CNN Effect Research Articles

MEDIA AND RELIGION IN THE ARAB/ISLAMIC WORLD

Until recently, the media in Arab/Islamic contexts by and large have tended to aggravate political and religious pathologies through their disregard for truth and accuracy, a habit shaped by their literary and propagandist antecedents. They have been the least faithful to Islam's own standards, leading to dangerous distortions of this religion. Paradoxically, the CNN effect, by magnifying these very tendencies, has led to a counteraction. Such countervailing trends promise that the media in Arab and other Muslim-majority contexts will adhere more closely to standards of honesty and accuracy, and in doing so will become more faithful to the demands of Islam itself.

The Effects of Satellite Technology on Newsgathering from Remote Locations

Over the course of the last decade, the equipment used by news organizations to transmit text, voice, and images from locations without fixed or operational communications links has changed radically. Whereas remote real-time transmissions once required tons of satellite uplink equipment, generators, and a stable of technicians, approximately the same can be accomplished today with a laptop sized device and handheld digital camera. This sort of technological prowess was seen most recently in the 2003 war in Iraq. We hypothesize that, as a result of these technological developments, the likelihood of newsgathering from remote locations has increased. By “remote location,” we mean any place without the standard technical infrastructure (fixed satellite uplinks or high-speed terrestrial lines). Most often, remoteness of this sort is a feature of nonurban, less developed regions of the world. This hypothesis is a critical but untested presumption underlying recent debates concerning the CNN effect, event-driven news, and other aspects of the changing nature of the relationships between news media and policy. In our analysis, we find evidence of a decrease in the effects of remoteness on levels of U.S. media coverage of distant events.

The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of International Relations

This study investigates the decade long effort to construct and validate a communications theory of international relations that asserts that global television networks, such as CNN and BBC World, have become a decisive actor in determining policies and outcomes of significant events. It systematically and critically analyzes major works published on this theory, known also as the CNN effect, both in professional and academic outlets. These publications include theoretical and comparative works, specific case studies, and even new paradigms. The study reveals an ongoing debate on the validity of this theory and concludes that studies have yet to present sufficient evidence validating the CNN effect, that many works have exaggerated this effect, and that the focus on this theory has deflected attention from other ways global television affects mass communication, journalism, and international relations. The article also proposes a new agenda for research on the various effects of global television networks.

Re-ordering Iraq

Re-ordering Iraq

The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention

The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention

'The CNN Effect' in Eastern Europe - Does it Exist?: The Representation of the Kosovo Conflict in the Bulgarian Print Media

'The CNN Effect' in Eastern Europe - Does it Exist?: The Representation of the Kosovo Conflict in the Bulgarian Print Media

‘The CNN effect’ in Eastern Europe ‐ does it exist?: The representation of the Kosovo conflict in the Bulgarian print media

This article explores the controversial relationship between media and politics. In particular, it looks at print media reporting of large‐scale conflict and its possible link to foreign policy responses. The article examines the representation of the Kosovo conflict by the Bulgarian print media assessing the media‐policy interaction and testing established Western media‐policy models in a post‐communist context. The conclusions drawn relate first, to the suitability of models developed for the Western media outside of the Western context suggesting that their applicability is most likely specific to certain types of media systems and journalistic cultures. Second, the article argues that in the Bulgarian case, as opposed to the Western media, at this current stage of the post‐communist development of the media (or development of the whole society) they are not able to seriously challenge the government no matter how coherent, strongly held and well articulated, or on the contrary, inconsistent, uncertain and badly presented its policies.

