|
|
Prof. C. Anthony Giffard, Director School of Communication University of Washington
"News Agencies, National Images and Global Media Events"
News Agencies, National Images and Global Media Events
Communications scholars have long regarded image politics as central to the conduct of international relations. Concepts such as strategic public communication, national image management, and media diplomacy have been used to refer to the purposeful enhancement of a nation's image as a tool of foreign policy.1 There is little dispute that power in the international arena is derived, in part, from a nation's ability to project an image that presents its military, economic, political, or cultural importance in a favorable or powerful light. Taylor offers a summary of government use of strategic public communication in international affairs that shows its evolution in form, function, and prevalence since 1945.2 Manheim also documents trends in image management practices by looking at the steady increase in the contracting of public relations firms by national governments.3 He demonstrates that the majority of the world's governments are involved in active campaigns to manage their media images.
Global media events as image management strategy
One image management strategy is hosting global media events. These include United Nations summits, Olympic Games, the signing of peace accords, international sports events, royal weddings and more.4 Global media events are a unique form of diplomacy because they attempt to reach not just other governments, but a global public. Their increasing prevalence clearly suggests the growing importance placed on world public opinion, which Rusciano et. al. suggest actors must heed in the international arena or risk isolation.5
The goals of hosting global media events are many. At the most basic level, nations want prestige. They seek to be coupled in the eyes of the world with positive or globally altruistic causes such as environmental protection, human rights, or peace processes.6 The Helsinki Accords, example, will forever link that city with a positive image as a barometer of human rights. Beyond simple image associations, nations desiring to host international events are drawn to this strategy to enhance trade and diplomatic relations. As Larson and Park point out, a significant goal of staging the 1988 Seoul Olympics was to assist South Korea in establishing political and economic relations with Eastern Bloc countries and the Soviet Union.7 Another reason is to be perceived as an advanced nation. Here again, the Olympics Games offered Japan in 1964 and Mexico in 1968 a chance to show the world their abilities to play with the big kids in an international economic arena.
Other reasons to host mega-events include promotion of tourism, foreign investment, or simply to have the world know a nation exists. A primary goal of the Barcelona 1992 Olympics was to introduce Catalonia to the world as a culture and economy distinct from the rest of Spain and promote Barclona as the southern business hub for Europe.8 Hess, after analyzing the content of seven years of international news coverage, stated that “Most of the world's countries are seen rarely, and then only because they host an important event or person, a pope or president, or because hurricanes happen...”9 In addition to a place on the global radar screen, a small country like Trinidad vies for an environmental summit to acquire technology or administrative or public management experience. Other hosting goals have included the desire of a government to gain legitimacy or showcase an ideology, as with the Nazi Olympics of 1936, or to enhance national unity.”10
This study investigates the hosting of U.N. summits as an image management strategy. In the past few years there have been several such mega-events, each attended by dozens of heads of state or other senior officials, and thousands of delegates. The conferences include those on the environment in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, on human rights in Vienna in 1993, on small island developing states in Bridgetown in 1994, on population and development in Cairo in 1994, on social development in Copenhagen in 1995, on human settlements in Istanbul in 1996, and on food security in Rome, also in 1996. Several hosts for these summits clearly sought to influence world opinion. Brazil reportedly wanted to counteract criticism of its environmental policies, to show off a new conference center, and to become the home for a planned U.N. environmental agency. Egypt wanted to show that, despite being an Islamic country, it could host a global debate on controversial population issues, and it hoped to have an Egyptian appointed head of the U.N. Fund for Population Activities. Egypt also expected to demonstrate that it could provide security for tourists in spite of negative publicity about attacks by Muslim fundamentalists.11 China wanted to overcome the negative publicity it had endured after Tiananmen Square and to showcase the progress made by Chinese women. Tefft, a long time Christian Science Monitor correspondent in Beijing wrote, that “Beijing...yearns to turn over a new page after the 1989 trauma and assume a rightful world place...China aspires to United Nations leadership and to re-entering the world-trade mainstream.... Beijing’s near-hysterical bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympics is [a] symptom of this effort.” 12
The expectation, of course, is that the international prestige that flows from playing successful host to a distinguished cast of thousands discussing issues of global significance will translate into positive news portrayals during the event and to an association with prestigious and important documents -- the Rome Plan of Action, the Rio Declaration, the Beijing Resolution -- long after the conference ends. The positive outcomes desired by host nations assume that coverage by the international media would focus on the important agreements negotiated at the conference; on the leading role played by host-country actors; on the host's competent preparations and logistics -- and not on its shortcomings.
