"A great deal has now been written about the patterns of media exploitation as they contribute to a vortex of destruction. Less has been elaborated about the efforts of international governmental organisations ("IGOs") and non-governmental organisations ("NGOs") to intervene so as to maintain a more
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stable and peaceful world order either in anticipation of conflict, during the conflict or in the ordeal following the conflict. This paper focuses, as a background for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ("UNESCO") Geneva Conference, in May 2000, on post-conflict patterns that emerge, primarily drawing from four case studies—Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Cambodia." (Introduction)
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"The international mission, as U.S. and Western representatives saw it, was to reconstruct a viable multi-ethnic media, as well as to prevent further conflict. NATO was seeking to build, under the Dayton Accords, a plural society out of pieces that seemed fractured beyond repair. The OHR believed th
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at a pluralistic, peaceful media was an indispensable part of the rebuilding process. The Office proclaimed its desire to "use the opportunity to remove one of the most serious obstacles bedeviling our efforts to re-establish civil society in Bosnia" - the fact that the media was ethnically based.358 NATO and OHR actions must be judged after a reasonable period of time elapses to see if a more democratic Bosnia-Herzegovina, supported by the pluralism that comes from a free and independent press, emerges. Still, one of the great dangers of information intervention is that it provides apparent democratic justification for any nation to use its police power to close down media outlets. Each time the international community intervenes to shut down a media outlet that it does not like, the line between information intervention and censorship becomes blurred. The real test is not only whether an information intervention transforms a society but also whether the intervention comports with the spirit of democratic change. Ends can justify means, but it is helpful if the means themselves are compatible with those ends." (Conclusion, page 111-112)
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"From outbreaks of the flesh eating viruses Ebola and Strep A, to death camps in Bosnia and massacres in Rwanda, the media seem to careen from one trauma to another, in a breathless tour of poverty, disease and death. First we're horrified, but each time they turn up the pitch, show us one image mor
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e hideous than the next, it gets harder and harder to feel. Meet compassion fatigue--a modern syndrome, Susan Moeller argues, that results from formulaic media coverage, sensationalized language and overly Americanized metaphors. In her impassioned new book, Compassion Fatigue, Moeller warns that the American media threatens our ability to understand the world around us. Why do the media cover the world in the way that they do? Are they simply following the marketplace demand for tabloid-style international news? Or are they creating an audience that as seen too much--or too little--to care? Through a series of case studies of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--disease, famine, death and war--Moeller investigates how newspapers, newsmagazines and television have covered international crises over the last two decades, identifying the ruts into which the media have fallen and revealing why. Throughout, we hear from industry insiders who tell of the chilling effect of the mega- media mergers, the tyranny of the bottom-line hunt for profits, and the decline of the American attention span as they struggle to both tell and sell a story. But Moeller is insistent that the media need not, and should not, be run like any other business. The media have a special responsibility to the public, and when they abdicate this responsibility and the public lapses into a compassion fatigue stupor, we become a public at great danger to ourselves." (Publisher description)
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"Kommunikation hat in jedem Konflikt der Geschichte eine tragende Rolle gespielt. Seit der Erfindung des Buchdruckes werden Flugblätter und Handzettel auf dem Kriegsschauplatz und im Hinterland eingesetzt. Zeitungen werden von Beginn an entweder von Streitkräften herausgegeben oder mittels Zensur
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beeinflußt. Auch der Film wird früh in den Dienst des Krieges gestellt. Bereits im Ersten Weltkrieg entfaltet er seine suggestive Kraft. Mit dem Aufkommen des Hörfunks beginnen die Gegner des Zweiten Weltkrieges Propaganda und Kriegsberichterstattung zu senden. Sobald das Fernsehen verbreitet ist, wird es auch von Konfliktgegnern genutzt. Im Vietnamkonflikt kommt der Krieg mit geringer Verzögerung in die Wohnzimmer. Im Golfkrieg induzierten Iraker und Alliierte Desinformation in die verzuglose Berichterstattung "in Echtzeit". Heute werden selbst Individualmedien wie Telefon und Fax und Datennetze wie das Internet in Konflikten eingesetzt. Der Kosovo-Konflikt fand auch im Internet statt. Zunehmend tritt Kommunikation aber auch in anderer Weise in Konflikten auf: sie ist nicht länger nur Waffe, sie wird in friedenserhaltenden Maßnahmen nun auch zur Brücke." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Video, War and the Diasporic Imagination is an incisive study of the loss and (re) construction of collective and personal identities in ethnic migrant communities. Focusing on the Croatian and Macedonian communities in Western Australia, Dona Kolar-Panov documents the social and cultural changes t
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hat affected these diasporic groups due to the fragmentation of Yugoslavia. She vividly describes the migrant audience’s daily encounter with the media images of destruction and atrocities committed in Croatia and Bosnia, and charts the implications the continuous viewing of the real and excessive violence had on the awakening of their ethno-national consciousness. The author provides a valuable and unique insight into how migrant cultures are shaped and changed through the reception and assimilation of images seen on video and television screens. Using the combination of close and powerful semiotic analysis of video texts with an informed account of social, political and historical contexts, Kolar-Panov recalls the complex relationships between ethnicity, technology and the reconstruction of identity." (Publisher description)
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