The CNN Effect: The myth of news, foreign policy and intervention, by Piers Robinson. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. xii + 177 pp. 16.99 paperback. ISBN 0-415-25905-3 (paperback)

Journal Article The CNN Effect: The myth of news, foreign policy and intervention, by Piers Robinson. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. xii + 177 pp. £16.99 paperback. ISBN 0‐415‐25905‐3 (paperback) Get access Paul Williams Paul Williams University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 102, Issue 409, 1 October 2003, Pages 679–680, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adg078 Published: 01 October 2003

Television News and U.S. Foreign Policy

This study argues that the main approaches used to investigate the impact of television news on U.S. foreign policy making including the “CNN effect” and “news management” have missed several significant effects. This work employs an approach that views the media impact in terms of constraints real-time television coverage imposes on the policy-making process. These include shortening of the time available for policy making and demanding immediate response to crises and events, excluding experts and diplomats, facilitating diplomatic manipulations, creating high expectations, broadcasting deficient reports, and making instant judgments. The work presents a few actual examples to demonstrate each constraint. The constraints have created challenges and dilemmas for political leaders and government officials, and the article suggests several ways policymakers can use to cope with them.

Representing Contemporary War

“… Sontag not only challenges the compassion fatigue thesis; she questions the notion of the CNN effect. With regard to inaction in Bosnia despite the steady stream of images of ethnic cleansing that made their way out of Sarajevo, Sontag argues that people didn't turn off because they were either overwhelmed by their quantity or anaesthetized by their quality. Rather, they switched off because American and European leaders proclaimed it was an intractable and irresolvable situation. The political context into which the pictures were being inserted was already set, with military intervention not an option, and no amount of horrific photographs was going to change that….… In the Iraq war of 2003 imagery was central to the conflict and often the subject of conflict itself. In this context, the Pentagon's strategy of “embedding” reporters and their camera crews with fighting units, and having them operate at the behest of that unit, continues the long-running tradition of a close relationship between the media and the military…. Given this, Sontag is perhaps surprisingly sanguine about the genuineness of war photography in the contemporary period. While recognizing that many of the now iconic combat images of the pre-Vietnam period were staged, she sees Vietnam as a watershed such that “the practice of inventing dramatic news pictures, staging them for the camera, seems on its way to becoming a lost art.” Insofar as Sontag is referring to the likelihood of individual photographers seeking to deceive, she may be right. There was, however, at least one notable instance in Iraq of digital manipulation. This resulted in the Los Angeles Times sacking award-winning staff photographer Brian Walski, whose altered image of a British soldier in Basra (he had combined two photos into one to improve marginally composition) was used on the paper's front page….… What is most striking about the embedded journalists' coverage of the Iraq war is the way in which the images of the conflict produced by the allies' media was so relatively clean, being largely devoid of the dead bodies that mark a major conflict. In this outcome, the media is a willing accomplice….”

The Worldflash of a Coming Future

The Worldflash of a Coming Future

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"Share" Editorial

Failing Failed States: Who Forgets the Forgotten?

When states are failing, when basic state functions are no longer carried out, and when people have no security, humanitarian crises erupt. In confronting this problem, the stronger states have followed an ad hoc policy of intervention and aid. In some cases, humanitarian disasters have resulted from inaction. Often, the media are blamed. Politicians complain about the media when they interfere (the CNN effect), and when they do not. This article looks at how the media do cover failing states. Sierra Leone and Congo are used as examples. The analysis shows that there is little independent coverage. A Danish survey of newsrooms shows that the national world-view and prevalent news criteria prevent consistent coverage. It is argued that politicians are the ones who determine national agendas: it is from political initiatives, rather than media coverage, that failing states and humanitarian crises can expect action.

Global Communication and Foreign Policy

This study investigated the effects global communication is having on the formulation and conduct of foreign policy and showed that it both constrains leaders and officials yet provides them with opportunities to advance their goals. The article presents a taxonomy where global communication is viewed as an actor in the policy process with corresponding attributes of type, activity, context, and concept. Four types of actors are identified: controlling, constraining, intervening, and instrumental. The article critically and respectively examines concepts developed to explain each type: the “CNN Effect theory,”“real-time policy,”“international political brokerage,” and “media diplomacy.” Although some of these concepts were found to be useful, major progress in this field requires interdisciplinary research based on joint application of theories and models from both communication and international relations.

The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk?

The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk?

