Table Of ContentMedia, Terrorism, and Theory
Critical Media Studies
INSTITUTIONS, POLITICS, AND CULTURE
Series Editor
Andrew Calabrese, University of Colorado
Advisory Board
Patricia Aufderheide, American University Vincent Mosco, Queen's University
Jean-Claude Burgelman, Free University of Janice Peck, University of Colorado
Brussels Manjunath Pendakur, Southern Illinois
Simone Chambers, University of Toronto University
Nicholas Gamham, University of Westminster Arvind Rajagopal, New York University
Hanno Hardt, University of Iowa Giuseppe Richeri, Universita Svizzera
Gay Hawkins, The University of New South Italiana
Wales Kevin Robins, Goldsmiths College
Maria Heller, Eotvos Lonind University Saskia Sassen, University of Chicago
Robert Horwitz, University of California at Dan Schiller, University of Illinois at
San Diego Urbana-Champaign
Douglas Kellner, University of California at Colin Sparks, University of Westminster
Los Angeles Slavko Splichal, University of Ljubljana
Gary Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Thomas Streeter, University of Vermont
Technology Liesbet van Zoonen, University
Toby Miller, University of California, of Amsterdam
Riverside Janet Wasko, University of Oregon
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Media, Terrorism, and Theory: A Reader
Edited by Anandam P. Kavoori and Todd Fraley
Media, Terrorism, and Theory
A Reader
EDITED BY
ANANDAM P. KAV OORI AND TODD FRALEY
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
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Library of Con~ress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Media, terrorism, and theory: a reader / Anandam P. Kavoori and Todd Fraley.
p. cm. - (Critical media studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-3630-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-IO: 0-7425-3630-0 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-3631-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-IO: 0-7425-3631-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
l. Terrorism-Press coverage. 2. War-Press coverage. 3. Terrorism in
mass media. I. Kavoori, Anandam P. II. Fraley, Todd, 1972- III. Series.
PN4784.T45M442006
070.4'49303625-dc22
2005012635
Printed in the United States of America
@TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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Contents
Preface vii
Part 1 Orientations
1 Televising the "War on Terrorism": The Myths of Morality 3
Daya Kishan Thussu
2 Mediatizing the Global War on Terror:
Television's Public Eye 19
Simon Cottle
Discussion Questions for Part 1 49
Part 2 Genres and Contexts
3 Prime Time Terror: The Case of La Jetee and
12 Monkeys 53
Marion Herz
4 Mediated Terrorism in Comparative
Perspective: Spanish Press Coverage of 9/11 vs. Coverage
of Basque Terrorism 69
Teresa Sadaba and Teresa La Porte
5 National Politics of Belonging and Conflicting Masculinities:
Race and the Representation of Recent Wars 91
Antje Schuhmann
v
vi Contents
6 Terrorism and the Exploitation of New Media 107
Bruce Klopfenstein
Discussion Questions for Part 2 121
Part 3 Frames and Contexts
7 Critical Media Theory, Democratic Communication,
and Global Conflict 125
Todd Fraley and Elli Lester Roushanzamir
8 Terrorism, Public Relations, and Propaganda 145
Nancy Snow
9 September 11, Social Theory, and Democratic Politics 161
Douglas Kellner
10 International Communication after Terrorism: Toward
a Postcolonial Dialectic 179
Anandam P. Kavoori
Discussion Questions for Part 3 199
Index 201
About the Contributors 205
Preface
It
was a defining moment for us as citizens, students, and scholars of global
television: Live coverage of the first Gulf War, where the world became com
pressed into the life-space of the CNN crew in Baghdad. In the years since,
numerous books have been written and documentaries produced on how that
war changed all the rules around Media and War. Today, we can see the effects
of these new rules-a global news environment, a 24-hour news cycle, the
growth of sectarian broadcast media, a deeply polarized political leadership,
and the emergence of new technologies of information. Now, the events of
9/11, the unfinished second Gulf War, and the open-ended "War on Terrorism"
have brought into sharp relief the contradictions and processes put into motion
by the first Gulf War. As students, scholars, and media practitioners, we are im
mersed every day in trying to understand how to make sense of the daily events
and find a vocabulary-both professional and scholarly-that will make sense.