The risks of hosting an international event
Ironically, the common appeal to those nations bidding to host international events is the opportunity to attract the one thing they cannot control: international media attention. While the reasons for hosting international mega-events are many, the risks and stakes are also very high. A nation can succeed in hosting an event on the global stage, but it can also fail, rendering its government politically vulnerable at home and abroad.
The challenges of hosting successful mega-events are many. First, they are expensive. When hosting a summit conference outside the U.N. headquarters, the host country must pay the difference between what it would have cost to stage it in New York, where the issues can be discussed by the General Assembly, and the additional expense of staging it elsewhere. Host countries pay for the conference facilities, security, local staff and travel and expenses for U.N. support staff. The cost to the United Nations itself still is significant. The U.N. Department of Public Information reports that recent global conferences have cost between $1.8 million and $3.4 million, except for the Rio Summit, “whose extraordinarily complex agenda required special staffing and more extensive preparations,” and cost the U.N. some $10 million.13 The total cost to the U.N., the host nation and all the participating countries is much higher. The Associated Press estimated that the women’s conference in Beijing cost $250 million.
Second, the logistics of large international events are extremely complex. The demands for housing, transportation, security, food, electricity, telecommunications, and other needs are enormous and can overwhelm hosts of even wealthy nations, as the world witnessed with the organizational and technological problems with the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games. Even weather can play a role, as complaints about the muddy venue for non-government (NGO) organizations at the Beijing conference demonstrated. Prior studies have shown that media attention to “hosting abilities” factors significantly into news and editorial coverage. Rusiano, Fiske-Rusciano, and Wang’s study of U.S. and Chinese newspaper coverage of the Women's Conference in Beijing found that close to 60 percent of all references to the Summit concerned China's reputation as host.14 Of those, all references in the New York Times were negative. Zaharopoulos and Punitha found that host-related issues ranked third (14%) of topics covered about the Rio Earth Summit across seven international newspapers, behind environmental topics (15.2%) and political issues (42.6%). 15
Third, event hosts cannot control all aspects of the event and groups involved. All modern day mega-events include elaborate security measures to prevent terrorist attacks. France's crackdown on suspected Islamic terrorist groups on the eve of the 1998 soccer World Cup is a recent example. In addition, various pressure groups attempt to grab the spotlight. In the case of U.N. summits, there is no guarantee that the substance of the conference will lead to cooperative agreements forever associated with the host city's name. And, for any media event, despite all efforts to provide upbeat information for the world's media, there is no control over what they say. The summits often have several thousand journalists in attendance, each seeing the event from a different perspective. Media attention may be diverted from the summit to unexpected events that occur elsewhere. Or, the summits may become the forum for discussion of such events - as happened when civil war broke out in Bosnia at the time of the Vienna human rights conference, and reports of mass starvation in Rwanda and Zaire coincided with the Rome's World Food Summit.
Despite these risks, nations compete aggressively for the right to host the U.N. summits, Olympic Games, or other events of international stature. According to U.N. officials involved in planning the conferences, rival claims generally are settled in behind-the-scenes deals, but if there is no consensus, the issue goes to a vote.16 Turkey, for example, wanted to host the population conference that ultimately was awarded to Egypt. So Turkey got the next conference -- that on human settlements. Denmark wanted the environmental summit, but settled for that on social development. Brazil won the Earth Summit against competition from Sweden, Canada and Egypt -- which later won the right to host the population conference.
Method
This study examines coverage of six major U.N. summits by three international news agencies for their presentation of the host cities and nations. The analysis also considered the character of the image associations. The conferences are:
-- Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992);
-- Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, June 1993);
-- International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, September 1994);
-- World Conference on Social Development (Copenhagen, March 1995);
-- Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, September 1995).
-- World Food Summit (Rome, November 1996).
The news agencies were selected to represent three different perspectives: those of North America, Europe and the developing world. They are:
-- the Associated Press (AP), the major U.S.-based international agency;
-- Inter Press Service (IPS), the largest international agency specializing in Third World news;
-- Reuters, the largest European-based international agency.
