorism, resulting in an opposite response from Arab news media and resulting in a widening chasm between the US and the Middle East, clearly running against long term security interests.

Ironically, this blog post is framed by various concepts offered both by the World Health Organization (WHO) Article “Basic Principles of Media Advocacy� and an article by Tony Palmero of the University of Wisconsin on “The Love/Hate Relationship with the United States: Media Framing�. As humans, we tend to seek order and simplicity in what is an increasingly complex world. Says cognitive linguist George Lakoff, “People understand almost everything by applying conceptual frames…and the conclusions one draws depends on the frame one uses� (WHO). Therefore, any conceptual framework is likely to influence the course of human thought processes on any subject. This reality is heightened by the fact that the news media has a greater influence on our lives than ever before. This trend occurs at a time when the media industry increasingly faces competition for human attention, forcing only short opportunities to communicate complicated global issues to citizens. In fact, one USA today article entitled “Short attention span linked to TV� discusses that television watchers are in fact more likely to impact a shortening of attention spans, meaning that television may only be reinforcing this trend. Therefore, the media, as does this blog post, seeks to communicate the complexity of the issue through a clear conceptual model that ultimately influences policies and signals responsibilities. According to Ralph Berenger of the University of Cairo, frame theory is a useful heuristic device against which broader conclusions in the differences of the media framing across regions can be discussed. His analysis in “Gulf War Fallout: A Theoretical Approach to Understand and Improve Media Coverage of the Middle East� will be discussed later in the context of developing a more balanced analysis of the terrorist threat and the US relationship to the Middle East.

The problem of media framing in the context of the television news media can be broken down into several key categories, as described by Palmeri: packages, core frames, core positions, metaphors, historical examples, catch-phrases, depictions, visual images, roots, consequences, and appeals to principles. In the context of the US Intervention in Afghanistan, Palmeri provides three packages frequently employed by the news media: (1) Freedom versus Terror; (2) Humanitarian Intervention; and (3) Quagmire. Each of these three packages included their relevant framing characteristics. For example, the “Freedom versus Terror� package employed the core frame of whether the US would permit evil to destroy civilization and rule the world, or (and this was clearly the dominant position) whether the US would defend civilization against terrorists and those who harbor them. The metaphor that the media frequently employed was that of the United States as the protector of civilized values that would perish if the global terror network was not destroyed. In terms of historical example, the news media would often draw upon the war against fascism of the 1930s and 1940s. Catch-phrases used included “you are with us or you are with the terrorists,� the “axis of evil,� and “The War against Terror,� which find their sources in the government and the news media. The media would frequently depict the US as the protector of freedom, while al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Bin Laden were evildoers who hijacked Islam. Visual images used were Ground Zero, the flag raising on Ground Zero (similar to Iwo Jima), and images of Palestinians and others around the Middle East burning Bush photographs or the American flag in protests. These visual images were rooted in the notion that the perpetrators of these crimes hated or envied the United States. Framed consequences included the notion that if Al-Qaeda was not stopped immediate, that they would export terrorism around the world and try to defeat or undermine Western values. The media machine appealed to the principle that the war against terrorism was really a fight for all those who believe in tolerance and freedom.

The other two packages of humanitarian intervention and quagmire are not terribly different from the freedom versus terror package discussed above. In all of these conceptual frameworks, the United States is essentially the “good cop� on the world stage. Very infrequently has the American news media stopped to consider if its actions run inimical to long term peace and stability in the region; one famous isolated example of this occurring was with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, though this scandal has not had real impacts on the dominant framework. While Americans are likely to consider this an indisputable truth, the rest of the world does not agree. Much of the world sees the United States as too easily resorting to violence to solve international disputes, as in the case of Vietnam and the War against Iraq. In these cases, framing the problems in terms of the US as the “good cop� carries a kind of arrogance that does not resonate well outside of the US, particularly in the Middle East. Moreover, these frames are limited by their lack in relevant historical parallels. The term “War against Terror� is particularly problematic since it is natural to try and associate this war with previous wars. Of course, a war against terrorism is much more complex than a war against Nazi Germany or even North Vietnamese guerillas. The current war is a war against the notion of terrorism; any media framing is considerably more potent since it addresses an entirely new paradigm, thereby influencing thoughts on the terror threat for years to come. Any media framing must in a sense be considerably more flexible as we continue to learn more about the terrorist threat. Finally, dominant news sources continue to be “institutional,� to the extent that they only support the dominant framework of the US as the good cop on the world stage. In the War against Iraq, journalists were “embedded� with US army troops where they quickly developed camaraderie with the troops and reported from the American soldier’s perspective. Any reporting from the Iraqi standpoint, prevalent in international news circles, were not matched by the US news media, according to Kai Hafez of the University of Erfurt, in Germany. This was certainly also the case with the Incursion in Afghanistan, which did little to illustrate the “receiving end� of the violence.