This volume is an attempt to provide that vocabulary-that sense of how to
contextualize the daily cycle of violence and spin, to frame "military action"
and "terrorism," to assess "news coverage" and "commentary." We invite you
to read these chapters collectively or singly; use the discussion questions at
the end of each part to frame your understanding of these topics and begin
an open-ended conversation that creates the critical vocabulary that is needed
around issues of media, terrorism, and theory.
Part 1, Orientations, tries to meet just that goal-to orient the reader to
both the scope and conceptual context of the chapters. This first section has
the chapters "Televising the 'War on Terrorism': The Myths of Morality" by
Daya Kishan Thussu and "Mediatizing the Global War on Terror: Television's
Public Eye" by Simon Cottle.
Daya Thussu's chapter draws on the mythmaking function of global news
to present a series of legitimizing narratives about the war on terrorism. He
vii
Vlll Preface
argues that the myths circulated by television news help consumers of mass
media to construct a worldview that plays into the values and interests of U.S.
and British corporate media and the political interests they represent. Drawing
on the late Marjorie Ferguson's work on the "mythologies of globalization,"
he argues that there are five dominant myths that structure our understanding
of the war on terrorism: the myth of Islamic terrorism, the myth of madness,
the myth of nuclear threat, the myth of atrocities, and the myth of (American)
morality. He contrasts these myths with the complexity that underlies reality,
and his chapter concludes with a call to accountability and a refocus on the
disjunctures that have appeared in events such as the global protest movement
and the numerous studies that have called into question both U.S. foreign policy
and an uncritical news media.
Simon Cottle's chapter examines the process of "mediatization"-the very
specific ways in which the "communicative architecture" of television jour
nalism functions to shape public perception of the war on terrorism. Drawing
on an analysis of news content from six different countries, twenty-seven
television channels, and four international service providers, Cottle's chapter
accomplishes an enviable task: Providing a theoretical accounting of "tele
vision's Janus-faced relation to systems of domination and democracy." His
findings examine the processes of mediatization through the communicative
frames of conflict (namely, dominant, contest, contention, campaigning, and
expose/investigation) and consensus (community service, collective interests,
cultural recognition, and mythic tales). Cottle invites us to reconsider the de
mocratizing possibilities that inhere within television journalism's existing
communicative architecture, which is now routinely deployed in countries and
by satellite TV around the world, as well as the systematic use of communica
tive structures that permit dominant views to go unchallenged.
These two chapters structure the overall collection-one oriented to dis
cursive closure (along lines of global political power, corporate interests, and
the power of media technology) and the other to those of disruption (along
lines of disjunctive reception, internal ruptures in discourse, local and regional
readings, and the democratic potential in both mainstream and alternative me
dia). These two themes are elaborated in the chapters that follow in the next
section-organized around a single genre or medium-and then reworked in
the final section of the book through their connections to contemporary social
theory, media literacy, and international communication.
Part 2, Genres and Contexts, contains the chapters "Prime Time Terror: The
Case of La Jette and 12 Monkeys" by Marion Herz, "Mediated Terrorism in
Comparative Perspective: Spanish Press Coverage of 9/11 vs. Coverage of
Basque Terrorism" by Teresa Scidaba and Teresa La Porte, "National Politics
of Belonging and Conflicting Masculinities: Race and the Representation of
Preface ix
Recent Wars" by Antje Schuhmann, and "Terrorism and the Exploitation of
New Media" by Bruce Klopfenstein.
The chapter by Marion Herz is a reading of two films, 12 Monkeys (starring
Bruce Willis) and an avant-garde film, La letee. Drawing on the theoretical
work of Freud, Lacan, and Foucault, the chapter offers an original insight:
'The producers of catastrophe films are of course terrorists, simply in a milder
form." Herz argues that the quality of terrorism exists in the ability to tum
a TV image into a medium of terror that "unites the extradiegetic reality of
the spectators with the intradiegetic reality of the incident, and which sus
pends the distinction between fictionality and factionality." He explores this
distinction by a close reading of both films and offers an analytic for the un
derstanding of contemporary terrorism whose impact lies not just in the realm
of politics but also in the personal realm that the films deal with. He sug
gests that we understand the relation between media and terrorism by examin
ing issues of phantasm and fantasy, dreams and trauma, personal agency and
responsibility.