Reports filed by each agency about the six conferences were collected from two weeks prior to their official opening until the day after they finished. For the AP and Reuters, the reports were those transmitted to full-service newspaper clients in North America. According to editors consulted on the international desks of these agencies, the feed to other regions of the world would have been similar. IPS coverage came from its English-language World Service, which goes to all regions.
Each of the conferences had not only the main event, attended by representatives of governments, but a large and vociferous side-show organized by non-governmental organizations seeking to influence their outcomes. The analysis includes coverage of these “alternative” summits as well as the official meetings. The sample comprised a total of 1,752 news reports from the three agencies for all six conferences. It included 410 reports from the AP, 496 from IPS and 846 from Reuters. The reports were analyzed using the TEXTPACK PC content analysis program.
Three of the conferences analyzed here took place in Western capitals: Copenhagen, Vienna and Rome. Three were held in the developing-world cities: Cairo, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro. The coding process selected out all the references to the host nation and the city in which it took place. Both nominal and adjectival forms were included. For example, search terms for the population conference included the words Egypt, Egyptian, and Cairo. For the women's conference, references included China, Chinese, Beijing and Huairou, the suburb where the non-government organizations were quartered. Coders then inserted a symbol into the electronic texts to indicate whether the reference either:
-- Provided substantive information or opinion about the host, but was not relevant to the topic or logistics of the conference (“Summit delegates are enjoying the lively night life of Rio”);
-- Identified the host as an actor involved in the summit proceedings (“The Brazilian president was the first to sign the biodiversity resolution”);
-- Associated the host with summit logistics, rather than substantive content (“Women's NGOs are complaining to the Chinese government about transportation to Beijing”);
-- Referred to the nation or city only as the conference site, or was part of the name of a document without further elaboration (“Castro met the pope in Rome on the eve of the World Food Summit today” or “The first draft of the Beijing Resolution made the rounds yesterday."
The references were coded also as to valence as it might be perceived from the perspective of the host nation -- favorable, unfavorable, or neutral/balanced. Computer content analysis programs then calculated frequencies for each category and valence across conferences and agencies, and wrote out the key words and their surrounding text to files for further qualitative analysis. The overall prominence of nations at the conferences they hosted was assessed by counting the number of times the host was mentioned, compared to other nations. Finally, there is a comparison of portrayals across news agencies. An intercoder reliability test was conducted on 50 references randomly selected across all conference. The results yielded a 92% agreement for reference category and a 91 percent agreement for valence, averaged across six trained coders.
Overall coverage
There was a combined total of 4,980 references in the coverage of all three news agencies to the host nations or cities for the six conferences. Most of these (60.1%) were neutral. There were three times as many negative references (30.2%) as positive references (9.9%). There was a significant difference in the valence of references to the Western host nations and those in developing regions. Altogether 86.6% of references to Austria, Denmark and Italy were neutral or balanced, compared to 54.6% for Brazil, China and Egypt. Differences in the proportions of positive references were not significant (8.3% in the case of the Western hosts and 10.1% for developing nations). However, 35.3% of references to the developing-nation hosts were negative, compared to 5.1% for the Western hosts.
DENMARK: As noted above, Western host nations received more favorable publicity than those in the developing regions. Denmark had a generally positive image across all three news agencies. The sample for the Social Summit in Copenhagen comprised 106 agency reports - 32 from the AP, 48 from IPS and 26 from Reuters. Excluding datelines, there were 125 occurrences of the words Denmark, Danish and Copenhagen. Of these, 14.4% were coded as positive and 5.6% as negative. The AP reports included 2% positive references, and 7% negative. IPS had 7.1% positive and 2.9% negative. And Reuters yielded 22.2% positive and 11.1% negative references.
Most of the positive references had to do with the Danish government's announcement that it was canceling $166 million in loans owed by six African and Latin American nations, and reports noting that Denmark was one of the few countries that had met United Nations targets for provision of development aid. On the negative side, there was some criticism about limited facilities for delegates from non-government organizations. Also criticized was Denmark's decision to deny Tibetan delegates the right to participate fully in the conference on the grounds that Tibet is not a sovereign nation.
