The Path to Political Substance: Exploring the Mediated Discourse Surrounding Controversial Media Texts

This article proceeds from the assumption that entertainment texts—particularly controversial ones—function in a broad intertextual field and that their political significance does not lie solely in their value as stand-alone texts, or in their direct influence on political knowledge, attitudes, opinions, and behaviors, but in their ability to instigate politically relevant discussions in other media venues. Focusing on the mediated discourse surrounding two controversial U.S. docudramas, The Reagans and The Path to 9/11, this study examines the political qualities of the public discourse surrounding these docudramas in the U.S. news media and investigates which factors were significant predictors of political substance in this discourse. Based on a distinction between “issue substance” and “media substance” as the two major types of political substance that emerge in the discourse surrounding controversial texts, the analysis demonstrates how these types of political substance varied across the two docudramas and across various dimensions of the discourse, among them the time in which the discussion took place. The analytical framework presented in this article is offered as a platform for future examinations of the contribution of media-centered political scandals to public discourse, the conditions under which entertainment texts spur substantive political discussions, and the complex interactions between journalism, entertainment, and politics in contemporary media environments.     

Product counterfeiting and the media: examining news sources used in the construction of product counterfeiting as a social problem

Product counterfeiting has received increased attention due to its economic and public health impact. Media framing of product counterfeiting shapes how the public and policymakers understand the problem. While there is a large body of literature examining crime and the media generally, empirical studies have yet to focus on the media construction of product counterfeiting. This study presents the results of a content analysis using a random sample of newspaper articles referencing product counterfeiting in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2009. Articles were coded for common patterns in sources of information. While the results indicate the presence of a wide variety of themes, product types, and industries, government and business sources are overrepresented among the sources cited, leading to some level of consistency in the presentation of the impact of and appropriate responses to product counterfeiting. Implications for understanding how the public and policymakers understand product counterfeiting are discussed.     

促进出版传媒企业快速发展的思考——以打造“双百亿”广西出版传媒集团为例

打造"双百亿"出版传媒集团是当下各省(自治区、市)文化跨越式发展的重要举措。文章分析了打造广西"双百亿"出版传媒集团的可行性、优势和困难,提出政府应统筹规划积极支持打造广西"双百亿"出版传媒集团;接通出版发行产业链;将集团上市工作列入政府工作规划之中;以重大项目的培育与实施,支撑和推动大型文化企业的快速发展;在北京建立广西出版中心;打造一支过硬出版传媒队伍;政府应加大对文化产业的资金及政策扶持等建议。     

Los poderes fácticos mediáticos y el surgimiento del Estado híbrido en México

The process of institutional overlapping that developed in Mexico between formal traditional constitutional powers and mass electronic technologies, which gradually attained factual positions in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, changed the nature and basic governing functions of the national State. Thus, mass media power gave rise to a novel mixing phenomenon that generated a new type of “hybrid State”. The corresponding new historical Republic with a highly political and media oriented nature modified the structure and scenario of the conventional contemporary nation state. The evolution of this historical reality has not yet come to an end, but instead continues to develop with an enormous amount of dynamism and force towards new stages of transformation of the State, public space, and society as a whole, without knowing its final outcome due to the strengthening of factual media power while the major branches of government are gradually weakening. Consequently, society needs to critically engage in an objective analysis of this strategic phenomenon, its phases of transformation and the viable alternatives for recovering the national development path.     

Pussy Riot as agent provocateur: conspiracy theories and the media construction of nation in Putin's Russia

This article studies the impact of conspiracy theories on post-Soviet Russian nation-building through the analysis of how the Pussy Riot trial was constructed by the Russian media. Conspiracy theory as a phenomenon is defined as a populist tool for relocation of power among different political actors, which creates identities and boosts social cohesion. This interpretation of conspiracy theories helps investigate how the media constructed the image of Pussy Riot and their supporters as a conspiring subversive minority, which threatened the Russian nation. The ability of conspiracy theory for swift social mobilization helped the authorities to strengthen the public support of its policies and model the Russian nation as ethnically and religiously homogeneous.     

