"Local fixers are becoming increasingly important for international media due to escalating security threats to international journalists, budget cuts within international media organizations, and the disappearance of long-stay correspondents. Local fixers give local color and context to news storie
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s, but their work in conflict regions is extremely dangerous. Making things worse, fixers are at the bottom of the international correspondence totem pole. This paper approaches the situation from the perspective of fixers using qualitative in-depth interviews made in northwestern Pakistan, whereby we see fixers’ problems in a wider context of post-colonial relationships. The role of Western international journalists is discussed within a cultural context of hegemony, primarily drawing on theories of Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci." (Abstract)
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"This ethnic conflict frame performs three functions when used by African journalists. The first is that it works to domesticate the conflict [in Darfur] by relying on already sedimented knowledge among African audiences about identity formation … The second function of this frame is based on know
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ing that the national media subfields in the three countries [i.e., Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa] have a nuanced understanding of ethnic identities. When asked about the role of ethnicity in Darfur, a Nigerian journalist responded, "It's a factor, religion is a factor as well. Religion shapes ethnicity" (interview with a journalist, Nigeria 2015). This approach alerts us that, as far as African journalists are concerned, ethnicity does not always have a path-deterministic relationship with violence, as some journalists in the Global North have sometimes suggested (Wahutu 2017b, 16-17). The third point is that this ethnic conflict frame works to create a sense of shared affinity between the victims and the audience in Kenya, South Africa and Rwanda while othering those framed as Arab/Muslim as being radically different. This explanation is one that was more present during my interviews with journalists. In both Kenya and South Africa, journalists often viewed as Sudan as not "real Africa." (Page 246)
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"There is no doubt that technology has improved the ability to document war crimes and human rights abuses, even in otherwise inaccessible locations. The world now sees, often in close to real-time, atrocities that would have been lost to the world only a handful of years ago. But does knowing neces
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sarily translate into doing? Whether such access can be directly linked to changes in international policy-making processes remains undecided. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that changes in the technical capacity to gather evidence have had negligible effect on states' willingness to intervene in mass atrocity events. Syria, for example, has been mapped, photographed and crowdsourced in detail for (as of this writing) seven years, yet the war there is expected to continue for years more. Reported war crimes have so far had no clear, unequivocal effect on policy. The use of chemical weapons by the Syrian military underscores the point." (Pages 569-570)
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"L’objet de ce livre est de décrire le système médiatique français et sa manière de traiter les conflits libyen et syrien à l’aune du « modèle de propagande » mis sur pied par Edward Hermann et Noam Chomsky dans les années 1980, dans leur ouvrage de référence Manufacturing Consent. A
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insi, à rebours de l’image d’Epinal de médias consciencieux, impartiaux et garants de la vérité que les journalistes aiment renvoyer, cet essai tente de démontrer comment un large consensus structure la présentation qui est faite de l’actualité en matière internationale. De la prédominance des partis pris et de l’instrumentalisation généralisée des informations — entre autres — se dégage une nouvelle manière de voir le discours médiatique et de comprendre sa nature propagandiste." (Dos de couverture)
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"[...] untersucht, wie konfliktsensitiv die deutsche Qualitätspresse über Kriege berichtet. Die empirische Antwort auf diese Frage ist für die mediale Glaubwürdigkeit elementar - und sie fällt ernüchternd aus. In zentralen Qualitätsdimensionen ist die Kriegsberichterstattung defizitär, was v
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or allem bedeutet: tendenziös. Exemplarisch deutlich wird dies an der journalistischen Wortwahl, einem bislang vernachlässigten Qualitätsindikator, für den ein spezifischer Analyseansatz entwickelt wurde. Die Ergebnisse der Inhaltsanalyse verstehen sich als Argumente einer konstruktiven Medienkritik und bieten darüber hinaus konkrete Ansatzpunkte für Qualitätsverbesserungen und Prüfroutinen in der redaktionellen Praxis." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This article examines representation of the conflict in Darfur by the media in Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Rwanda. It analyses 850 newspaper articles published from 2003 to 2008 and journalist interviews from Kenya and South Africa. Using Mbembe’s articulation of ‘meaningful acts’ and Bour
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dieu’s field theory, the article highlights how the intersection of geopolitics, symbolic affirmation of unity and ‘Africanness’ and a ritualistic use of official sources led African media fields to mimic the global north in how they have framed the Darfur conflict. The most striking finding from the analysis of how these four countries reported the violence in Darfur is the salience of the ethnic conflict frame. However, the ethnic conflict frame was used in African media differently than in Western media, which often assumed a path-determined relationship between conflict and tribal identities. In contrast, African journalists used the ethnic frame to domesticate the news and as a part of specific political project to demarcate which actors should be understood as Other and with which actors audiences share an affinity." (Abstract)