This biased media framing only seems to perpetuate the image that Muslims do not understand the West and that the West does not understand Muslims (Beringer 1). According to Beringer, Arab media sources framed the Afghanistan and Iraqi conflicts in ways that completely ignored American framing almost out of spite, resulting in an inimical impact of relaying the big picture to the Middle Eastern audience. For example, during the Iraq war, the Arab media did not immediately focus on Iraq’s potential Weapons of Mass Destruction program, which was one of the main reasons cited by US officials for entering into the war. Moreover, the Arab media would engage in practices similar to the US media. For example, the Arab media also engaged in personalizing the War on Iraq: just as the US media portrayed Saddam Hussein as the bad guy, the Arab media portrayed Bush and Blair as the fumbling owners of the war (7).

This discussion began at the theoretical level, discussing that news frames originate in a human desire to simplify what are in reality complex news stories. The news frame in the context of the US incursion on Afghanistan and other stories indicate that news framing, as useful as it may be to illustrate some of the broad themes in a short time span to the public, may be detrimental in the long term. While Americans citizens can tune in to American television and confirm in their view that the US is playing good cop around the world, it is in the best interests of the national security of the United States that Americans be exposed to the broader reality of the conflict. In doing so, Americans will be in the position to better understand the vehement disagreement by Middle Easterners on the other side.

Moving forward, we must more closely consider the role that the government plays in creating this framework. To what extent is this a news media-driven phenomenon versus a political tactic? It is clear to me that the consideration of this War on Terror originated within the government to provide as much flexibility as possible in the policymaking process. For example, had Bush responded to 9/11 as a War against Al-Qaeda, he would have created a highly limited framework that would not have justified his harsh tone against Saddam Hussein and other “rogue� states. It appears that the issue of media frameworks should focus on the role of the government in “selling� ideas that are used by the media.

Posted by fbaradel at 1:17 PM | Comments (1)

April 10, 2005

International News Story: Peasant protests in Perú

The following is a distilled version of the presentation I gave in class on April 10, 2005 on Peasant protests in Perú and why it is important that this news story be covered in American domestic news. This summary provides a general introduction to the conflict, its impact on Peruvians, its impact on the United States, reasons why the United States should care about this issue, and finally a 3-minute breakdown of how I believe this news story should be presented.

Summary

The Peruvian government recently reached an agreement with peasant leaders in the Peruvian province of Andahuaylas to end several days of a large scale protests. Peasants began a strike there on April 1 in protest against the low market prices they receive for their main agricultural staple: potatoes. Protesters blocked three main highways in the country, immediately impacting the transit of passengers and cargo and forcing the attention of the national government.

The Peruvian government responded to the crisis by declaring a 30 day “state of emergency� in the province. This allowed local government officials to arrest peasants and restrict rights of political assembly to the strikers. Although the government had previously established that it would not negotiate with the strikers, they sent Agricultural Minister Manuel Manrique to negotiate with the protestors.

Impact on Peruvians

This protest reveals the country’s deep socioeconomic divides and the lack of political machinery to mediate conflicts on the ground. The protests also reflect more broadly on the impact of free trade policies on the Peruvian government. The ongoing process of trade liberalization means those staple prices will continue to fall, immediately impacting small-scale producers of agricultural staples, such as these Andahuaylan peasants. These peasants will find the market for their produce eroded due to increased imports of subsidized grains from the United States. Currently, talks on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States are stalled, though President Alejandro Toledo has indicated that Perú is on course to reach an agreement.

In response, the peasant farmers of Andahuaylas, represented by the Frente de Defensa Regional Agrario de Andahuaylas, have demanded that the government purchase agricultural goods from them at well above market prices to distribute to the poor through its social assistance programs.

Impact on the United States

The U.S. sees the Andean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) as an important opportunity to expand foreign trade and expand investment to Colombia, Ecuador, and Perú. The key sticking point has been with agricultural policies, where the U.S. continues to support large-scale subsidies to American farmers. The U.S. continues to back agricultural subsidies, to the extent that they make a very large part of the yearly U.S. budget. In 2000 the U.S. paid over $22 billion to farmers in the U.S. These subsidies have allowed U.S. farmers to “dump� excess staple productions on export markets at 34 percent below market costs, according to a recent Oxfam Report. Yet it is not altogether clear that the benefits of the investment are carried over to U.S. consumers, who pay higher prices for U.S. produced goods, without a noticeable impact on the U.S. economy. Therefore, this issue has important ramifications for the United States, since the Peruvian riots themselves demonstrate the inherent tensions in asymmetrical trade, a byproduct of these agricultural subsidies. Should the U.S. remove agricultural subsidies, Peruvian farmers will be in a much better position to benefit from free trade.

