The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur - Softcover

Mody, Bella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0739120719 ISBN 13: 9780739120712

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2010

Synopsis

This inductive study investigates the "curricula" of ten different news organizations from seven different countries that produced news in four languages on the Darfur uprising in Western Sudan: the New York Times, the Washington Post, France's Le Monde, the UK's Guardian, BBC.co.uk, Egypt's Al-Ahram, South Africa's Mail & Guardian Online, English.AlJazeera.Net, and China's People's Daily and China Daily.

Mody and her collaborators show how news organizations uniquely and strategically constructed a foreign event for a particular intended audience based on national historical solidarity with global North or South power blocs, current national interest in the country, ownership of the news organization, and the political-linguistic constituency of the intended audience. While previous research on the role of national interest and ownership are supported in this study, the influence of the intended audience (namely, foreign or domestic) on the design of news is a new contribution to the field. Conceptualizing foreign news as perhaps the only means of cross-national, continuing education, Mody uses comprehensiveness as an evaluative measure of news. The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News provides unique insights that will be of particular interest to those researchers working in the field of international journalism.

About this title

About the Author

Bella Mody is the James de Castro Chair in Global Media Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Review

Foreign News Matters combines systematic content analyses with insightful interpretation, places this research into theoretical, historical and political contexts, and uses an elegant organizing structure that compares news coverage within and across nation-states, regions, and the globe. The result is a significant contribution to our understanding of the constructed nature of 'news,' the diverse practices of contemporary journalism, and the implications of both for cross-national understanding of the Darfur crises specifically, and foreign 'others' more generally. (Michael X. Delli Carpini, Dean, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania)

Foreign News Matters reveals a great deal about who decides what is news, the different ways national media define a story, and what this means for the publics that consume the news. Mody's starting point is that news about human abuse is a desirable end in itself, and an investment against future genocides. The analysis of how various media measured up to that standard in covering the crisis in Darfur is fascinating and, in some cases, alarming. The result is a must-read for anyone interested in international journalism. (Catherine McKercher, Carleton University)

Mody combines political economy, international relations, and content analysis in this unique interpretation of foreign news as geopolitically situated knowledge. Her focus on the Global South and the North and on print and online news offers new understandings of global news flows. Her analysis of the potentials and pitfalls of foreign news as international education is illuminating. (W Lance Bennett, University of Washington)

Edition details

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0739120719
• ISBN 13: 9780739120712
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 478