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71. Unmasking Our Leaders: In Conversation with Michael Cockerell

Author:
Michael Cockerell and Tom Chidwick
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London
Abstract:
In the first MEI event ‪@QMUL‬ since the Covid-19 pandemic, the legendary broadcaster and documentary-maker, Michael Cockerell, spoke about his book, Unmasking Our Leaders: Confessions of a Political Documentary-Maker. In addition to presenting clips from across his fifty-year TV career, Michael spoke about interviewing Britain's last ten Prime Ministers and how the 24/7 media has changed British politics. He also explained how his films were made, how he has managed to lull some of the wariest people in the land into candour, and gave a compelling insight into what politicians as different as Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Boris Johnson are really like. This event, which was chaired by the MEI Manager, Tom Chidwick, was held at QMUL's Mile End campus on Wednesday 21 September 2022.
Topic:
Media, Domestic Politics, and Prime Minister
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

72. Panda Power? Chinese Soft Power in the Era of COVID-19

Author:
Amit Gupta
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Much like competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the rivalry between the United States and China is not only one of military-strategic and economic challenges but also one of ideas. The West, particularly the United States, has had the advantage of presenting the more compelling image to the rest of the world in the form of what Joseph Nye, Jr., dubbed soft power. The argument goes that while China makes propaganda efforts, the United States enjoys soft power—the attractiveness of its culture, political ideas, and policies—and this gives America an international advantage. As the Australian security analyst Hugh White put it, “Everybody admires China, but no one wants to be China.”1 While this was true in the early years of the post–Cold War era, the Chinese have since used their newfound wealth to create a more friendly image for themselves. If they are able to successfully distribute their version of the COVID-19 vaccine around the world, we may see Beijing benefiting from a boost in its image—despite the abrasive “wolf warrior diplomacy” of the past few years, its military forays in the East and South China seas, and the fact that the Chinese government was initially less than forthcoming in sharing data on the pandemic.2 With a recent analysis suggesting that China’s economy will overtake that of the United States in 2028, China’s attempts to rebrand its image will not only have more resources but also find an increasingly eager international audience that seeks to engage the newly emerging number one global economy.3 Soft power, after all, means little without an economic and a military capability to back it up, and China has both. To discuss the Chinese challenge, this article makes its argument in three parts: first, it argues that Nye’s definition of soft power has limitations, and in fact, the Chinese can influence global public opinion with a mixture of propaganda and soft power. Second, it describes China’s attempts to influence global public opinion and the extent to which it may succeed. Finally, it examines the possible future of the Chinese soft power challenge and what the United States can do to counter it.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Media, Soft Power, Strategic Competition, COVID-19, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
China and Global Focus

73. The Disinformation Threat and International Cooperation

Author:
Kyoko Kuwahara
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Japan Institute Of International Affairs (JIIA)
Abstract:
An open democratic society is one that allows its members to access information from both inside and outside the country presenting a diversity of viewpoints, to freely express their own thoughts, and to involve themselves in free and fair national governance. The role of the media has traditionally been emphasized with regard to accessing information. Traditional media play an important role in shaping public opinion and in providing information that enables members of the public to participate actively and effectively in a democratic society (see Figure 1). Freedom of the press1 as guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of Japan is also one of the core values of democracy.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Science and Technology, Media, and Disinformation
Political Geography:
Europe, Global Focus, and United States of America

74. Talking about Europe: exploring 70 years of news archives

Author:
Enrico Bergamini and Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
This paper quantitatively explores news coverage on the subject of ‘Europe’ in three different countries and three newspapers: France (Le Monde), Italy (La Stampa) and Germany (Der Spiegel). We collected and organised large web-scraped datasets covering the period 1945 to 2019. After ensuring the quality of the archives, we identified articles referring to ‘European’ news while leaving aside national and other non-European news, based on a mix of keyword matching, large-scale natural language processing and topic identification on the full text of news articles. Once articles were classified and datasets labelled, we performed a time-series analysis, detecting salient events in European history, across France, Germany and Italy. We analysed these events in light of the evolution of European cooperation and integration since 1945. We found that the most important events in post-war European history are easily identifiable in the archives and that European issues have gathered substantially greater attention since the early 1990s.
Topic:
Governance, Public Opinion, European Union, Media, Populism, and Data
Political Geography:
Europe

