"Two major conclusions can be drawn on the basis of our case study. First, our analysis confirms that war reporting is characterized by a confluence of nationalist and sexist discourse. This discursive universe restricts the lives of women to a rather limited set of roles tied to the private domain
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– caring mothers, loving wives, dutiful daughters and sisters – and expects them to reproduce the nation both biologically and culturally. Indeed, the television coverage of the military conflict between the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Slovenian Territorial Defence in 1991 was almost devoid of female actors, let alone women who would appear in professional, public capacity. Out of all news reports dedicated to the conflict over the course of 20 days, women appear as participants in fewer than 5 percent of them and, of these, the vast majority are identified as wives and mothers, whose main concerns are achieving biological reproduction and protection of their families and their nation." (Conclusion, page 1057)
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"Im gegenwärtigen Globalisierungszeitalter betreffen Nachrichten aus dem Ausland die Bürger in Deutschland oftmals ebenso direkt oder indirekt, wie Nachrichten aus dem eigenen Land. Deshalb sollte der Auslandsberichterstattung in den öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendern ein hoher Stellenwert eingeräum
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t werden. Doch da auf Seiten der Sender befürchtet wird, mit hintergründiger Auslandsberichterstattung keine großen Marktanteile zu erzielen, wird dieses journalistische Themenfeld im Kontext der öffentlich-rechtlichen Programme fast zur Gänze vernachlässigt: Weder die Auslandsberichterstattung des ZDF noch die der ARD wird, so die Haupterkenntnis dieser Arbeit, den durch die voranschreitende Globalisierung aller Lebensbereiche entstandenen Anforderungen gerecht." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Building on rigorous research by the world-renowned Glasgow University Media Group, 'More Bad News From Israel' examines media coverage of the current conflict in the Middle East and the impact it has on public opinion. The book brings together senior journalists and ordinary viewers to examine how
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audiences understand the news and how their views are shaped by media reporting. In the largest study ever undertaken in this area, the authors focus on television news. They illustrate major differences in the way Israelis and Palestinians are represented, including how casualties are shown and the presentation of the motives and rationales of both sides. They combine this with extensive audience research involving hundreds of participants from the USA, Britain and Germany. It shows extraordinary differences in levels of knowledge and understanding, especially amongst young people from these countries." (Publisher description)
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"This report examines South African media coverage of human trafficking during the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup. The monitoring period included the month during the World Cup and the month immediately after (11/06/2010 – 06/08/2010). A total of 3009 newspaper stories and broadcast items were monit
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ored of which 60 (1.99%) were human trafficking related items - which form the basis of this report. As the final component of a broader multifaceted project “Child Protection and Human Trafficking: Is the Media Telling the Right(s) Story”, MMA has begun the development of a best practice methodology for reporting on human trafficking with a specific focus on child protection. Findings show that media coverage of human trafficking during the monitoring period can be distinguished into the period during the World Cup and the period immediately after by the kinds of stories reported. During the World Cup media failed in numerous stories to identify human trafficking where it was in fact found, and these items were classified as Missed Opportunities because of this. In other regards, during the World Cup there was a predominance of stories pertaining to education, awareness and protection, whereas after the World Cup, this is where we see greater reporting on actual occurrences or incidents of human trafficking." (Abstract)
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"The anti-Taliban discourse during the Swat military operation, as mediated by the Pakistani state in its propaganda campaign, was aimed at maligning the Taliban militants in order to build support and legitimacy for the military offensive. The dominant trends in the analysis of state’s propaganda
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narratives in Pakistan’s two mainstream newspapers reveal that the main ideological discourse (Islam and national security) of the state remained unchanged during the conflict. In fact, the state tried to build its anti-Taliban narrative on the same ideological discourse. Since the meta-narrative of the state did not undergo any transformation, the post-9/11 anti-terrorism narrative of the state remains a superficial discourse. The discourse analysis of Pakistani state’s anti-Taliban narratives reveals this temporality and superficiality. The state, through its propaganda campaign, portrayed the Taliban as evil, as anti-state actors, who needed to be eliminated in the interests of the country. However, the state ideology supports a pro-Taliban narrative. The only conflict is operational and temporary. Thus, the state propaganda is not directed towards all Taliban, and it is event-specific and time-specific. The state has not abandoned the Islamic ideology and its so-called strategic discourse. The Islamic ideology and the national security discourse, on the basis of which Pakistan supported the Taliban in the 90s, suit more a pro-Taliban discourse. That is why the state’s anti-Taliban propaganda kept clashing with the ideology of the state." (Conclusion, page 23)
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"In 2007 nearly 17,000 people died because of natural disasters and more than 211 million others were directly affected. News media play a basic role in giving publicity to these numerous instances of global suffering as it is mainly through media reports that the world perceives international crise
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s. Drawing upon theories on distant suffering, this study investigates the mediated representation of international crises, with a focus on natural disasters occurring in Australia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the USA. Applying critical discourse analysis, this article explores how discourses of hierarchy and inequality are realised in news texts about distant suffering. The cases of analysis are nine news items that were broadcast on a public and a commercial Belgian television channel on 2 January 2006. The comparative analysis of these news texts reveals glaring differences that reflect global hierarchies of place and human life. Suffering in the West (USA and Australia) was portrayed as comprehensible and close to the spectator, who could identify with the distant sufferers as if they are like us. While being of a greater magnitude, the Indonesian disaster was in contrast presented as no cause for concern or action, which blocked the engagement with the distant sufferers who were portrayed as ‘Others’, with a capital ‘o’. Pakistan sufferers were also articulated as distant others, but close-ups of gazing children urged the spectator to care for them and potentially act on the represented misfortune. In general, the critical discourse analysis supports the claim that Western news media reproduce a certain kind of global hierarchy, mainly a Euro-American-centred world order, and that news discourse normalises inequalities. This article argues that mediated representations of international crises reflect and consolidate the power relations and divisions that characterise our contemporary world." (Abstract)
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"Peace and Development Network Trust- Kenya (PeaceNet-Kenya) and The Seed Institute commissioned the “Nurturing Nationhood through Peace Media” study to assess the extent to which Vernacular/Community Radio stations cover peace programmes. The study gauged perceptions of audience as well as syst
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ematically quantified media content on indicators such as accuracy, fairness, objectivity and independence. As part of PeaceNet Kenya’s role in peace building and Conflict resolution, the research sought to evaluate variables such as: the depth of coverage of conflict issues, percentages of order restorers’, and the radio trends in addressing restorative justice in Kenya as well as the cultural transformation fronted by the media." (Introduction)
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"This study investigates Pope Benedict’s visit to Turkey as a global media event. The presentation includes the interaction between the global and the local in mass communication studies. The argument is that this visit makes visible some contradictions such as: East/West, EU/Turkey, Christian/Mus
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lim, Catholic/Orthodox. Before this trip, it was presupposed that these contradictions and stereotypes reinforced by the media were to set the agenda; however, it did not happen to be the case. Instead, the existing frames had been replaced by the new ones, which was called a frame shift in news reporting. The discourse method is used to prove this hypothesis. Data were collected during the trip and the visual materials helped in building our theoretical perspective. The aim is to observe the handling of this media event by Western press. Within this perspective, our sample had been formed by pioneering newspapers: Le Monde, Le Figaro, La Libération, The Guardian, The New York Times, Financial Times, Der Spiegel, BBC on-line and Time (magazine)." (Abstract)
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