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New Media Revolutions: The Problems
Facebook must be truly a magical medium. It cannot only reconnect you with your old high school friends but whip up a democratic revolution in its spare time. It received so much initial credit for the Arab Spring that political activists in places like Egypt began to question whether or not they were sufficiently committed or worked hard enough. Well, that was all an exaggeration but it is the case that Facebook had at least “something” to do with influencing the uprisings.
I enjoy my twitter (that’s me @dellis2) and Facebook accounts and they represent truly important advances in technology and the puffed up power of information networks. But as of now their media created images remain more potent than the reality; the impact of online activists is exaggerated although not unimportant. Marc Lynch, writing in Foreign Policy (Twitter Devolutions), argues that the power of social media must be tempered, that activists and academics sang the praises of these new media too loudly and they are subject to more criticism than has been levied. Moreover, the gritty politics that follow these uprisings is more important for shaping political life, yet if you judge by news coverage new media seem to have little to do with this. Facebook and twitter only seem to rear their heads during times of revolution. Off-line politics is turbulent but remains more central to the struggle for transition from authoritarian systems to more democratic ones. Below are some questions and issues that must be addressed with respect to new media because on the one hand new media get too much press, but on the other they are truly impactful. This means our understanding must be more nuanced.
1. Why do social media seem to get more attention or have more impact during revolutions or times of upheaval? During quiet times Facebook seems to offer little more than a pleasant pastime or benign exchange of information. There is still a tinge of awe surrounding new technology that lends technologically laden significance to a story that it carries. The story is not trivial because it is circulating on new media; on the contrary, it is important. When there is a crisis or political instability Facebook and Twitter seem to structure stories quickly as “good vs. evil” or “right vs. wrong.” I would guess, and I have yet to see data on such an effect, that any flurry of new media activity has a polarizing effect that results in binary oppositions such as “right vs. wrong.”
In the article cited above, Lynch observed that during the most active times in Cairo the Muslim Brotherhood and the non-Islamist online community structured their Twitter and Facebook exchanges exactly as described. Every time a story was critical of the Muslim Brotherhood it was quickly shared and reinforced by additional stories critical of the Brotherhood. And the same was true of the other side, every story critical of non-Islamist political activists was redistributed and shared by the Muslim Brotherhood thus perpetuating spirals of polarization. Habermas’s glorious inclusive and democratically aesthetic public sphere was nowhere to be found.
2. Why is it that social media are better at organizing and stimulating upheaval then routine politics? The new media seem to love energy and issue-driven controversies rather than the slow work of building political organizations. Again, Lynch points out that Twitter and Facebook were more successful at merging once disparate coalitions than mobilizing masses of voters. Perhaps Facebook is simply easier and faster and works best when a political situation is amenable to faster organization. Moreover new media can quickly employ the power of visual and auditory messages that increase their impact. Violence or a grisly death can be captured immediately on a cell phone and uploaded within minutes. This captures the attention of activist groups and encourages involvement. There is a “thrill” to new media because of its speed and multisensory impact that is not present during routine politics.
3. The political strengths of Twitter and Facebook can be easily challenged by any regime willing to be as repressive as it needs to be. Places like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Iran and Syria, are finding new ways to interfere with online activism including shutting them down when necessary. After enough pressure, and it does not take much, citizens and active account users will simply stop participating in online activity in order to avoid persecution and even violence. The possibility of harassment and arrest make it quite easy to withdraw from the online community.
The various social media did not create revolutions in Egypt or the Arab spring, but they did play a role. They have undermined traditional models of information and helped elites and activists empower themselves in order to facilitate change. But if we hail the opportunities for elites and activists to encourage democratic changes, we have to also recognize the problems and limitations of these new forms of communication. At the moment, given the instabilities still raging in Egypt and other countries, no advocate for new media would want to take credit for the current political realities.
Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Triumph of “Narrative” over “History.”
Last week I attended a conference on Zionism at Brandeis University. It was an excellent conference populated by highly capable people all of whom had something to say and are worth listening to. There were lectures on the history of Zionism and its various expressions. The essence of Zionism is a rather simple idea. It was a national movement designed for the care and feeding of Jews who had a history of displacement and discrimination. Zionism was about finding a home and reconstituting the Jewish people as a nation along with the promotion and development of Jewish culture, history, arts and literature. Zionism was a program designed to foster a transition from a dispersed and discriminated religious group to a coherent nation.