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"The book develops the analytics of grievability as an analytical framework that unpacks the ways in which news about death constructs grievable death and articulates relational ties between spectators and sufferers. The book employs the analytics of grievability in a comparative manner and analyses
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the coverage of three different case studies (terror attack, war and natural disaster) by two transnational news networks (BBC World News and Al-Jazeera English). This comparative analysis showcases the centrality of news media in selectively cultivating a sense of cosmopolitan solidarity in a global age." (Publisher description)
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"This chapter examined compassion as a news value in the humanitarian coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza by French and UK broadcasters to show the extent to which victims of foreign conflict can be portrayed with greater and lesser degrees of compassion … The study demonstrates that compassion as a
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news value is highly contextual, and in some cases was found to be insufficient as a dominant news characteristic. Coverage displayed other dominant news values such as negativity, violence and graphic imagery of the dead and wounded, and the elite value of world leaders. It confirmed that a hierarchy of victims can be identified in coverage of humanitarian suffering. For example, coverage by 20 Heures of related protests in Paris revealed that domestic victims may quickly displace remote others because of their cultural and geographical proximity. News at Ten provided a predominantly humanitarian coverage with direct interaction with victims while 20 Heures preferred less emotive and more one-dimensional coverage supported throughout with analytical, factual information. The findings not only provided insight into compassion as a news value but also shed light on it as an emotion among the warring parties, demonstrating the difficulty, if not impossibility, of displaying compassion for the enemy, regardless of their state of suffering." (Conclusion)
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"Building on critical theory, most notably Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model, Florian Zollmann's pioneering study brings propaganda back to the forefront of the debate. On the basis of a forensic examination of 1,911 newspaper articles, Zollmann investigates US, UK and German media reporting of
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the military operations in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Egypt. The book demonstrates how 'humanitarian intervention' and 'R2P' are only evoked in the news media if so called 'enemy' countries of Western states are the perpetrators of human rights violations. Zollmann's work evidences that the news media plays a crucial propaganda role in facilitating a selective process of shaming during the build-up towards military interventions." (Back cover)
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"This collection of essays explores the complicated relationship between the messengers bringing news of catastrophic upheaval and the recipients of that message. It concentrates on the journalists, photographers and film-makers, reflecting not only the motivations behind their work, but also the ps
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ychological consequences of witnessing extreme suffering. The audience interpret the news according to their circumstance, be it with anger sympathy or with compassion-fatigued indifference. The book explores that reaction, which is always more nuanced than anticipated. Finally, the modern communication circle is completed by exploring the potential of the media to diminish conflict. This is demonstrated by the media bringing together communities that are either geographically or historically divided." (Publisher description)
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"This book explores the state of European foreign conflict reporting by public-sector broadcasters, post-Cold war and post-9/11. It compares the values of three television news providers from differing public systems: BBC’s News at 10, Russia’s Vremya and France 2’s 20 Heures. The book examine
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s how these three news providers have reported and broadcast the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which pre-dates both the change in East-West relations and the events of 9/11. In doing so, the work identifies and analyses the role of public and state-aligned broadcasters and illustrates how certain news values are consistently prioritised by the broadcasters and the effect this has on how news stories are portrayed. The book is divided into two parts. Part I focuses on 2006 to 2008 and provides a detailed quantitative overview of the broadcasters’ news values. Part II provides an update of the analysis by examining coverage of the war in Gaza 2014 and discusses the findings from audience research into perceptions of this latter war. This book explains that not only do hierarchies in news values exist in foreign conflict reporting but that they are never arbitrary and can be explained, in part, by the structure of the broadcasters and by events occurring within, or associated with, the reporting country, resulting in nationally differentiated perceptions of conflict throughout the world." (Routledge.com)
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"This article argues that when it comes to reporting conflicts in the developing world the western press ignores the private sphere of economic activity because it privileges a narrative of people fighting over the nation state, as well as political ideologies and territory gained and lost. This cho
