Mediated violence as `global news': co-opted `performance' in the framing of the WTO

Abstract

The article examines the dynamics involved in the mediation of a global event by (local) news media. Using the case study of the WTO conference held in Hong Kong in December 2005, it critiques the discursive practice of 'indigenization' in local news coverage. Specifically, it argues that mediated violence is justified in the framing of a global event. Mediatized conflict is also seen as a process that potentially co-opts conflicting parties in the global event, and as an example of the fluid expansive space between the global and the local. The article also discusses the representation of Korean farmers as the violent 'foreign' other. This 'framing' of the Korean protesters, however, was disrupted by experienced Korean protesters, who forced unwary reporters to change their ritualistic representation of the whole event. This scenario epitomizes one of the problematics involved in the hegemonic interplay between local news media, social movements and politics in the increasingly intensified local/global nexus.