Theorizing the Influence of Media on World Politics

Debate over the extent to which the mass media serves elite interests or, alternatively, plays a powerful role in shaping political outcomes has been dogged by dichotomous and one-sided claims. Some attribute enormous power to the news media (the so-called CNN effect) while others claim the media `manufactures consent' for elite policy preferences. This article reviews existing theories of media-state relations, in particular the work of Daniel Hallin and Lance Bennett, and highlights theoretical and empirical shortcomings in the manufacturing consent thesis. The article then outlines two models, a model of media influence and Gadi Wolfsfeld's `political contest model', that serve to reconcile contrasting claims over the power of the news media. The model of media influence is then applied to the Vietnam War in order to reconcile contrasting claims (Hallin vs David Culbert) regarding the role of the media during this conflict. It is argued that the two models, taken together, provide a starting point for a two-way understanding of the direction of influence between media and the state that builds upon, rather than rejects, existing theoretical accounts.

The Policy-Media Interaction Model: Measuring Media Power during Humanitarian Crisis

This article details the results of a plausibility probe of a policy-media interaction model designed to identify instances of media influence. If sufficient evidence is found to support the model, it can be used as part of a wider study examining the impact of media coverage on decisions to intervene during humanitarian crisis, the so-called CNN effect. The model predicts media influence when policy is uncertain and media coverage is framed so as to be critical of government and empathizes with suffering people. In order to test the model, it is applied to two cases: US intervention in Bosnia in 1995 in order to defend the Gorazde `safe area' and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999. In the first case, the model highlights the impact of critical, empathizing media coverage and policy uncertainty in effecting the US decision to defend the Gorazde `safe area'. In the second case, the failure of critical newspaper coverage to change the Clinton Administration's air-war policy highlights the limits of media influence when there exists policy certainty. Overall, it is argued that the plausibility probe supports the prediction that media influence occurs when policy is uncertain and media coverage is critically framed and empathizes with suffering people. And that when policy is certain, media influence is unlikely to occur. As such, the policy-media interaction model should prove a useful tool in testing the claim that media coverage causes intervention during humanitarian crisis.

Victims and victors: reflections on the Kosovo War

Both the ‘CNN effect,’ whereby images revealing large-scale suffering push governments into humanitarian interventions, and the ‘bodybags effect’, whereby images of casualties pull them away, were evident in the Kosovo War, as was the ‘bullying effect,’ whereby the use of excessive force risks draining away public support for interventions. Although Serbs deliberately tried to present themselves as victims, however, the harsh methods used to suppress Kosovar Albanian aspirations ensured that it was they who appeared as the victims. The Serb effort was also counter-productive in that it made the KLA harder, instead of easier, to defeat.

Focus on the CNN Effect Misses the Point: The Real Media Impact on Conflict Management is Invisible And Indirect

`[Television] has changed the way the world reacts to crises', Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General (Gowing, 1994a). The media ignores most conflicts most of the time. The coverage of the pre- and post-violence phases is negligible at best and only a few armed conflicts are covered in the violence phase. As focus and funds follow the cameras, the 1990s have witnessed a transfer of resources from more cost-effective, long-term efforts directed at preventing violent conflict and rebuilding war-torn societies to short-term emergency relief. Selective media coverage also contributes to an irrational allocation of short-term emergency relief because coverage is determined by factors other than humanitarian need. This invisible and indirect media impact on Western conflict management is far greater than the direct impact on intervention and withdrawal decisions that the debate over the CNN effect focuses on.

All the News That's Fit to Print?

The so-called CNN effect suggests that the American public has quick access to more information about world events than ever before.To test the prevalence of the effect, this study examines New York Times stories on fifty countries that human-rights researchers list among the top violators. Results show that although there is a moderate correlation between the magnitude of political terror and the number of human-rights stories from a given country, the Times's overall coverage of human rights is seriously lacking. Attention to abuses occurs primarily in countries that were strategically instrumental during the cold war and in countries where there is clear U.S. involvement.