AUSTRIA: Like Denmark, Austria was accorded a positive image overall. The 155 reports in our sample comprised 35 from the AP, 59 from IPS and 61 from Reuters. Together they included more than 200 references to the words Austria, Austrian, Vienna and Viennese. Most of these (83.7%) were neutral, mainly references to Vienna as the site of the human rights conference. Of the remainder, twice as many were positive (11%) as negative (5.3%). The AP reports included 32% positive references, and no negatives. The corresponding figures for Reuters were 8.1% positive and 2.3% negative. Only IPS had more negative (7.1%) than positive (2.4%) references, but in each case the absolute numbers were small.
A single controversy accounted for most of both the positive and negative references. Austria had invited the Dalai Lama to attend the conference, along with several other Nobel Peace Prizewinners. This was coded as positive. Then, after pressure from the Chinese government, Austria withdrew the invitation, generating several critical reports. These were coded as negative. Finally, the invitation was renewed and, as one Reuters report put it, “China's demands to ostracize the Dalai Lama collapsed in the face of opposition from host country Austria and other Western delegations.”17 IPS, with its concern for the Third World perspective, criticized Austria for refusing entry to delegates and journalists from some developing nations unless they could prove they would not remain in Austria after the conference ended.18
ITALY: The Italian sample comprised 445 agency reports about the World Food Summit: 43 from the AP, 126 from IPS and 276 from Reuters. Together, they included 734 mentions of Italy, Italian and Rome (the word Roman occurred only in the context of the Roman Catholic Church). As in the case of Denmark and Austria, the great majority of the references was neutral (87.9%). However, there were more negative than positive references. Of those that had a valence, 4.9% were positive and 7.2% negative. Both the AP and IPS reports had more positive than negative references. In the AP reports, 9.1% of the references were coded as positive and 2.3% as negative. IPS had 6.2% positive and 1.6% negative references. Reuters, however, included 6.9% positive and 15.4% negative, and because there were more Reuters reports, this tipped the balance towards the negative.
The bulk of the positive judgments had to do with Italy's leading role at the conference, which was chaired by Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Italy was reported as agreeing to help reduce Third World debt, and to increase the share of its budget allocated to development aid. There also were positive mentions of Italian corporations that supported the conference. Criticisms of logistical problems, such as traffic congestion in Rome as a result of tight security arrangements; of the strength of Italy's Communist Party and its adulation of visiting Cuban President Fidel Castro, counterbalanced these positive references. There also were critical references to air pollution, to the nation's “notoriously unreliable postal system,” to the tendency of Italians to go on strike, and to Italy's fascist past.19
BRAZIL: The coverage of the three host nations in the developing regions - Brazil, Egypt and China - differed from that of the European hosts in two main respects. A smaller proportion of the references was neutral, and in each case negative references outnumbered the positive. Brazil's Earth Summit was represented in the sample by 381 agency reports: 130 from the AP, 85 from IPS and 166 from Reuters. Altogether there were 931 references to Brazil, Brazilian or Rio de Janeiro. Of these, 8.2% were coded as positive and 11.8% as negative. The AP had the highest proportion of negatives (17.3%) compared to 8.9% positive. Reuters had 8.3% negative references and 6.3% positive. Only IPS had more positive (10.4%) references than negative (4.5%).
The positive references dealt for the most part with Brazil's role in negotiating compromises on controversial issues, including a convention to prevent global warming and another to preserve biodiversity . Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello was the first leader to sign the climate convention. Many of the positives, however, were balanced by negatives - often in the same sentence. Reuters noted, for example, that “although it has one of the world's biggest economies ... Brazil's wealth is very unevenly shared among its 146 million people.”20 The same report referred to “Brazil's blend of sophisticated, high-technology industry and grinding rural poverty,” and commented that “in Brazil, extreme poverty finds itself face-to-face with the opulence of the few.” An AP report referred to Rio as “Brazil's jewel by the sea ... tarnished by years of urban blight, poverty and crime.”21
The negative references to Brazil cluster into three main themes. One had to do with the deterioration of Rio as a tourist venue: “murky, smelly water and filthy sands are keeping tens of thousands of sun-seekers away from Rio's shores at the start of the tourist season.”22 Another had to do with Brazil's more general environmental problems, especially rapid destruction of the Amazon rainforest: “The Brazilian government has come under pressure from industrialized countries to more vigorously discourage farmers and ranchers from hacking away at the oxygen-producing rainforest.”23 A third category of negative references had to do with such social issues as crime and attacks on street children. One report noted that “death squads, hired by merchants to clean up high-crime areas, kill an estimated three children every day in Brazil.” and noted that “a 35,000-member security force has swept Rio of the beggars, urchins and vendors who normally swarm the streets ... but despite heavy security, Rio's robbers are still active.”24
EGYPT: Coverage of the population conference in Egypt was represented in our study by 171 agency reports, 70 from the AP, 74 from IPS and 50 from Reuters. Together they included 389 references to the words Egypt, Egyptian and Cairo. Of these 9.2% were coded as being positive, 15.9% as negative and 74.8% as neutral. The AP had the highest proportion of negative references (22.6%) compared to positives (15.1%). For Reuters, the figures were 17% negative and 7% positive, and for IPS 11.5% negative and 7.1% positive.