This basic idea and many of its ramifications received attention during the conference. But there was a dearth of papers and discussion about the changes in Zionism over the years. Some have argued that Zionism is over; the state of Israel was created and Zionism has successfully served its purpose. Moreover, there was little discussion about the degradation of the term Zionism. Jews and the Zionists have had the contradictory misfortune of benefiting by the movement toward nationhood and nationalism in the last century – a period of time when nationalism was on the ascendancy – along with the deconstruction of nationhood. Contemporary theorists such as Hobsbawm have argued that groups of people have invented history and invented traditions in order to serve their own purposes which are sometimes inconsistent with true nationhood. Of course, Benedict Anderson and his captivating phrase “imagined communities” has been at the center of the claim that traditions are invented. Zionists have been particularly subject to recent efforts to deconstruct historical traditions. Zionism began as a noble effort to find a homeland for a historic people but its enemies successfully degraded the term associating it with at one time or another with “racism” or “apartheid” or “colonialism.”
Two words that appear quite often in discussions of Zionism and issues related to national histories are “myth” and “narrative.” I’ve noticed an increase in use of these terms over time. Both of them imply a subjectivity and I think their increased use is due to academic and intellectual fears of talking about historical facts or truth. The postmodern sensibility that vaporizes “truth” and characterizes knowledge as having lost its moorings needs a new language to talk about historical events and their explanations. This new language includes “narratives” which have a subjectivity and truth coded into them. In other words, a member of one ethnic group or nation does not have a history they have a narrative. And narratives are rooted in individuals and subject to their individual distortions. Hence, one narrative becomes as good as the next if it is tied to an individual and a perception of reality, and there is no historical or evidence-based grounding for the claims of the narrative. The same is true for the word “myth.” The culture does not have events or occurrences in its history that are meaningful, the culture has “myths.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be understood as filtered through these lenses. The current intractable nature of the conflict is the result of the clash of “narratives.” And narratives are subjective and rooted in the beliefs of one group or collection of individuals. Because narratives are personal and assumed to be the “reality” of the individual or group they must be taken seriously. So a Palestinian can tell his or her story and it must be treated as truthful, real, and respectfully. The same is true for an Israeli Jew. His story must be treated as truthful, real, and respectfully. The two realities are incommensurate and share very little in common, they have almost no sense of overlapping historical evidence or truth, the two narratives are almost incapable of sharing facts or interpretations, but both must be considered “real!” The two sides cannot even narrate one another. The Israeli “war of independence” is a Palestinian “disaster.” This paradox goes directly to the heart of the conflict. The conflict is a consequence of contemporary sensibilities about truth and reality, and a form of political correctness, as much as it is about historical events.
So Zionism, which was so central to the redefinition of Jewish nationhood, is now an opaque and harsh term according to many that has degraded in significance. In the future I think there needs to be more discussion of how this happened and why. Finally, the argument that Zionism has successfully established the state of Israel is a defensible one, but now there needs to be room for some sort of new Zionism: A Zionism that continues the tradition of developing Jewish nationhood but adapts to current political and geographic conditions. This sort of Zionism might include more attention to democracy, conflict resolution, and better ways to coexist in the neighborhood.
The European Union Gets Nobel Prize for Conflict Resolution
The European Union just received the Nobel Peace Prize. This seems like an odd political unit to receive the Nobel Prize. It usually goes to an individual or organization making significant contributions to peace. But people often forget that the European Union, along with the legal and philosophical justifications, was created as a conflict resolution mechanism. The abstract political entity called the EU just received the Nobel Prize for peace. Can you imagine an integrated entity called the Middle East Union (MEU) one day receiving the same prize? Probably not, but take some comfort in the fact that a generation ago the same thing would have been said about Europe. Up through World War II European countries had fought one another on a regular basis at least once a decade for the previous 200 years. The development of common currency, economic cooperation, and promises to use established institutions to resolve conflicts was first and foremost an experiment in peace. And even though the EU has rejected Turkey’s membership they required Turkey to make a variety of political changes as preparation for membership and even that has had the salutary effects on Turkey and their relationship with European countries.
