The Media’s Role In Resolving Conflict After The 9/11 Attack

THE MEDIA’S ROLE IN RESOLVING CONFLICT AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACK
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Introduction
One of the features defining the modern world is conflict. Since the Cold War ended, a large number of conflicts have been recorded, with a majority of them, resulting in deaths and suffering for millions of individuals. Although there has been a rise in conflicts witnessed across the globe, there is little information about how such conflicts arise. The wars that occur between nations can be explained in geopolitical terms. However, internal conflicts are difficult to assess mainly because of the lack of information concerning ethnic tension, and instability among societies, which eventually lead to organized violence. Perhaps the lack of understanding is brought about by the inconsistency in the approach to media coverage of conflicts worldwide. It is well known that some political significance of conflicts, influences the response from the superior governments (Puddephatt 2006, p. 6). As a result, such influences affect how the media cover conflicts across nations.
Nonetheless, the media can also be blamed for giving some conflicts more priority over others. Despite that, one factor that seems to be universal is the fact that the media pays close attention to the concerns of their domestic audience whose attention can only be engaged when they are offered a point of identification. These audiences need to have a better understanding of the entire picture before they pick sides. This means that the media should not only focus on the combatants but the entire community as well. Media coverage has more power and influence that the will of governments. It is because of the effects that the media has on citizens that make political parties feel the need to gain control over media houses more specifically broadcast media. The control over the media deprives them of their freedom to convey the truth about events and limits their coverage of particular conflicts. In turn, the entire community is influenced by the parties through the media. However, individuals should be able to receive the entire information without bias. The media should have the freedom to gather information on their own and freely convey such information to individuals without taking sides. By freely investigating conflicts and diving deep into their root causes, the media can force the concerned individuals or governments to take a significant U-turn. Doing so will empower media houses to advocate for peace and expose individuals or parties which encourage conflicts. Hence, the media plays an essential role in influencing the masses and can be used to resolve conflicts rather than for political influence.
Intensification of Media in a Global Context.
There has been a transformation in the way disasters, and conflicts occur today. Because of globalization, conflicts do not only affect the combatant but the wider global community as well. Such conflicts are neither regarded as territorially confined events that occur, nor a separate national event that occurs without warning to interfere with social order and established norms. These conflicts are therefore considered endemic, within the current global community (Cottle 2014, p. 4). The conveyance of conflicts and other disasters by media houses using technology has been taking place throughout history. Media’s involvement in conflicts is therefore not something new. However, compared to the old means of media coverage, current trends of communication have experienced a dramatic change from the spatial-temporal communication. Beginning from the fifteenth century, when new sheets and printing emerged in England, the seventeenth century, which saw the creation of public postal services, and the development of radio transmission in the 1890s which gave rise to radio broadcasting during the 1920s (Cottle, 2014, p. 5). These historical milestones gave rise to the current forms of media and communications. As technology advanced, media changed the way it conveyed messages and adopted a modern approach as well.
Six different features currently characterize the intensity and extensity of media coverage across the globe. They include; scale, speed, saturation, social relations, surveillance and seeing (Cottle, 2014, p. 6). Media and communication in today’s global environment, exhibit a vast scale when it comes to covering global reach. This is partly because of the presence of the internet and satellites. Media houses can transfer information, images, and videos simultaneously across a majority of the world’s population. The speed at which media has been accelerated worldwide has also eliminated the boundaries of time as and media coverage has reached a point whereby media personalities can near real-time or live images, texts, and speeches (Cottle, 2014, p. 6). This undermines the outdated practices of managing information, encourages, and gives room for experience and immediacy over deliberation and analysis. The heightened saturation of the individual population together with the introduction of universal means of communication such as mobile phones and social media encourages the establishment of normative expectations about the availability and access to communication as well as the preparedness by the media to use such means in case of a conflict. The universalizing technologies also help to communicate conflict, social relations through the incorporation of a heightened number of survivors as well as engaging the individuals responsible for settling the conflicts, and those responsible for helping the victims. The many forms of media and communication present today also enhance the surveillance capacity of the media that can be matched with the surveillance by governments and societal actors through satellite monitoring. Contemporary media, old media forms together with the bottom-up, few-to-many, one-way, top-down and many other types of communication encourage the flow of a vast amount of information. Additionally, the modern media offers unprecedented opportunities for individuals to not only hear about a conflict but also see the conflicts as they take place (Cottle, 2014, p. 6). The improved capabilities of the media to be able to visualize the events as they occur offers viewers an opportunity to witness the consequences of such occurrences, which might be considered to be a signal for humanitarian response.
Because of these six different characteristics, the contemporary media have not only managed to achieve global summits of extensity and intensity, in such a way that the media has become deeply entwined within the broader global community and most importantly, but it has also been pervaded within modern conflicts. By understanding the involvement of media in today’s conflicts and how media are interwoven within our social relations leads to the belief that the media can help to transform the society and generate new forms of interaction and action as well as new modes of exercising power without bias.
Factors that Influence Media Coverage
To have a better understanding of media, it is best to gain much information on the political environment in which the media operates. This becomes apparent when looking at the significant differences between media in totalitarian and democratic countries. It is common for totalitarian systems to gain control over media coverage. Reason being, the mass media’s influence is overpowered by dominant constraints set up by the state. Such influences reach the extreme point of the media acting as the country’s propaganda arms of the state (Croteau 2002, p. 77). This makes it difficult for the country’s citizens to identify the truth and make sound decisions; instead, they are forced to read between the lines and try to decipher such efforts of propaganda. In such cases, the nation’s often give rise to underground media, which are often considered illegal. The underground media is typically formed with the aim of providing information that is free of bias and truth.