The positive themes were few. Agency reports noted that Cairo was looking cleaner as a result of a $50 million facelift before the conference. At the conference itself, Egypt was depicted as standing up to threats of a boycott by some Islamic states and also resisting pressure from the Vatican to condemn contraception. The nation received some credit for drawing the world's attention to problems associated with rapid population growth. Timothy Wirth, head of the U.S. delegation, was quoted as saying that “a spirit of Cairo emerged during the conference that recognized for the first time the need for a comprehensive approach.”25 Egypt also was credited with having reduced the growth rate of its own population.
Outside of conference issues, however, most of the references to Egypt had to do with threats of terrorist attacks on delegates. There were numerous reports about measures to block attacks by extremists who had been trying since 1992 to topple the Egyptian government and install Islamic rule. Some reports noted that more than 500 people had died in the ensuing violence, among them several foreign tourists. And despite a police crackdown and the arrest of dozens of potential troublemakers, there were still concerns about the security of visitors. As one AP report put it, “In Cairo, police now stand at intervals of a dozen or so yards around the major hotels ... still, it will be no simple task to keep the delegates safe.”26
Even reassurances that delegates would be protected had the effect of drawing attention to the potential danger. For example, a United Nations spokesman was quoted as saying that “the U.N. has every confidence in security measures related to the conference,” and the city's security chief stated that “Cairo is completely secured.”27 like these, while intended to be reassuring, may have left the impression of a city under siege.
CHINA: The women's conference in Beijing received more extensive coverage by the three agencies than any other summit. There were 471 reports in our sample: 100 from the AP, 104 from IPS and 267 from Reuters. Overall, we found 2,601 references to China, Chinese, Beijing or Huairou, the Beijing suburb that was the site of the huge NGO conference that ran parallel to the main summit. Agency coverage was markedly more negative in tone than that of the other conferences. Negative references accounted for 37.9% of the total, positive for 12.2% and neutral for only 49.9%. Reuters had the highest proportion of negative references (57.3%), with 17.4% positive. AP also had three times as many negative (25.5%) as positive (8.1%) references. IPS reports were more neutral (79.1%) but still included more negatives (12.5%) than positives (8.4%).
On the positive side, China was credited with improving its human rights record. Former U.S. President George Bush, on a visit to Beijing, was quoted as saying, “China now has far more liberties than it did several years ago.”28 Several reports drew attention to advances specifically in the field of women's rights that had, as the AP put it, “greatly promoted the improvement of Chinese women's status in social and economic affairs.”29 IPS noted that “China leads much of Asia when it comes to the number of women in public office.”30
Such positive themes were more than counterbalanced by criticisms. These fell into three main categories: continued violation of human rights, a belligerent foreign policy, and poor handling of conference logistics. Negative references to China's human rights record included the nation's one-child policy, forced sterilization and abortions, and female infanticide. There also were numerous references to China's suppression of pro-democracy movements, including the Tiananmen Square massacre, and to strict censorship. The saga of Chinese-born American dissident Harry Wu, who was arrested on the eve of the conference and accused of spying on China's prisons, was extensively reported, often in the context of forced prison labor. Most of the negative references to China's foreign policy had to do with its nuclear tests, its occupation of Tibet, its attempts to isolate Taiwan and to intimidate that nation by conducting missile tests nearby, and its sale of missile technology to Pakistan.
