Globalizing Terror

The globalization of terror is something new. It goes hand in hand with the globalization of the media. The creation of new media technology has created a public space in which political actors may perform: Terrorists are some of the actors who can now play on a global stage. Kosovo, Israel/Palestine, the twin towers terror is not a sometime thing. Man's inhumanity toward his fellow men makes terror a constant in human affairs. Not very long ago most of the terror was hidden beyond our willingness to wait for the news. That is no longer true. We experience the terror around the world

Globalizing Resistance: Global Media and the Political Psychology of Oppression and Resistance

On September 30, 2005 a large Danish newspaper published a set of twelve cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad. The text was about freedom of the press; the cartoons, which the author knew would anger Muslims, were to demonstrate freedom as it was being exercised by the newspaper. Thirteen days later Al Jazeera's English language website contained a brief report about a protest by Muslim organizations in Denmark. Then nothing until the end of January 2006 when there was an explosion of news reporting about protests by Muslim communities demanding an apology for the desecration of their leader and their faith.We use this episode to examine the interaction of reporting and protest in the global domain

Global Media Diplomacy and Iranian Nuclear Weapons

Diplomacy at the start of the 21st century occurs as part of a highly complex global system, both openly and behind closed doors, publicly and and privately. Political actors use the media, and media actors use the politicians to advance their interests in different ways. The question today is not whether or not there shall be diplomatic publicity, but rather who does it where, when, why, and how. The case of Iranian nuclear weapons shows globalizing media and political elites using new technologies as part of a dynamic and sophisticated diplomatic process. Diplomacy behind closed doors is not replaced by the interactions in the global media. But pluralistic global media communication adds a new dimension to diplomatic activity, making it more accessible, dynamic, and complex

Studies of War and Peace: Summary of an Academic Career

A personal profile that summarizes the academic career and research findings of the author

Geography of Global Communication

The only distance that matters in communication is the distance involved in sending a signal up and then down. The close connection between communication and transportation has been broken. Near and far -- familiar and unfamiliar -- can be constituted by communication. The rhythm of day and night, as it moves around the globe, remains. We can watch a war in Iraq in real time -- except that we are asleep and can wait until we awake to watch the battles. But the images and sounds are just as real as if they were just over the horizon. And that is what they are. Contemporary communication has put everywhere just over the horizon. We have, however, traded one constraint for another. Transportation, or distance, is no longer a constraint on communication. But there is the constraint of finitude. News broadcasters have only twenty-four minutes in which to report the happenings of the world. They have no difficulty reporting about an earthquake in Turkey, a war in Iraq, an earthquake in the mountains of Afghanistan or a meeting of political leaders in Kyrgyzstan. They do have to shoe horn it into only twenty-four minutes. And that produces a new geography -- the geography of global communication. Which nations are familiar and which are not? Which subjects are familiar and which are not? The answer is given by the broadcasters' conception of importance to a global audience operating under the constraint of twenty-four minutes

Picture Framing: Images of War, Protest, and Flags on the Aljazeera in Arabic Website

War and protest are major components of the daily news. "If it bleeds, it leads" is a central axiom of news broadcasting. This paper examines the way that one globalizing news network uses images to frame stories about war and protest. Individualistic images of soldiers and weapons; death, destruction and suffering present important visual themes. At the same time, flag images invoke more communal identities. We examine such images from war and protest news stories in Arabic editions of Aljazeera websites during 20052006

Globalizing Political Action: Building bin Laden and Getting Ready for 9/11

As globalization gathers momentum at the beginning of the 21st century, global communication is increasingly important. Part of this process is global news, which has emerged as a separate genre made possible by the development of new communication technology. Media elites have used the ability to communicate from anywhere to anywhere in real time to create a new global space, which has become a domain for global political action. In this space, media elites mix political content with entertainment values in news reality television, the global political theater of the real. Capturing images from the vast ocean of daily human activity, they create breaking news. They help construct dramatic political characters like Osama bin Laden. They weave past and present experience together in gripping ongoing stories like terrorism that give meaning to current events and prefigure the future.As the media construct characters and stories, they help create the content and context of contemporary world politics. Building bin Laden as a player and getting ready for the spectacle of 9/11, the news media are at work, using professional production values to transform local people and real time events into powerful global political actors and concrete action sequences, trying to make public sense of a crazy, frightening world

Leading with Blood in the Streets: Global Broadcasters, Protesters, and Democratic Leaders

Protesters attempt to broaden conflict by taking advantage of the news media's principle"if it bleeds it leads". Democratic leaders turn that rule back on the protesters. If there is no blood there is no story. All the democratic politicians have to do is disappear. There is no blood. And the protest is silenced. Globalizing media broadcasters and protesters lead with blood in the streets. Globalizing political leaders, on the other hand, can not lead with blood in the streets. Globalizing communication and political actors thus perform the interactive logic of globalization, playing out the mutually reinforcing incentives of globalization

The Rhetoric of Global Leadership: Cooperating, Crusading, and Preparing for War

Global telecommunications technology and practice offer the permissive conditions for global political leadership and political rhetoric. Global media provide a new platform, an expanded public domain for talk and action. The medium, as Marshall McLuhan famously said, is the message; but media do not fully determine their own use. The players on the global stage follow their own scripts. Media elites have their own concerns, choosing stories that they feel appropriate for their tasks. Issues like Iraq ebb and flow as a focus of news attention. Political actors seize the stage to a greater or lesser degree. Though their speaking parts may be small, they can set the plot lines. The leaders are the main characters and dominate the action as reporters frame the talk. The rhetoric of global political leadership includes different stories, characters, and performances. In the cases we examined, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush set different tasks for themselves and adopted different rhetorical styles to accomplish the tasks. And they addressed different audiences within the global domain. Both addressed the Other: Milosevic, the Taliban, and Hussein. Clinton focused on nurturing cooperative international allies, persuading coalition members to undertake collective action as team players. Bush was unwilling or unable to address a global audience in this way. His crusading performance, combining the Lone Ranger and a frontier preacher talking hell fire and brimstone, appealed mainly to parts of the U.S. audience. In the emerging global public domain, media elites, political players, and audiences use different scripts in different situations to adapt, learn, and evolve together. Some are more successful than others