On the other hand, democratic nations pride themselves in the freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Such countries often have a diverse group of private and publicly owned media houses that offer various forms of entertainment, news, information, and arts as well. Nonetheless, the government still has control over these media houses through the regulations set up, but the media outlets are offered more freedom to operate independently as compared to those of totalitarian systems.
Despite the freedom, it is common for a relatively small group of powerful individuals and organizations in some democratic states to gain control over the media. The control is mostly by corporations rather than the government itself and might result in the rise of underground media houses. In every country, the government is seen as the organizing structure, which can either promote or constrain to a certain degree, the free activity of the media. This tension between agency and structure is familiar to the political world and the media, and the relationship between the two gives rise to the limits of free speech, the government’s role and the effects of economic interests.
Likewise, the media environment has witnessed a change in the technologies used to gather and broadcast information. For journalists, the job of quick reporting and information gathering from conflict areas has become more comfortable through the introduction of portable editing and lightweight equipment, as well as satellite communication devices (Gilboa, Jumbert, Miklian and Robinson, 2016, p. 660). This has eliminated the need for official sources of reporting who often manipulate the information. Nonetheless, the emergence of newer forms of journalism has allowed information to be shared through various means. For instance, mobile devices allow individuals to take photographs and videos instantly and share widely via the internet, making them the primary sources of breaking news as well whenever conflicts occur. This practice of citizen journalism has prompted several states to call for a censor on internet sharing while others were demanding that the internet is shut off completely to avoid the sharing of videos and photographs that might be disturbing for most people (Allan, and Einar 2009 p. 18). In general, the media environment has created a fragmented, pluralized and a diverse myriad of information flows and interconnectedness.
Based on such scenarios, the patterns of media differences to political elites, propaganda campaigns, and other ideological imperatives prove that the media serve as a critical tool in either instigating or even exuberating conflicts. According to Livingstone (2011, p. 23) the CNN effect, which explains how the 24-hour news reporting together with the old form of media broadcasting allows journalists to provide real-time information on conflicts which is facilitated by satellite communication and this, in turn, influences how the news is made as well as policy changes. It is evident that the media has a great influence not only on the masses but also on the government as well. Although the media is conceptualized as having a largely domestic level of influence over the decisions made by the government, it serves as a good platform for the media to help in resolving conflicts since a majority of conflicts start on a domestic level.
Most importantly, new media technologies can either disempower or empower political actors at various levels, mainly because the increased political influence is not necessarily synonymous with increased visibility. The proliferation and fragmentation of technological advancements seem to muddy the processes through which elites and political actors encourage comprehensible frames which affect and shape conflict responses. This has been proven in instances such as the war in Afghanistan whereby the advancements in the media environment have helped reduce the ability of developed states to influence and mobilize support from either domestic or global audiences for their actions. Therefore, the diversity of the media environment has contradictory consequences for international responses to conflict and wars. For instance, the proliferation of media enables the combatants to have a wide variety of choices available to mobilize a response to a crisis. Concurrently, the proliferation decreases the chances by any group to try to influence the public, mainly because of the fragmentation of audiences to various media outlets and diffusion of media (Robinson, 2015, p. 16). Nonetheless, the key issue is whether global or domestic public spheres are becoming more abundant in information at the expense of a timely response to the crisis, how the media influences political action, as well as the ability of the media to complicate or facilitate such political actions.
Television Coverage during the 9/11 Attack
Some of the major disasters and wars have been theorized by the elites to capitalize on the disaster shock that is brought about by the devastating occurrences, which further political goals and economic interests (Nacos, Shapiro, and Bloch-Elkon 2011, p. 22). The elites force the media to focus on events that condense the discourses and wider cultural frames, to soften up the citizens into agreeing to specific measures, for instance, the elites can push for ultimate militarized control of conflicts claiming that it would be the best alternative to end such occurrences. Instead, the elites can push the media to cover the prevailing political views and question the current alternatives to end the conflicts and eventually proposing alternative solutions that would be beneficial for the elites (Cottle, 2014, p. 11). Such cases occurred during the 9/11 terror attack which had a significant impact on the U.S economy and citizens at large. According to Kellner (2004, p. 2), the 9/11 attack was the most extravagant strike in the United States since the battle of 1812.
The 9/11 attack shows how individuals can orchestrate an extravagant attack, to gain the attention of the media by dramatizing the issues of the individuals and gain political influence. The attack is one of the many that have been carried out by terror groups such as the Al Qaeda in the U.S to demonstrate that the United States is vulnerable to attack. This attack was accompanied by dramatic montage and images aired on television which are meant to grab the attention of U.S citizens and catalyze unexpected occurrences, which are meant to spread terror among the population. Since the television bulletins covered most of the occurences during and after the attack, the citizens were able to get a feeling of the traumatic events that unfolded, and this made the U.S citizens endure the same feeling of suffering, death, and fear that other individuals experience on a daily basis across the globe. According to Kellner (2004 p. 4), the constant television broadcasting of the effects ...