Mass Media Coverage of Conflict and Civil Disorder: Pseudo-events as Agents for Change

Abstract

This critique of the relationship between media and social change reviews both the nature of the pseudo event as originally analyzed by American social historian Daniel Boorstin, and the relatively few systematic studies and essays on how news about such events may have affected social behavior, political power and history. Minority movements involving confrontation with police seeking to preserve established order are examined in the context of news communication, social and political causes and in some cases violence. This analysis casts considerable scepticism on the short-range impact of pseudo events, but offers a longer historical look at citizen participation in democracies, problems of substituting symbols for complex issues, and the clash of minorities and disorder with the resistance of the established majority. This article assembles both sporadic essays and commentaries along with more systematic studies, many of which were contemporary observations at the time when the events occurred. The in...