Interweavement, International Media Ethics and Rational Decision-Making

Interweavement: International Media Ethics and Rational Decision-Making presents a media decision-making model–the Crisis Decision-Making Model for Media Rational Responsibility (CD_M³_R²)–that contributes to the effective performance of media decision-makers, as a consequence of being rational and responsible. The model, which is theoretical, prescriptive, and dynamic, helps media decision-makers understand what ought to be done during international political crises in order to achieve the sought-after goals. The author looks at communication from the angle of decision-making and discusses how the nature of news-writing in media organizations is full of decisions with consequences that significantly shape the content of their communication. Based on extensive analysis of international media codes of ethics and the fundamentals of journalistic practices, the author suggests a motivator towards ethical conduct and proves it mathematically to demonstrate how rational conduct for the media decision-makers is connected to the adherence to key ethical principles. By applying Game Theory to the United States-Iraqi Crisis and the 2003 War on Iraq, the author shows how individuals’ decisions are interrelated and how those decisions result in outcomes that when analyzed help explain the rationality of actors in the war and examine the performance of media decision-makers. The author justly calls for the connection of four theoretical fields–communication, mathematics, crisis management, and decision-making–into a comprehensive body to create the foundation for the suggested model. The concept of Interweavement serves as a central locus through which the interactions among these fields are presented in a dynamic ideational architecture.

Mahmoud Eid, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Ottawa, Canada. His research focuses on international communication, media ethics, terrorism, crisis management and conflict resolution, and the political economy of communication. Dr. Eid is an editor of the Global Media Journal–Canadian Edition, the series editor of Communication Research Methods: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches and Introduction to Communication and Media Studies. He has contributed chapters to several books published by Hampton Press, Pearson, Peter Lang and Oxford University Press, among others. He has also published several articles in The European Journal of Communication Research, International Journal of the Humanities, First Monday, INFORMATION, Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen, Corporate Ownership and Control and The Journal of International Communication.