The primary goal when solving conflicts anywhere, whether it is in the Middle East or Europe, is to avoid segmentation and cultural and political distance. There is simply no substitute for quality human contact (read communication). I underscore the term quality because contact alone is not sufficient. After World War II secular political theorists fantasized about the unification of states and about how old differences would fade away. They thought that values would converge and political entities would harmonize. Coupled with new technology and less reliance on religion and ethnic identity, human institutions were supposed to recognize their dependence on one another for stability.
But alas, this dream is been deferred. And although new technology does increase contact and facilitates the values of weak ties and organization, it also permits increased parochialism and opportunities to reinforce existing beliefs and values rather than integrating them with others. Political polarization in the United States is a commonplace enough example. Citizens are even less informed than ever and more reluctant to encounter differences in a constructive manner. They have trouble making the distinction between bias and perspective, and are easily “upset” and put off by argument. Even those who endorse the whining generality that political campaigns are too negative are usually only being squeamish about drawing genuine contrasts between candidates. Americans consume almost 95% of news produced only in America and have very few opportunities and exposure to news from other countries.
Still, the EU is an important experiment. There are clear divides amongst European countries and certainly important differences that exacerbate pressures toward divergence and segmentation. But governing a divergent and multilateral set of organizations is very difficult and typically results in chaos. Nevertheless, integrated contact and interdependence is the only solution. We must not be naïve about convergence and recognize not only the inevitability but the naturalness of differences all the while energizing points of commonality.
New media are in a strong position to effect some of these changes necessary to increase convergence and decrease differences. Traditional mainstream media often perverts conflict and seeks not only violence but issue dualism. But new social media – even with all of the recognized limitations in mind – does present a public sphere capable of meaningful interaction where ideas are formed. New media can change the communication order by transforming traditional structures of communication (hub and spoke) into a more distributed model that maximizes connections. These do, as we have seen in places like Egypt and Tunisia, have innovative potential. A resonance and sense of shared experiences is an oft cited difference between political leaders and citizens in cultures in conflict. Citizens typically have more commonalities and a greater capacity for empathy. We have seen for example Israeli citizens use new media to reach out to Iranians during times of deep tensions over nuclear capabilities (go here for story). This is made possible by a networked public and not that different conceptually from EU integration.
Something interesting to read on social media’s potential for increasing integration between groups in conflict can be accessed here. It’s definitely a moment in media history when human volatility can be moderated.
New Media and Political Conflict
Claims that new media such as Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet have significant impacts on political activity and protest continue to swirl around in the academic world in particular. It takes little more than a local citizen to be interviewed and report his use of Facebook for the world believe that these fancy new media are responsible for protest and the outbreak of Jeffersonian democracy. Consequently, there is contentious debate about the role of social media in crystallizing events in certain countries. The long-term research on these matters is sparse but we can introduce a scholarly perspective and at least “sum up” our current state of knowledge. There is a review article pertaining to the Internet and politics here. Below I will intertwine some commentary with a statement of the general direction of this research.
It is true that social media play a role in political protest and organization. But it is important not to overstate the role. The riots and eventual overthrow of Mubarak were influenced by social media but not caused by them. This is especially true as a protest spreads because it becomes more difficult to contain information. If the social upheaval gains traction, if it refuses to fade away and the size of the crowds swell, then many participants will begin documenting and sharing images. This becomes a self reinforcing cycle as it becomes apparent that more people are participating and thus encouraging others to participate.
The opportunity for what is termed “user generated content” is a special feature of new media. This means that information and stories about political activity are removed from the sole hands of the official journalist community. Bloggers and users of Facebook and Twitter begin to produce content, write stories, and take pictures and essentially become citizen journalists. A so-called “citizen journalist” will have a different perspective than the professional journalist. He or she will have a more subjective and “on the ground” view with a more hard hitting human impact. That is one reason why social media are better at coordinating leaderless challenges to authority than they are at organizing democratic processes. Dramatic photographs that come to characterize a political movement (burning flags, violent police or security people, dead innocents) are increasingly likely to be taken by citizens with new media capabilities. The amount and quality of user generated content is also dependent on the richness of the media system of the country. Egypt, for example, had greater use of Twitter with more tweets from organizations and activists then did Tunisia. It is not surprising that Egypt and Tunisia, which have more new media users than any country in the region, experienced greater social upheaval and pressure toward change. An interesting future research question will be to explain why some countries have experienced unsuccessful protests (Algeria, Bahrain) or no protest at all (Saudi Arabia) even though these are cultures with access to new media.
