“The Lions of Tomorrow”: A News Value Analysis of Child Images in Jihadi Magazines

Abstract

This article reports and discusses the results of a study that investigated photographic images of children in five online terrorist magazines to understand the roles of children in these groups. The analysis encompasses issues of Inspire, Dabiq, Jihad Recollections (JR), Azan, and Gaidi Mtanni (GM) from 2009 to 2016. The total number of images was ninety-four. A news value framework was applied that systematically investigated what values the images held that resulted in them being “newsworthy” enough to be published. This article discusses the key findings, which were that Dabiq distinguished different roles for boys and girls, portrayed fierce and prestigious boy child perpetrators, and children flourishing under the caliphate; Inspire and Azan focused on portraying children as victims of Western-backed warfare; GM portrayed children supporting the cause peacefully; and JR contained no re-occurring findings.     

Budgetary Impacts of third world arms production

One of the more intriguing empirical findings in recent years is evidence that a number of Third World economies experience a positive relationship between military expenditures and overall rates of economic growth. While this result has been found in a number of individual studies, no satisfactory explanation has been put forth - presumably defense expenditures have both positive spin-offs, tending to support growth, and a number of negative aspects such a crowding out of private sector investment which tend to reduce overall growth. It is something of a tautology therefore to argue that those countries experiencing net positive benefits from defense expenditure simply have an environment where the net positive effects predominate. The purpose of this paper is to show that Third World arms producers differ considerably in terms of budgetary priorities from their non producer counterparts. More importantly it can be demonstrated that differences in budgetary priorities between these two groups of countries is consistent with the fact that arms producers tend to obtain net positive benefits from military expenditures while non-producers find their overall rates of growth declining with increased allocations to defense.     

Shelley Rigger,The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise

Journal of Chinese Political Science -