World Trade Center attack from cover of book
"Framing Terrorism: The
News Media,
Government & the Public"
Professors co-author book chapter on media influence
(May 20, 2003)--University of Texas at San Antonio political science professors Amy Jasperson and Mansour El-Kikhia contributed a chapter to an upcoming book about the U.S. media's role in shaping perceptions of the threat of world terrorism.
The chapter, "CNN and Al Jazeera's Media Coverage of America's War in Afghanistan," compares media framing of the war in Afghanistan by CNN and Al Jazeera, a Middle Eastern news network. The book chapter came out of a conference paper presented at the Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
The book "Framing Terrorism: The News Media, Government & the Public," edited by Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and Marion Just, is due in August. The editors argue that although the 9/11 attacks had a dramatic impact on U.S. foreign and security policy, international relations and public opinion, the framing of the events by U.S. mass media changed American perceptions of the threat of terrorism to a point not matching the reality of the threat.
"We found that we were getting very different pictures in comparing U.S. and Middle Eastern networks," said Jasperson, who is also director of the UTSA Media and Elections Studio. "While Al Jazeera served as a source of new information for CNN, including the only live and in-person video footage of military strikes and combat in Afghanistan, U.S. sources did not show the casualties of war that were shown on Al Jazeera, nor did they place the same humanitarian frame."
An ongoing study by Jasperson and El-Kikhia of the war in Iraq is producing similar findings. According to Jasperson, research done in the UTSA Media and Elections Studio shows that different framing of the news may lead viewers in each region to different conclusions about the war, hampering a common understanding and resolution.
Supervised by Jasperson, students began work last fall in the Media and Elections Studio housed in the Department of Political Science and Geography. The studio consists of six televisions, six video recorders and a video editing suite used to monitor political and news programs and advertisements, with TV service donated by Time Warner Cable. The facility serves as an independent study resource for UTSA faculty and students and includes a growing database of materials from broadcast and print media.
"We're very excited about the studio," said Richard Gambitta, chair of political science and geography. "The only similar projects are at Harvard and the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania."
For more information, contact Amy Jasperson at (210) 663-1278 or Mansour El-Kikhia at (210) 458-5165.
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© The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2003