New media lowers the cost of collective action. It makes organization cheaper and available to more people. A key challenge in all social organization is to take networks of people with weak ties and coordinate and motivate them. The quick, inexpensive, and pervasive contacts available through Twitter or Facebook make this easier. But the downside is that the ease of contact and organization made possible by new media makes it more difficult to build permanent and durable social structures. This is related to the term “slacktavist” or the tendency for new media to be an easy way to contribute, a way that does not require much effort, but make people feel like they are doing more than they actually are.
This tendency to make dramatic claims for the effects of new media continues: Jay Carney, a spokesman for the White House, claimed that the video offensive to Islam caused the riots in Libya. We know now of course that the video had no such potency. Still, because the Internet is not confined by physical boundaries it provides political actors with a number of opportunities. It becomes easier to destabilize social systems from afar. There are now electronic diasporas that enable ethnic or religious communities to stay in touch with their home countries and maintain identities rather than assimilate into a host country. Muslim communities that ring the city of Paris are one example. Lack of cohesion, difficulty with language and employment, and regular cultural tensions are consequences of failing to assimilate and maintaining an identity within ethnic homeland. It is also important not to forget that the Internet is more vulnerable to censorship than you might think. There is an association between Internet use and democratic processes in a country, but this is probably more likely the result of democracies allowing widespread Internet use.
In the future it will be impossible to study social protest or conflicts without including the Internet and the tools that it makes available. New technologies are increasingly integrated into our political consciousness and more than anything else are influencing the information process. In other words, it will affect what news becomes available to different cultures, how fast it reaches various subgroups, and as exemplified by Wikileaks it will make new information available. In the end, social movements are increasingly dependent on new media but it remains the case that such movements have ethnopolitical explanations and that politics and history come first.
Fauxtography in the Political Conflict Media
The above is the Pulitzer prize-winning
photograph taken by Kevin Carter in the Sudan in 1993. The girl was trying to
make it to a feeding center when the vulture landed. Carter waited about 20
minutes, took the picture, and then the vulture flew off. Carter was criticized
for not doing more to help the girl. He committed suicide a year later.
The photograph is haunting and
grippingly captures the consequences of famine and poverty. But what is the
practical effect of these photographs? They are powerful but there are some
misconceptions about such media effects. This is essentially a question of the
CNN effect, the idea that persistent around-the-clock media coverage influences
official political decision-making. It is termed the CNN effect but really refers
to a broad range of persistent real-time media that can set political agendas,
impede governmental actions, or accelerate them because of immediate news
coverage. There are some general misconceptions about this media effect.
THE MEDIA’S ROLE IN IMAGES OF SUFFERING:
To spend a moment looking at this picture and absorbing its impact is an
emotional experience. The vulture’s presence is ominous and captures the agony
between deep human identification and the raw reality of nature. But what is
the practical and political impact of these pictures? Do they cause people to
act, do pictures of suffering pressure governments to initiate humanitarian
aid? Surely, such pictures sometimes encourage action but not always. Political
leaders calculate the costs of interventions. If providing aid is relatively
easy and cheap then aid is easily forthcoming. But governments are conservative
about interventions when it involves troops and long-term commitments.
There was pressure to do something in
Bosnia where there was horrific Serbian violence against Muslims and pictures
of emaciated corpses. But the Bush administration was not going to commit the
troops and resources necessary to effect change. The media were manipulated in
this case to make it appear as though the US were providing aid when in fact
our reaction was minimal. Media images of suffering had little effect on
foreign policy. Clinton did not intervene in Rwanda in 1994 and the airways
were full of coverage of slaughter. A study once showed that contributions to
relief agencies do not increase during periods of wartime and images of dead
soldiers. But there is an uptick in contributions when the pictures are of
innocents – women and children. So the CNN effect must be conditioned. It can
inform and energize a public as it makes the public aware of atrocities, but it
does not dictate so easily to governments.
