The Bias of Provocation Narratives in International News

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Boudana ◽  
Elad Segev

This paper explores how provocation narratives introduce political bias in international news. It is based on a two-step methodology. First, a network analysis of country co-mentions in American, British, French, and German news corpus shows that core countries (e.g., the United States) and their opponents (e.g., North Korea, Russia, Iran) are the most frequently cited in provocation narratives. Focusing on the case where provocation narratives are the most prominent, the Korean conflict, we then employ a quantitative content analysis to identify the relationships between the countries involved in news stories using provocation narratives, and the role played by the provocation in those news stories. Our findings show that bias is introduced in many instances where journalists, while repeatedly identifying one country, North Korea, as the provocateur, omit key information such as the reasons behind North Korea’s provocations or the identity of the provoked country. This indicates that provocation narratives adopt the core countries’ geopolitical views and portray their enemies as a global threat.

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 478-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hoewe

Given the intense debate surrounding the United States’ policies regarding admission of refugees and immigrants into the country, this study set out to determine how the news media cover refugees and how that coverage influences news consumers. This research examines how news stories informed the public about the individuals affected by the wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In particular, it explores usage of the word “refugee” as opposed to “immigrant” to determine how individuals fleeing their home countries were described by the press. A content analysis revealed that U.S. newspapers were more likely than international newspapers to conflate the term “immigrant” with “refugee.” Also, when refugees were incorrectly described as “immigrants,” references to terrorism were more likely. The experimental portion of this research tested how news consumers respond to this framing of “refugee” versus “immigrant” in the same war-torn situation. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans who read about individuals labeled as “refugees” did not distinguish them from “immigrants” in the same situation, indicating they may have adopted the U.S. news media’s conflation of these terms. Republicans, however, had more negative perceptions of both refugees and immigrants than did Democrats or Independents, reporting greater perceptions of threat and favoring more stringent policy. These results suggest that American news consumers do not distinguish between refugees and immigrants in terms of policy, which at least partially implicates U.S. news media for not providing a solid benchmark for understanding these groups of people.


Author(s):  
Andrea Harris

The introduction presents the core historiographical problem that Making BalletAmerican aims to correct: the idea that George Balanchine’s neoclassical choreography represents the first successful manifestation of an “American” ballet. While this idea is pervasive in dance history, little scholarly attention has been paid to its construction. The introduction brings to light an alternative, more complex historical context for American neoclassical ballet than has been previously considered. It places Lincoln Kirstein’s 1933 trip to Paris, famous for bringing Balanchine to the United States, within a transnational and interdisciplinary backdrop of modernism, during a time when the global art world was shifting significantly in response to the international rise of fascism. This context reverberates throughout to the book’s examination of American ballet as a form that was embedded in and responsive to a changing set of social, cultural, and political conditions over the period covered, 1933–1963.


Author(s):  
Norman Schofield

A key concept of social choice is the idea of the Condorcet point or core. For example, consider a voting game with four participants so any three will win. If voters have Euclidean preferences, then the point at the center will be unbeaten. Earlier spatial models of social choice focused on deterministic voter choice. However, it is clear that voter choice is intrinsically stochastic. This chapter employs a stochastic model based on multinomial logit to examine whether parties in electoral competition tend to converge toward the electoral center or respond to activist pressure to adopt more polarized policies. The chapter discusses experimental results of the idea of the core explores empirical analyses of elections in Israel and the United States.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Irus Braverman

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in the West Bank, challenging the all-too-binary assumptions at the core of settler colonialism. Against the backdrop of the settler colonial project of territorial dispossession and elimination, we illuminate the infrastructural connections and disruptions among lives and matter in the West Bank, interpreting these through the lens of environmental justice. We finally ask what forms of ecological decolonization might emerge from this landscape of accumulating waste, concrete, and ruin. Such alternative visions that move beyond the single axis of settler-native enable the emergence of more nuanced, and even hopeful, ecological imaginaries that focus on sumud, dignity, and recognition.


Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Zeynep Correia

Airports are located at the core of the production process, but can they also be where the “revolutionary subject” is hidden? We know what airports stand for nowadays, but have we pushed for what they could possibly stand for? Can airports, as a form of urban technology, be reimagined beyond their current roles of a “space technology nexus” driving capital movement? Can we imagine, idealize, and locate them somewhere else in a period dominated by the economy of time, where speed and accessibility matter the most? In this framework, this provocative essay aims to frame airports as a protest and public expression venue. Drawing inspiration from recent examples, such as the Stansted Airport protests in the UK, the Occupy Airports protests that occurred all around the United States, and touching upon the divergent example of Turkey’s 15th of July night protests in 2016, I provide a glimpse of an alternative prospect for this key urban infrastructure.


2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 85-105
Author(s):  
Steven Hugh Lee

AbstractSince December 1997, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the United States have met in a series of talks aimed at promoting peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in the region. According to a November 1998 U.S. Department of Defense report, the discussions have created a “diplomatic venue for reducing tensions and ultimately replacing the Armistice Agreement with a permanent peace settlement.”1 Amidst the tragic human suffering which has occurred in North Korea, there have been some encouraging developments on the peninsula. The 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea placed international controls on North Korea’s atomic energy program and cautiously anticipated the normalization of U.S.-DPRK relations. Since assuming power in early 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has vigorously pursued a policy of engagement with P’yo¨ngyang, known as the “sunshine policy.” Over the past decade, North Korea has also reoriented its foreign policy. In the early 1990s, the regime’s social and economic crisis led to a rethinking of its autarkic economic system. By early 1994, the state had created new free trade zones and relatively open foreign investment laws.2 By complying with the Agreed Framework, the DPRK has also shown a willingness to work with the international community on sensitive issues affecting its internal sovereignty and ability to project power beyond its borders.


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