This problem can also be framed in the context of the global war on terror. Much has been said of the underlying socioeconomic problems that bring about terrorism. These asymmetrical trade relationships bring about the anti-U.S. resentment, poverty ad inequality – all factors that create a breeding ground for terrorism.

Latin America is also a popular tourism market. Protests in Latin America are likely to impact students and tourists who want to spend time in Latin America. Also, the U.S. population is becoming more and more Latino, meaning that issues in Latin America are becoming more relevant to Americans more generally, particularly in Spanish-language news outlets.

Why Should the U.S. follow this story?

1)Fairness: The American public should be aware if its government is pursuing fair and equitable trade policies overseas.

2)Agricultural subsidies: The American public should question the logic of agricultural subsidies – do they really offer returns on investment?

3)Regional instability: Peasant revolts do not just occur in Perú, but in other parts of Latin America as a result of inequitable trade policies. This will almost certainly impact the tourism market and U.S. travelers will want to know.

Television Approach

A television news story on this international story must include the following components:

1) Interviews
a. Regional knowledge: Establish the key players on the ground, from the Peruvian government, the peasant groups, and any relevant NGO.
b. U.S. involvement: The U.S. embassy in Lima, U.S. trade negotiators, U.S. farmers and everyday Americans commenting on agricultural subsidies.
c. Specialists/Experts: Commenting on the wisdom/problems behind agricultural subsidies and/or asymmetrical trade

2)Background information
a. Peruvian location, geography, general information
b. U.S. farmers (population, role of subsidies)

3)Images
a. Peasant revolts
b. U.S. farmers
c. U.S. government officials and trade talks

Three Minute Narrative

Introduction:
1. Show videos of the country of Perú on a map and then videos of peasant revolts and angry people, including possibly peasants burning American effigies or chanting anti-American slogans.

2. Provide a voiceover: “Is Latin America the new breeding ground for the war on terror?�

3. Then interview an expert saying something like: “These US-subsidies are only further contributing to violence and instability in Latin America�

Again, the three contexts for framing the problem are:
1) War on terrorism: trade asymmetries create the breeding ground for terrorism
2) Poor agricultural policies: exploring and questioning the wisdom of US agricultural subsidies. These don’t noticeably help most Americans and really anger people in the international community. By removing them, you benefit all parties involved, except for farmers who make up a very small percentage of the American population
3) Relevance to U.S. residents: More and more students are traveling abroad to Latin America, and the United States is becoming more “Latino.�

Posted by fbaradel at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2005

Wikinews Presentation

The following is a distilled version of the presentation I gave in class on February 20th, 2005 on Wikinews, a new web portal that attempts to redefine news gathering by allowing anyone around the world to write and edit news stories. This summary provides a general history (evolution) of the news organization, its ownership, position in the news market, as well as a summary of reasons why an organization like Wikinews might fail to achieve any success in the news market.

History (evolution)

Wikinews is a new project begun just last year that aims to collaboratively report and summarize news on all subjects from a neutral point of view. For those of you who know about Wikipedia, it is essentially an open content encyclopedia which allows anyone in the world can make any change they want, including adding or deleting anything on the site. The site works by providing a list of recent changes automatically maintained on the system. Frequent contributors to the portal are always watching that list and either make the changes immediately or put it on a list of pages that need attention.

According to Tom Malone of MIT, what makes Wiki-technology so unique is that it illustrates two emerging trends: freedom and scale. Anyone in the world has the freedom to be an author of an encyclopedia or news report. Likewise, there is also a global scale in the pool of people that the contributors are able to draw upon and the audience for the product. Wikinews seeks to create a free source of news, where every website visitor is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere. Therefore, while Wikinews aims to be a useful resource of its own, it will also provide an alternative to proprietary news agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters, allowing independent media outfits to get a high quality feed of news free of charge to complement their own reporting.

On its portal, Wikinews maintains that it follows key principles which have made Wikipedia and other Wikimedia websites what they are today: neutrality, free content, and an open editorial process. All of these principles facilitate the empowerment of the citizen journalist. They approach news from an opposite perspective of traditional news agencies, which traditionally follow centrally-driven editorial processes. In contrast, Wikinews believes that everyone can make a useful contribution to painting the big picture of what is happening in the world.

Ownership

Wikinews is run by the same people who created Wikipedia. Both are run under the Wikimedia Foundation, an international non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. Wikimedia relies on public donations to meet its goal of providing free knowledge to every person in the world. Jimmy Wales, a technology entrepreneur, is the founder of Wikimedia, which is run by a board of trustees of five directors. Two of the seats are filled by a project-wide vote.