The two photos below are from the public relations service of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and first appeared 2008. As was explained at that time, a second missile from the right seems to be the sum of the two missiles in the image. The shape of the smoke match perfectly near the ground as well as the immediate wake of the missile. There are some slight variations of color but they are very minor. The photos were quickly retracted. After being shown the photos a representative of a London-based Institute for Strategic Studies pointed out that the photos appeared to be doctored to cover up what was apparently a firing mistake on the part of one of the missiles.
These photos actually have appeared more than a few times over the last four years. They are a good example of fauxtography.
The media do play some role in either stoking or calming passions – especially with visual images. In the Middle East, for example, no reporter leaves the scene indifferent to the passions involved in the region. And a thoughtful reporter recognizes the feelings of both sides. This requires reporters and analysts to be “morally careful” so that the true enduring and important issues are represented as accurately as possible. Visual images are coded and cognitively processed quickly with a high-impact message. They are not the medium of careful analysis but better communicators of passions and feelings.
Television is a visual medium and the primary source of information about political conflict for most people. Television sets the agenda and signals which issues are most and least important. This is done at least primarily through visual means. It hasbecome so easy to manipulate visual images that it is only a matter of time before our memories and images for history are increasingly distorted. I suppose the only answer is a sort of visual fact checker who finds the truth about either starving children or misfiring artillery.
WikiLeaks and Freedom of Expression Versus Security: Part 1
Julian Assange is currently seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange is an interesting character with some quirky and brilliant personality traits, but these are not my main concern. Assange is considered a criminal in the United States because he gained access to secret documents by way of an American soldier named Bradley Manning. Manning is imprisoned in the US for leaking documents to Assange.
Assange manages the website Wikileaks which organizes and makes available thousands of government and diplomatic documents once classified as “secret.” Assange makes the argument that his work is centered in the long tradition of open expression and the importance of citizens keeping an eye on their government. Wikileaks publishes information from whistleblowers and seeks to make political governance a far more open process. Assange is no fringe character. He considers himself a revolutionary democratic leader devoted to freedom and has been the recipient of awards from Amnesty International, Time Magazine, and other journalistic outlets. The governments from which he took documents do not quite see it that way. They see Assange as challenging the security rights of the United States and violating laws designed to protect the nation. The US wants to charge Assange with jeopardizing national security, a charge that could result in life imprisonment. Hence we have the tension between freedom of information and security.
In what has been described as an Evita moment, Assange gave a speech from the Ecuadorian Embassy balcony which you can see here: Wikileaks
There was a large crowd and he spoke of freedom of the press. There have been other cases where journalists have reported from what is considered to be improper access to government documents. The Pentagon papers in the United States, albeit under quite different political and military conditions, were also considered a potential threat to national security. Israel has more than a few examples of journalists writing stories based on classified documents.
Opinions differ on this matter. Some see Assange, Bradley Manning, and journalists who report from secret government documents as traitors who reveal government secrets and expose the nation to damages that result from security breaches. On the other hand, they can be seen as advocates for free speech and transparent information for exposing the public to a full critical analysis of issues facing them. Some people take a third position by parsing the issues into justified and unjustified release of information. Thus, they criticize hacking into American government sites but support the release of documents from authoritarian governments such as those in Syria, Zimbabwe, or Saudi Arabia.
Because Assange is an interesting and charismatic figure, and because he has been accused of sex crimes (always a matter of interest), he has been able to use his celebrity status to rally thousands of people around the world and perhaps delay his arrest and generate interest in his cause. But it remains the case that all governments support their own security interests. And they will all in the end oppose improper access and leaking of classified material. Moreover, they will continue to sing songs of media freedom but maintain a common refrain about their own security rights. The tension between freedom of the press and security will continue because many documents marked “secret” are not really very important. It is easy to classify a document as secret but much less easy to justify the content of the document as truly requiring a “secret” classification.
There is no easy answer to these issues but the following are necessary in a democratic society, which is where we must begin. Openness to information is a far less threat to the general body politic than excessive secrecy or security. From the Johannesburg Principles on National Security and Freedom of Expression (http://www.article19.org/data/files/pdfs/standards/joburgprinciples.pdf) we can quickly pose the following requirements for a democratic society that wants to limit freedom of expression:
To establish a restriction on freedom of expression or information it is necessary to protect a legitimate national security interest, a government must demonstrate that: (a) the expression or information at issue poses a serious threat to a legitimate national security interest; (b) the restriction imposed is the least restrictive means possible for protecting that interest; and (c) the restriction is compatible with democratic principles.
