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121. News coverage and Japanese foreign disaster aid: a comparative example of bureaucratic responsiveness to the news media

Author:
David M. Potter and Douglas Van Belle
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This paper examines news coverage of overseas natural disasters in Japan and the United States and assesses the extent to which that coverage affects amounts and types of emergency assistance provided by each country's ODA program. The comparison between the two cases allows for the examination of the different effects of media on foreign policy as well as the different ways in which those effects are filtered through institutional arrangements within the aid policy-making apparatus in each country. Following up comparative work on media impact on development aid programs in five countries, this paper argues that the organization of emergency assistance programs is a key determinant in explaining media impact on aid policy.
Topic:
Mass Media
Political Geography:
United States and Japan

122. Good, But How Good? Monitoring and Evaluation of Media Assistance Projects

Author:
Andy Mosher
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
During the early '90s, international media assistance was transformed from a small field to a multimillion-dollar global endeavor. While how to gauge the impact of this wave of assistance was always a concern, the so-called media missionaries' strong sense of purpose and their limited understanding of social science techniques often led them to give short shrift to monitoring and evaluating their media development programs. Since then, things have changed. Interviews with more than a dozen donors, media assistance implementers, and professional evaluators indicate that the importance of monitoring and evaluation has become more widely appreciated. Monitoring—the tracking of programs and activities as they proceed, and the marshaling of the resulting data—has become more rigorous over time. And evaluation—the assessment of a program's impact—has become an integral part of virtually every assistance program, according to those who design and implement them.
Topic:
Economics, International Affairs, Mass Media, and Foreign Aid

123. Challenges to U.S. Government Support for Media Development

Author:
Andrew Green
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Media play a pivotal role in U.S. foreign policy, but the two U.S. government bodies most directly involved in media development assistance—the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—face significant resource shortfalls in this area. This weakness has a direct impact on the U.S. government's ability to support media development around the world. Several units within the State Department are engaged with media efforts. Those that work in media development usually do so in cooperation with or through USAID and its media experts.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Democratization, Mass Media, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
United States

124. Print and Broadcast Media Freedom: Disparities and Openings

Author:
Karin Deutsch Karlekar
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Broadcast media have long been subject to greater government control than print media-from outright restrictions on private ownership to licensing and other regulations that maintain state control or influence content. Using historical data from Freedom House's Freedom of the Press index, which has been conducted since 1980, this report assesses regional trends regarding differing levels of print and broadcast media freedom. While an initial set of data covering 1980-88 shows a clear pattern of print media ranked as freer than broadcast media in every country studied, a later data set covering 1994-2001 shows that while print media outlets faced fewer direct government controls, they were targeted more often by governments in terms of legal harassment and physical attacks on journalists and their facilities.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, Mass Media, and Foreign Aid

125. Media as Global Diplomat

Author:
Sheldon Himelfarb, Tamara Gould, Eric Martin, and Tara Sonenshine
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Over the last decade, America's image abroad has declined, and public diplomacy is often cited as the reason for that decline. According to the BBC World Service Poll in 2008 and the University of Maryland's Program for International Policy Attitudes, publics in twenty-three countries view America's influence in the world more negatively than the influence of North Korea. Citizens in a NATO ally, Turkey, view the United States (64 percent) as the greatest threat to their country in the future.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Globalization, Science and Technology, Mass Media, and Public Opinion
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Turkey

126. „Das olympische Feuer brennt. Und mit ihm lodert das Misstrauen" – Die Chinaberichterstattung während der Olympischen Sommerspiele in Beijing 2008 ("The Olympic Torch Burns, and Great Suspicion Blazes" – China Narratives in the German Media during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing 2008)

Author:
Michael Poerner
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the description of China in leading German daily and weekly newspapers during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. On the basis of a brief outline of the main China narratives in German media since the 1950s, this paper analyses China-related articles which were published during the period August 8-15, 2008. It argues that reports on China are mostly based on well established German notions of China and centre around the image of a despotic and/or dangerous China. Therefore, they primarily refer back to the source culture and contain little information of value regarding the target culture.
Topic:
Mass Media
Political Geography:
China and Beijing

127. Digital Media in Conflict-Prone Societies

Author:
Ivan Sigal
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
The complex relationship between media and conflict is longstanding. Traditional mass media have been used to amplify and extend viewpoints and ideologies, to persuade audiences at home, and to influence opposing sides in conflict. However, both media and conflict have changed markedly in recent years. Many 21st-century wars are not only about holding territory, but about gaining public support and achieving legal status in the international arena. Governments seek to hold onto power through persuasion as much as through force. Media are increasingly essential elements of conflict, rather than just functional tools for those fighting. At the same time, newer media technologies have increased communication and information dissemination in the context of conflict. In particular, the growth of citizen media has changed the information space around conflict, providing more people with the tools to record and share their experiences with the rest of the world.
Topic:
Peace Studies, Science and Technology, War, International Affairs, and Mass Media

128. Throwing the Switch: Challenges in the Conversion to Digital Broadcasting

Author:
John Burgess
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Broadcast television has begun the most important technological shift since its birth in the 1920s. The analog designs that from the start underlay “terrestrial” TV—over-the-air broadcasts from transmitter towers, the medium's traditional form—are giving way to the digital technology of computers. The shift has the potential to greatly expand the diversity of voices on the airwaves because digital stations, by making efficient use of the increasingly crowded airwaves, can broadcast multiple new channels. With broadcasting highly centralized in many countries today, notes Patricio Navia, a professor of global studies at New York University, “digital television might provide the opportunity to open the market to competition.”1 Digital technology can also send programming to the tiny screens of cellphones and bring interactive services to areas that have no Internet connections.
Topic:
Democratization and Mass Media

129. Experimentation and Evolution in Private U.S. Funding of Media Development

Author:
Anne Nelson
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
U.S. foundations have long funded programs in both “media development” and “media for development,” but recent political and economic trends have shifted the balance between the two fields. No one disputes the value of media development, which promotes independent news media. Nor do they doubt the importance of media for development, which emphasizes the communication of critical information to vulnerable populations, whether or not the information or the media involved meet the definition of “news.” But as U.S. journalism has entered a period of crisis, along with its philanthropies, these institutions, which have historically funded media development, have retrenched. With the U.S. advertising-based business model in peril, new avenues and approaches are being explored, with a greater emphasis on addressing the domestic model before trying to apply it abroad.
Topic:
Mass Media and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
United States

130. Funding for Media Development by Major Donors Outside the United States: A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance

Author:
Mary Myers
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
The main guiding questions for this research are: How much are European and other governments and donors spending on international media development? Where is the money going, for what sort of development (training, capacity building, infrastructure, legal or physical safety, etc.) and what are the trends in terms of donor priorities and approaches? The present study is an update of one produced for the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) by the author, with Emma Grant, in 2007 (see Grant and Myers in References). That study was, in one way, more limited in that it dealt only with media support when used by donors to enhance access to information and promote governmental accountability in developing countries. In another way it was broader in that it made recommendations about “what works” and “what are the gaps” in media support in order to guide DFID policy. The present study is less of a discussion document and more of a straight survey.
Topic:
Development, Mass Media, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, and Europe