Readership (Viewership)

Readership seems to be growing very rapidly. There has been a steady rise in Internet hits since Wikinews was launched. On May 1, 2005, there were 248,000 hits. According to one regular citizen editor in an interview, over 4,000 registered users are participating in the editorial process in varying degrees of commitment. You can visit this detailed Wikinews website on Awareness statistics for more information.

Influence

Given its relative youth in the newsmedia environment, Wikinews is not terribly influential. This organization is brand new and faces significant challenges to success. These challenges include constant fundraising to have the bandwidth capacity for a growing viewership. Revenue generation is particularly difficult as Wikimedia refuses to sell ad space on their webportal. Although there have been rumors circulating recently that Google planned to host Wikimedia’s portals for free, thereby significantly saving money for the organization, these rumors have yet to be substantiated.

Position in the news market

Wikinews carves out its position in the news market with two fundamental strategies: (1) its decentralized approach and (2) its public-sensitive neutrality. First off, Wikinews follows a completely decentralized approach. In order to implement a vision of not just a news summary service, but a source of original reporting, Wikinews has two types of reports: summaries from external sources and reports by Wikinews reporters (based on first-hand experiences or on interviews and research). In this context, there is one key principle that Wikinews must follow. Its vision is “to make available to the reader all the knowledge which we ourselves have, that is, to fully cite their sources, with the exception of sources which are anonymized for their protection.� Second, Wikinews claims that it is as neutral as the broad public wants it to be. Wikinews adopts the neutral point of view policy which has been key behind the success of Wikipedia. All opinions and beliefs have to be attributed to their adherents, all factual claims have to be sourced. Wikinews will not engage in political advocacy; unlike some newspapers, it will not endorse political candidates, for example. An article which is not neutral at the time of final review should either be fixed or not be published.

Common criticisms

On the Wikinews portal, freelance editors have developed a page that outlines some of the common criticisms of the portal. These “scenarios� will hopefully yield solutions that will make decentralized news gathering processes a more effective approach to its traditional, centralized counterpart. These scenarios include (1) not enough contributors, (2) articles are only written about certain areas (i.e. other areas are left out); (3) editorial hell; (4) lack of original content; (5) lack of press access; and (6) too much argument. To see these criticisms in detail, please access this website: Wikinews Worst Cases.

Posted by fbaradel at 7:03 PM | Comments (0)

February 7, 2005

Is the Internet driving a change in popular news consumption?

For the past several years, the Internet has had an increasingly significant role in our lives in terms of access to information and communications. As the Internet has increased in importance, my reliance on this medium as a source of news has grown dramatically, to the point I rarely get news from the television or newspaper.

Moreover, the advent of streaming audio from NPR or the BBC makes even the radio seem obsolete. The benefits of Internet news include being an interactive medium where the user actually controls the content being presented. A second benefit is the ability to seamlessly communicate and publish your opinions on the news on weblogs such as this one, or among friends using instant messenger or e-mail. The seamless interaction between customized information and communications makes the Internet a far more powerful tool for daily news, particularly in a world dominated by time limitations and sound bites.

Once grown accustomed to the Internet as a news medium, it isn’t difficult to notice the faults in traditional news mediums. One of the most frustrating elements of the twenty-four hour news cycle is that channels like CNN and MSNBC are so engaged in providing a broad range of news that they rarely go in depth in any story. By customizing news content over the Internet, you can read more in depth about news stories of interest. I am mostly interested in international news, but because I also want to remain grounded in US news I usually use CNN.com as my first news source. Second I’ll take a look at the BBC and the Economist. If there’s a particular news story that I want to learn more about, I’ll use the Google news search, which indexes news stories from thousands of news sources around the world.

The massive adoption of technology by society manifests itself twofold: (1) by creating new levels of empowerment and democratization due to the massive equalization power of the Internet and (2) by raising expectations: the result of access to unprecedented quantities of information with equally unprecedented low access barriers. In my view, we are currently undergoing a process not dissimilar from the late 1950s and early 1960s when media consultants, politicians and political scientists struggled to learn how to harness the power of broadcast television and use it for the political public discourse. Today this media is used and abused in a well-understood fashion: its initial artistry has mostly been reduced to well-understood processes, actions and measurable outcomes. However this new, networked world is just emerging and in consequence the frameworks to harness this new level of “media empowerment� by consumers remains a largely unexplored area. The power of the Internet actualized by real time opinion surveys, on-demand news, weblogs, etc. are not yet reduced to sustainable practices. There is a great deal of potential in the Internet as a democratizing and decentralizing news medium that circumvents centralized corporate or government interests. Hopefully we will have ample opportunities in class to discuss these possibilities.

Posted by fbaradel at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)