In the next post I will turn our attention more specifically to the legal and philosophical issues that we must grapple with in order to balance the freedom of expression versus security scale.
Peace Journalism
One of the best ways to transform ethnic conflict is by means of consensus democracy or the sharing of power between groups. Consociation is an ideal to be sure, but it remains an important aspiration. At a minimum, it rules out the use of force for achieving unilateral objectives. An additional deliberative goal is a media that is oriented toward peace and solving problems rather than intensifying them. This would be part of a consensus democracy project and would represent a shift in priorities from sensationalism trying to attract readers to conflict resolution. This has been termed peace journalism by McGoldrick & Lynch, a term often met with skepticism as too simplistic.
Journalist organizations remain convinced that the media are not only positioned to illuminate conflicts but to actually resolve them and encourage cooperation. By practicing the best journalism the media can contribute to bridge building between conflicting groups. This calls for an activist journalism that relies on a set of practices that go beyond straightforward reporting about conflicts. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) calls on reporters to be trained in conflict resolution and to have the promotion of peace as their goal. They are asked to be well versed in the narratives of both sides of an issue and scrupulously avoid reinforcing violence. Moreover, journalists should be equally as concerned with solutions and common ground as much as the basics of a story. McGoldrick and Lynch pose a set of guidelines for the coverage of conflicts that are too numerous to list here, but include techniques such as (1) avoid simplifying the contest by enumerating the various goals of the conflicting parties, (2) avoid stark distinctions, (3) see ourselves in others, (4) avoid reporting on only violence, (5) report on peace initiatives, (5) identify wrongdoers, (6) avoid demonizing words, (7) do not see signing documents and military victories as creating peace, and others.
These recommendations can lead one to believing that clear reporting and sensitive concerns will enlighten readers and advance peace. But journalists live and work in political, economic, and power systems like everyone else. They are not independent actors who can determine effects. Hence, a biased and aggressive media will have less impact on an educated audience than and uneducated one; a prosperous and comfortable society will be less responsive to a challenging media. Nevertheless, it remains the case that the media can contribute to a helpful deliberative environment. Transparency, rationality, diversity, and the promotion of quality journalism are all part of peace journalism as well as deliberation. Bell (1997) refers to a sort of peace journalism as the journalism of attachment, that is, the concern is more for people than issues. Attachment journalism is not necessarily deliberative but it does represent a broadened sensibility to balance. It helps quiet the persistent refrain about how violence and drama captures attention, and peace is boring. Most journalism related to conflicts is “war” journalism and preoccupied with propaganda and violence. But “peace” journalists can be easily manipulated and subjected to propaganda that they are not able to understand. Gowing (1997) explains how journalists are easily manipulated and not always able to check facts. They sometimes begin to identify with one party and simplify or distort information. In the end, journalism must take a critical stance such that it does not encourage violence but also avoids disseminating peace propaganda. The critical stance requires transparency and, most important, a diversity of opinion that comes with exposure to quality disagreement and the avoidance of polarization.
The Quality of Fox News Reporting
The above is an example of reporting by Fox news. Notice anything about the graph? The location of the trend line for the most recent number of 8.6 for November is higher than the placement of the line when the number was 8.8 back in March. Media matters first pointed this out. According to them when the unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 Fox news rounded up to 9.0! Maybe the chart below (also from media matters) gives a more accurate picture? I don’t think so but it does make the point. The claim that it is easy to manipulate impressions with “misleading” graphs is easy enough to defend and requires no additional elaboration.
Notice anything about the above picture? Seems like they got Romney wrong. It remains quite impressive how Fox news can continue to manipulate images and political inclinations. The Republican debate sponsored by Fox had very little to do with the press’s noble goals of providing fora for issues. The audience was loud and highly partisan and many questions were designed to highlight Republican platform positions and attack Obama rather than clarify issues.
Rush Limbaugh and the conservative talk radio crowd have been using these techniques for some time. These issues are a little beyond the “peace and conflict” subject matter of this blog, but they do speak to the issues of the press and its role in a political environment.