Regulating the Media: Some Neglected Freedom of Expression Issues in the United Kingdom's Counter-Terrorism Strategy

ABSTRACT

In the wake of the first ever Al Qaeda-inspired bombings in Britain in July 2005, there has been much discussion about the appropriate form(s) of counter-terrorism response. This article focuses on one aspect of the “war on terror” usually afforded less prominence than other counter-terrorist measures; namely a range of existing and proposed constraints on media freedom and the constitutional/human rights issues provoked. The United Kingdom is the focus because terrorism laws intended for the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland have been replaced by legislation in 2000 and 2001 claimed to reflect the changed nature of terrorism and that arguably has serious implications for freedom of expression. Measures that would impact adversely on speech are being debated in Parliament presently, measures that go considerably further than the previous bans on the direct broadcasting of Sinn Féin representatives and their sympathisers.     

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: Framing Narratives and Prescriptions

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has positioned itself at the vanguard of a media revolution in which terrorist groups both create and frame news events to an unprecedented extent. Through the publication of its e-magazine Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Epic Battles), the organization has sought to mobilize both Yemeni and non-Yemeni Muslim, Arabic-speaking audiences to carry out violent jihad. This article utilizes the concept of collective action frames to analyze Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's media output, identifying the organization's grievance narratives, ideological justifications for violent actions, and means to strengthen its credibility among its intended audiences.     

The Dynamics of Stereotyping: Is a New Image of the Terrorist Evolving in American Popular Culture?

This article considers popular ways of representing terror activists, and the metamorphoses that approaches to representation in the American media have undergone. A part of the article deals with terrorism in the media over time, common stereotypes, and how they affect the representation of Arabs and Muslims. The article then discusses Sleeper Cell (2005), a mini-series which focuses on a Jihad terror group. The article addresses questions including: How are Arabs and non-Arab Muslims portrayed in the series? Can a real change be observed over time in the method of portraying them? Twentieth-century historical considerations precede the pointed topical discussion.     

More Bang for the Buck: Media Coverage of Suicide Attacks

ABSTRACT

This paper provides empirical evidence that suicide attacks systematically draw more media attention than non-suicide terrorist attacks. Analyzing 60,341 terrorist attack days in 189 countries from 1970 to 2012, I introduce a methodology to proxy for the media coverage each one of these attack days receives in the New York Times. Suicide attacks are associated with significantly more coverage. In the most complete regression, one suicide attack produces an additional 0.6 articles—a magnitude equivalent to the effect of 95 terrorism casualties. This link remains robust to including a comprehensive list of potentially confounding factors, fixed effects, and country-specific time trends. The effect is reproduced for alternative print and television outlets (BBC, Reuters, CNN, NBC, CBS), but remains weak for Google Trends (worldwide and in the U.S.), a more direct proxy for people’s interests, and is non-existent for C-SPAN, a television station dedicated to broadcasting political discussions directly. Thus, the media appears to cover suicide missions in an extraordinary fashion, which may in turn explain their prominence among terrorist organizations.     

Local Politics Online: The Influence of Presumed Influence on Local Politicians’ Online Communication Activities in Germany

Abstract

How extensively local politicians use online media to communicate with others and the factors that influence their online activities have rarely been examined. In particular, it is unknown whether local politicians use online media more extensively when they believe that online media has a strong political influence on others. To examine this, a standardised survey among German local politicians was conducted (n = 608). The results showed the following: The stronger the politicians perceive the influence of facebook and Twitter on journalists to be, the more extensively they spread information via these social media networks. However, the presumed influences on the public or on other politicians do not affect those online activities. Thus, local politicians apparently do not pursue a disintermediation strategy – they do not try to bypass journalism by directly addressing the public. Rather, journalists seem to be an important target group for local politicians’ online communication efforts.