75. Interest in European matters: a glass three-quarters full?

Author:
Francesco Papadia, Enrico Bergamini, Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, and Giuseppe Porcaro
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
A disconnect between European Union integration and the level of interest of EU citizens in European matters is a potential weakness in the EU’s democratic foundations. The existence and possible size of this disconnect is a critical issue in assessing the potential for further integration of the EU and the risks to its stability. To move beyond qualitative assessments of this disconnect, we use three indicators to measure EU citizens’ interest in Europe: turnout in European Parliament elections relative to national elections, Eurobarometer surveys of interest in Europe, and the presence of European news in national newspapers, relative to all published news. We interpret our empirical results using three frameworks: Putnam’s social capital concept, the agenda-setting hypothesis and the no-demos hypothesis. All three indicators point to an increased interest in European matters, especially since the 1990s and the creation of the euro. However, this result does not settle the issue of whether the increased level of interest matches the actual state of integration of the EU’s member countries. Our results indicate the European construction maintains a technocratic character.
Topic:
Governance, European Union, Media, Populism, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Europe

76. Trigger warning. The CCP’s coordinated information effort to discredit the BBC

Author:
Jacob Wallis, Albert Zhang, and Ariel Bogle
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) diplomatic accounts, Chinese state media, pro-CCP influencers and patriotic trolls are targeting the UK public broadcaster, the BBC, in a coordinated information operation. Recent BBC reports, including the allegations of systematic sexual assault in Xinjiang’s internment camps, were among a number of triggers provoking the CCP’s propaganda apparatus to discredit the BBC, distract international attention and recapture control of the narrative. In ASPI ICPC’s new report, Albert Zhang and Dr Jacob Wallis provide a snapshot of the CCP’s ongoing coordinated response targeting the BBC, which leveraged YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and was broadly framed around three prominent narratives: That the BBC spreads disinformation and is biased against China That the BBC’s domestic audiences think that it’s biased and not to be trusted That the BBC’s reporting on China is instigated by foreign actors and intelligence agencies. In addition, the report analyses some of the secondary effects of this propaganda effort by exploring the mobilisation of a pro-CCP Twitter network that has previously amplified the Covid-19 disinformation content being pushed by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and whose negative online engagement with the BBC peaks on the same days as that of the party-state’s diplomats and state media. To contest and blunt criticism of the CCP’s systematic surveillance and control of minority ethnic groups, the party will continue to aggressively deploy its propaganda and disinformation apparatus. Domestic control remains fundamental to its political power and legitimacy, and internationally narrative control is fundamental to the pursuit of its foreign policy interests.
Topic:
Media, Journalism, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and BBC
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Australia

77. Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: The CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms

Author:
Albert Zhang, Jacob Wallis, and Zoe Meers
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This report explores how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), fringe media and pro-CCP online actors seek—sometimes in unison—to shape and influence international perceptions of the Chinese Government’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including through the amplification of disinformation. United States (US) based social media networks, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, along with Chinese-owned TikTok (owned by Chinese company ByteDance), are centre stage for this global effort. The Chinese Government continues to deny human rights abuses in Xinjiang despite a proliferation of credible evidence, including media reporting, independent research, testimonies and open-source data, that has revealed abuses including forced labour, mass detention, surveillance, sterilisation, cultural erasure and alleged genocide in the region. To distract from such human rights abuses, covert and overt online information campaigns have been deployed to portray positive narratives about the CCP’s domestic policies in the region, while also injecting disinformation into the global public discourse regarding Xinjiang. The report’s key findings: Since early 2020, there’s been a stark increase in the Chinese Government and state media’s use of US social media networks to push alternative narratives and disinformation about the situation in Xinjiang. Chinese state media accounts have been most successful in using Facebook to engage and reach an international audience. The CCP is using tactics including leveraging US social media platforms to criticise and smear Uyghur victims, journalists and researchers who work on this topic, as well as their organisations. We expect these efforts to escalate in 2021. Chinese Government officials and state media are increasingly amplifying content, including disinformation, produced by fringe media and conspiracist websites that are often sympathetic to the narrative positioning of authoritarian regimes. This amplifies the reach and influence of these sites in the Western media ecosystem. Senior officials from multilateral organisations, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN), have also played a role in sharing such content. The Xinjiang Audio-Video Publishing House, a publishing organisation owned by a regional government bureau and affiliated with the CCP’s United Front Work Department, has funded a marketing company to create videos depicting Uyghurs as supportive of the Chinese Government’s policies in Xinjiang. Those videos were then amplified on Twitter and YouTube by a network of inauthentic accounts. The Twitter accounts also retweeted and liked non-Xinjiang-related tweets by Chinese diplomatic officials and Chinese state-affiliated media in 2020.
Topic:
Human Rights, Media, Social Media, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China, United States of America, and Xinjiang

78. Media Reporting on International Affairs

Author:
Andrew Shaver, Leonardo Dantas, Amarpreet Kaur, Robert Kraemer, Tristan Jahn, Grady Thomson, Hank Cheng, Katherine Gan, and Jazmin Santos-Perez
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
We consider how the U.S. news media reports on international affairs. Analyzing ≈40 million news articles published between 2010 and 2020, we explore whether the American news media report differently on various international affairs topics based on partisan leanings. We then analyze ≈25 million articles published by top online news sites to determine whether collective reporting shows disparities between the level of attention afforded major global issues and objective measures of their human costs (e.g. numbers of individuals killed). We find that left- and right-leaning news outlets tend to report on international affairs at similar rates but differ significantly in their likelihood of referencing particular issues. We find further strong evidence that the frequency of reporting on the international issues we study tracks only modestly with their associated human costs. Given evidence U.S. public and policymakers dependence on news reports for foreign affairs information, our findings raise fundamental questions about the influence of these reporting biases.
Topic:
International Relations, Communications, Media, and Internet
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus

79. Ten Years After: Syrian Artists Reflect on the Anniversary of the Syrian Uprising

Author:
Lyne Sneige, Lara Haddad, Maymanah Farhat, and Kevork Mourad
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
Marking the launch of the MEI Art Gallery exhibit, In This Moonless Black Night: Syrian Art After the Uprising, MEI is pleased to host a conversation exploring how Syrian artists in exile have addressed the hope, trauma and displacement of the past decade through their art. Among the 14 participating artists, US-based artists Lara Haddad, Essma Imady and Kevork Mourad, as well as curator and writer Maymanah Farhat, will reflect on their artistic practice and the personal experiences that influenced their work over the past 10 years. They'll also examine how the exhibit's diverse imagery and media helps shape our understanding of the magnitude and complexity of the past decade with beauty, grace and humanity. Lyne Sneige, director of MEI's Arts and Culture Center, will moderate the discussion followed by Q&A .
Topic:
Arts, Culture, Media, Syrian War, and Memory
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

80. Information in the First Globalization: News Agencies and Trade

Author:
Pierre Cotterlaz and Etienne Fize
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII)
Abstract:
This paper documents the effect of information frictions on trade using a historical large-scale improvement in the transmission of news: the emergence of global news agencies. The information available to potential traders became more abundant, was delivered faster and at a cheaper price between countries covered by a news agency. Exploiting differences in the timing of telegraph openings and news agency coverage across pairs of countries, we are able to disentangle the pure effect of information from the effect of a reduction in communication costs. Panel gravity estimates reveal that bilateral trade increased by 30\% more for pairs of countries covered by a news agency and connected by a telegraph than for pairs of countries simply connected by a telegraph.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Partnerships, Media, News Analysis, and Trade
Political Geography:
Global Focus