Democratic values as they apply to the press are important. Issues such as accuracy, independence, freedom from bias, and integrity are important. The news media should always make the distinction between factual news stories and opinion pieces. Fox’s manipulation is to blur this distinction. When conservative talk hosts are attacked for their partisanship the Fox leadership claims that they’re not supposed to be news but entertainment. There certainly is a place for intelligent opinion and perspective which are often essential to understanding the consequences of the story. But we can see from the above examples that Fox is a little sloppy when it comes to representing accuracy and authority.
A recent study of Reuters proprietary websites examine their reporting related to the Middle East conflict. The study ran tests of articles for problems with logical fallacies, propaganda, and violations of Reuters handbook. These were tested in order to determine attitude shifts and support for belligerent parties in the Middle East conflict. The results indicated that there were over 1,000 occurrences of reporting and ethical failures that attitudes did shift as a result of being exposed to these reporting and ethical transgressions. For example, atrocity propaganda or lies and manipulations about the extent of violence and atrocities increased favorability and sympathy toward Palestinians. The same was true for the use of pity and subordination propaganda. The authors of the study concluded that Reuters engaged in systematically biased storytelling in favor of the Palestinians, and these biases directly influenced audience affect and behavior. On the one hand, these findings are not surprising but they certainly demonstrate that errors, biases, and manipulated frames do have strong effects. Both Fox News and Reuters must work on improving clarity and accuracy.
A diverse employment environment is one response to these biases. This includes more than simply gender and ethnic differences but must include differences in terms of knowledge and perspectives. Fox with respect to national political news and Reuters with respect to international news must do better at accuracy, error correction, focusing on intelligent and coherent perspectives rather than bias, information quality, and balance. Fox will continue to maintain its distinction between traditional news and editorial or opinion and defend their use of the media designed to direct perspectives in a certain manner. They have found a business model that allows them to maintain a conservative ideology and still garner enough of an audience. Although there is nothing particularly wrong with representing a coherent political ideology, there is something very wrong with rank partisanship and mistakes.
News Frames and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
If you drew a map of the world and you drew the size of each country proportionate to how much news attention it receives, Israel would be the size of the old Soviet Union. There are a variety of reasons for this, namely, that Israel is a democratic country in which it is possible to walk around and file a story. It is also true that the international appeal of the conflict as well as the prevalence of English make newsgathering easier.
But there is another slightly more insidious reason. Media coverage of Israel is often simply framed in an extreme way or in a regularly consistent manner such that the frame takes on “reality” or a strong sense of “truth.” News stories of Israel are almost always framed around “conflict.” A conflict frame includes “violence”, images of Israel as Goliath and the Palestinians as David, along with accusations about “apartheid,” settlements,” and “occupation.” These violence and conflict frames overwhelm the rest of Israel. In fact, it is frame incompatibility that defines the conflict. An act of violence will be framed as a “security” issue by the Israelis and an “aggression” or “occupation” frame by the Palestinians. Frame management is one important route to conflict resolution.
Arguments can be cast or “framed” in such a way as to direct attention toward a specific type of information or cognitive processing. Framing, wherein the frame casts the same information in either positive or negative terms, has been the focus of substantial research activity in the past three decades.The issue is whether framing an alternative in either a positive or negative manner influences the response. Frames are an alternative to classical rationality. Subjective issues form the cornerstone of framing theory. For instance, as Kahneman and Tversky first pointed out, gaining a hundred dollars by going from $100 to $200 is more significant than gaining hundred dollars by going from $1100 to $1200. The absolute gain in both cases is the same; however the gain in the first example is psychologically greater. The framing perspective for ethnopolitical conflicts is heavily influenced by the presence or absence of various psychological factors. That is, it is an alternative to classical rationality and the effectiveness of the argument is dependent on the qualities associated with accepting or rejecting a particular frame.
A framing effect occurs when, during an argument, relevant considerations of how the argument is framed causes individuals to focus on these considerations when constructing their opinions. The arguments of others are an important window on our own reality; that is, people are influenced by the opinions and arguments of others. Such informational influences demonstrate the value of argumentative exchange; arguments have an informational influence and can direct the development of attitudes about an issue.