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ice of media framing matters in how western audiences understand the complexity of resource wars. To explore this concept further I examine American and British press coverage of conflict diamonds in the civil wars fought in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sierra Leone in the pages of four western newspapers of record: The Guardian (UK), The Times (UK), the New York Times (US) and the Washington Post (US). Overall, while conflict diamonds were present in the reporting, the press ignored the full extent of involvement of private companies and international capital in the financing and trading of diamonds to fuel war." (Abstract)
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"The aim of the present book is to provide both empirical and theoretical input to the discussions of the role of journalism and media in conflict and post-conflict situations and in the often rather muddy waters between them. Together, the contributions to this book from different parts of the worl
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d emphasise that discussions about post-conflict situations will gain from including the media. At the same time, the contributions problematise the concept of post-conflict and powerfully illustrate that the phase between war/conflict and peace is neither unidirectional nor linear, as the use of the concept sometimes seems to imply. Reaching a peace agreement or arranging for the termination of hostilities is, in itself, no guarantee that peace can be secured. The examples from Afghanistan, Colombia and South Sudan in this book show this up clearly. Remaining post-conflict societal friction may even be as threatening to long-lasting peace as the war itself. Hence, post-conflict may be seen as a “conflict situation in which open warfare has come to an end. However, such situations remain tense for years or decades and can easily relapse into large-scale violence” (Junne and Verkoren 2005)." (Introduction, pages 16-17)
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"Purpose: More journalists died in Syria during 2013 than in any other country experiencing conflict. This statistic raises concerns about the psychological wellbeing of journalists covering the internecine violence. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: The study sample
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was made up of 59 western journalists currently covering the Syrian conflict. To place these results in the broader context of war journalism previously collected data from a group of 84 journalists who had reported the war in Iraq were used as a control sample. Outcome measures included indices of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Impact of Event Scale-revised) and psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire-28 item version (GHQ-28)). Findings: Compared to journalists who covered the Iraq war, the journalists working in Syria were more likely to be female (p = 0.007), single (p = 0.018), freelance (p = 0.0001) and had worked fewer years as a journalist (p = 0.012). They were more depressed according to the GHQ-28 (p = 0.001) and endorsed more individual symptoms of depression including worthlessness (p = 0.012), helplessness (p = 0.02) and suicidal intent (p = 0.003). A linear regression analysis revealed that the group differences in depression data could not be accounted for by demographic factors. Research limitations/implications: An absence of structured interviews. Results not applicable to local Syrian journalists. Practical implications: Western journalists covering Syrian appear to be particularly vulnerable to the development of depression. Journalists and the news organizations that employ them need to be cognizant of data such as these. Given that depression is treatable, there needs to be a mechanism in place to detect and treat those in need. Originality/value: This is the first study that highlights the emotional toll on western journalists covering the Syrian conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)." (Abstract)
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"How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the
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case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields." (Publisher description)
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"Este artículo examina la precariedad y dificultades inherentes a las actividades periodísticas en la década del sesenta en Bolivia. Para ello revisa dos hechos comunicacionales fundamentales: la formación y desarrollo de la primera y más antigua agencia nacional de noticias: la Agencia Noticio
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sa Fides (ANF), que ya ha sobrepasado los cincuenta años de actividad, y la cobertura de la guerrilla del Che Guevara en 1967, en el sudeste de Bolivia. Experiencias que fueron hitos, se postula, en el proceso de profesionalización de la comunicación social en Bolivia." (Resumen)
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"This volume explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies. In contemporary wars, with public opinion impacting heavily on outcomes, str
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ategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict. This book asks how public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan was garnered, sustained or lost in thirteen contributing nations. Public attitudes in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe towards the use of military force were greatly shaped by the cohesiveness and content of the strategic narratives employed by national policy-makers. Assessing the ability of countries to craft a successful strategic narrative, the book addresses the following key areas: 1) how governments employ strategic narratives to gain public support; 2) how strategic narratives develop during the course of the conflict; 3) how these narratives are disseminated, framed and perceived through various media outlets; 4) how domestic audiences respond to strategic narratives; 5) how this interplay is conditioned by both events on the ground, in Afghanistan, and by structural elements of the domestic political systems." (Publisher description)
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