Sadaba and La Porte's chapter examines Spanish press coverage of the events
of 9111 and that of Basque terrorism. Framed within the theoretical framework
of "glocalization," the chapter eschews any "national" or essentialist frame
work for the comparative reception of these two realms of reporting on terror
ism but rather articulates a nuanced reading based on issues of local/national
party affiliation, competing media ideologies (referenced to Spanish politics
and global corporate culture), and localization. Stories from El Pais, ABC, El
Mundo, El Correa, and Gara are examined with an eye for examining the
problematics of traditional categories of local/global and of a homogenous
globalization (Americanization). In one instance, for example, the localization
tendency is examined in the use of Basque language to make puns, plays on
words, and punch lines, framing Basque leaders such as Batasuna as members
of the Taliban. In sum, the chapter is a counterpoint to much contemporary
discourse about how the events of 9111 "changed everything." Issues of local
reception (such as the Spanish one) orient the rest of the world much differently
from how mainstream American political and media corporate narratives have
defined terrorism in recent months.
Antje Schuhmann's essay explores the idea of localization with a differ
ent conceptual lens: Gender politics and issues of feminism and masculinity
as they relate to the German experience with terrorism. The chapter exam
ines both sides of how nation-states are constructed through mass media
internally and externally. Internally, issues of German identity are discussed
through examples of German national politics, immigration, and Bavarian
identity. External constitution of German identity is examined through a wide
range of examples, from the war in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to
x Preface
Gennan concentration camps to the conflicts in Kosovo and Afghanistan. In
each case, the focus of the analysis is on how gendered notions of whiteness and
masculinity/femininity are used in the articulation of Gennan identity, further
ing a national politics of belonging.
The concluding chapter of this part by Bruce Klopfenstein is a context
setting one-articulating an overall framework of how we can understand
"new media" and "terrorism"- both tenns that are used in a range of ways, with
little in the way of systematic accounting. Klopfenstein examines both terrorist
organizations' use of new media and the role of such media in the war in Iraq
and develops a model examining how the medium constructs messages with
different conceptuaVcultural vocabularies for internal and external audiences.
The concluding section, part 3, Frames and Contexts, contains the chapters
"Critical Media Theory, Democratic Communication, and Global Conflict"
by Todd Fraley and Elli Lester Roushanzamir, "Terrorism, Public Relations,
and Propaganda" by Nancy Snow, "September 11, Social Theory, and Demo
cratic Politics" by Douglas Kellner, and "International Communication after
Terrorism: Toward a Postcolonial Dialectic" by Anandam P. Kavoori.
The chapter by Fraley and Roushanzamir sets the tone for this part of the
book, which takes the task of theoretical redirection of "media and terrorism"
as a defining theme. Their focus is not directly on terrorism but on its reflection
in the realm of democratic communication under current conditions of global
conflict and global corporate media. Fraley and Roushanzamir offer a model
for critical media consciousness in place of the traditional models of critiquing
corporate media content, and they suggest alternative ways of gathering infor
mation, different organizational arrangements, and so forth. Using evidence
such as the role of alternate production and delivery (for example, in the Iranian
Revolution) and the role media continue to play in the current pan-Islamicism,
they highlight how the application of critical media consciousness may show
ways of organizing outside the dominant corporate paradigm.
Nancy Snow parses the relationship between terrorism, public relations,
and propaganda and provides a framework for understanding these oft en
misunderstood tenns. Drawing on a range of theoretical material and examples
from the world of media coverage, public diplomacy, advertising, public rela
tions, and strategic infonnation campaigns, Snow articulates both a descriptive
and prescriptive set of criteria that can be used while evaluating the range of
media messages that make up public relations, public diplomacy, and propa
ganda. Her perspective eschews an unproblematic critique of public relations
or a simplistic analysis of propaganda but rather draws on her extensive work
experience with the U.S. Infonnation Agency and her status as a well-known
scholar of propaganda to articulate ways out of the current quagmire of under
standing media reporting and public diplomacy.