For example, the blame frame and the cooperative frame are two typical ways to frame messages, especially between Palestinians and Israelis. Blame is based on the perception that someone is responsible for a failure to achieve a goal or a particular social condition. Blame is also associated with a sense of injustice that can be very motivating and even used to justify aggression. The act of blaming another person or group serves to exonerate one’s own actions. I can ignore my own problematic behaviors because by blaming someone else, attention is directed away from my own behavior, and I can even justify my behavior as a result of someone else’s actions. The attribution of blame serves as moral justification for my own behaviors. The attribution of blame toward a competing party creates a particularly intense reaction because of the negativity bias: the tendency to be more sensitive to potential losses or negative information than to gains or positive information. Negativity is an informational cue that carries a strong negative valence and may have a more powerful effect on attitudes and evaluations. We would expect, then, an argument between Israelis and Palestinians that is framed by “blame” to elicit a defensive tension reducing response that prevents attitude change in the desired direction. Moreover, a “blame” frame acts as a “loss” frame in the Kahneman and Tversky sense of the term. In other words, potential outcomes fall below a reference point, because accepting an argument means accepting responsibility for inappropriate and even immoral behavior. A blame frame is negative stimuli and attracts more attention; it induces more cognitive activity and increases the analytical tension an individual brings to a decision. We would expect, then, that when Israelis and Palestinians argue their respective positions, that couching the argument in blame would be counterproductive and weaken the conflict resolution process.
Message framing is usually a highly intentional activity and used mostly by communication professionals who are crafting messages designed to elicit a particular effect. In the flow of normal deliberative conversation participants are usually, though not necessarily, less conscious of the arguments they are making. Message frames have been described as either forward or backward looking, which are somewhat related to cooperation and blame frames. Backward-looking statements prefer compromises and emphasize the past, including the symptoms of the conflict and implying that the other party is responsible. Forward-looking message frames, in contrast, are characterized by an effort to create a new framework and build a constructive future. The focus is more on similarities and mutual responsibility. Message framing is a powerful component of argument because how a message is perceived is equally as important as the quality of the presumptive relationship. Deliberation relies on quality argument and message framing can be used for good or ill. Deployed deceptively, a message framed in a particular way can detract from proper consideration of issues. On the other hand, framing can elucidate an issue and help provide perspective and clarity.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains fiercely entangled and frame management is one way out of the morass.
Photographers Creating Drama
Click here on the word Photographers and watch the video (wait a moment for it to begin). You can see how photographers can become part of the story and help construct images. The media manipulation is part of ethnopolitical conflicts and the extent to which they are intensified by improper coverage of the story. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is intense and complex and deserving of proper treatment.
I’ve seen this myself in Israel on more than one occasion where photographer’s, reporters, and medical personnel show up before the protesters to get “ready” for the event. What gets reported in the news or on television, if it makes it that far, is more dramatic than what actually occurred.
Manipulated photographs gain their credibility by being attached to real photographs or real events. Adages about how a picture is worth 1000 words or how photographs never lie resonate with the public’s belief that pictures are real and tell the truth. The pressure for the public to believe the photograph is powerful so people view images and work hard to find them truthful.
It’s also the case that manipulated photographs make for a gray area of reality. The photograph is of course “of” something and this contributes increasingly to the sense of reality a photograph carries with it. Technology and computerized images are now so sophisticated that the fake picture can be better than a real one. It is so easy to simply “improve” the photograph by sharpening the colors, increasing the contrast, or cropping without encountering any moral questions about the new reality the photographer is creating.
Compare it to writing. If you observe an event or listen to an interaction and then go write a story using those instances, it is not much different than what a photographer does when he or she approaches a subject and constructs a photographic image. Maybe we should begin to think about photography as fictional and begin the process of teaching people to treat it as a story or narrative that has been constructed. Writers exceed the boundaries of truth and are called creative and interesting, why not the same for news photographs. The photographs from the news perspective are supposed to be reporting some semblance of the truth. If the photograph is manipulated or staged in any way it violates the truth to some degree.
I think the manipulation in this video is some of the worst kind because the photographers are going out of their way to replicate a dramatic and violent reality in order to increase the sense of excitement around the photograph. No one is benefiting from this.
Peace and Conflict Politics 