Although there were some positive comments about China's preparation and organization for the conference, by far the majority was negative. The AP and Reuters files are replete with complaints about logistical problems and intrusive security measures at what AP called “the muddy, half-finished Huairou site”31 (IPS said that although there was some confusion there, Huairou was “a pleasant resort town” in a “scenic tourist area”).32 Chinese authorities were reported to have jailed most dissidents or run them out of Beijing to prevent protests and contacts with conference delegates. The AP reported that “China is believed to have located the forum of private groups in Huairou because of fears that the delegates' debates, protests and pamphlets would infect the Chinese with a spirit of dissent.”33
Frequency of mention of nations
There is no doubt that hosting a summit results in a nation's getting a higher profile than it would if only a participant. Apart from China, which was one of the nations mentioned most frequently overall, none of the other hosts achieved significant recognition at the conferences other than the ones they hosted. If one disregards mentions of the hosts at the conferences they presented, and calculates their rank at the other conferences, China is in third place, Egypt in 25th, Brazil in 31st, Denmark in 36th, Italy in 40th and Austria in 44th.
Hosting a conference boosted China’s ranking across all six conferences and three agencies from 3rd to 1st; Brazil's from 31st to 4th, Italy's from 40th to 5th, Denmark's from 36th to 7th, Egypt's from 25th to 16th and Austria's from 44th to 23rd. Two nations, China and Denmark, were the most frequently mentioned countries at the conferences they hosted. Brazil was ranked second at its environmental conference, behind the United States which drew attention because its high-level delegation led by President Bush became an issue in the 1992 presidential election campaign. Egypt also was second at its population conference, behind the Vatican which held up the conference for five days until platform language was changed to stress that abortion could not be promoted as a means of population control. Host nation Austria was ranked fourth at its conference, largely because the limelight was drawn to the ideological dispute between two camps, led by the United States and China, over the universality of human rights. Bosnia ranked third at that conference, with numerous reports of human rights violations during the civil war raging there at the time. Italy ranked fifth in terms of frequency of mention at its food summit. The United States was first, with its insistence that the solution to hunger was free trade in food products, and its support of genetically engineered crops. Cuba was second, because of Castro's visit to Rome, his meeting with Pope John Paul II, and his invitation to the pope to visit Cuba. This also drew attention to the Vatican, which occupied third place. Zaire and Rwanda also outranked the host because of the refugee and starvation situation there which came to dominate discussion at the conference.
Differences across agencies
Both the AP and Reuters were significantly more inclined to criticize than to praise the host nations. Calculated across all six conferences, 7% of references on the AP were positive, compared to 22.2% negative and 70.8% neutral. Reuters had a higher proportion of positive references (12.4%) than the AP, but an even higher proportion of its references were in a negative context (31.2%); the remaining 56.4% were neutral. IPS reports yielded a more even balance between positive (7.6%) and negative (9.1%) references, and were more frequently neutral (83.4%).
Discussion
We have no data on changes in public opinion toward the host nations that might have occurred as a result of the conferences. However, if one believes that “any publicity is good publicity” then our data demonstrate that being the venue of a summit does give the host nation a much higher profile compared to other participants than it received at the conferences it did not host. Assuming, however, that the intention of hosting is to gain favorable publicity, then the data are much more ambiguous.
Western host nations did indeed receive more overtly positive than negative coverage, but the numbers of references with either a positive or negative valence was relatively small compared to neutral references. And even the negative seldom had to do with the host's keystone policies or activities. Journalists clearly expected the logistics to be efficient, the accommodations to be comfortable, the security measures dependable, the host's national and international policies congruent with familiar Western norms.
Host countries in the developing regions underwent a far more critical appraisal. Whereas journalists presumably could assume a familiarity on the part of their audience with the national characteristics of the Western hosts, This was not always the case for the developing nations. The tendency was to highlight precisely those negative images that the hosts hoped to ameliorate - environmental degradation in Brazil, Islamic insurgency in Egypt, human rights violations in China.
These findings appear to support Manheim’s research on public diplomacy campaigns orchestrated on behalf of national governments by public relations firms.34 Manheim suggests that countries with high visibility and primarily negative valence in international news cannot move directly into a high visibility, positive valenced news position. Rather, they optimally must follow a path of first lowering visibility, then moving incrementally over the positive side of the valence axis before increasing visibility once again.
For example, given Brazil’s generally low visibility in international news coverage, by Manheim's model hosting a summit could offer that nation substantial opportunity to reconfigure its international image. However, the opportunity is constrained by the need to replace a negative association of Brazil with environmental degradation directly with a positive one.35 According to Jervis the veracity of this proposed new coupling lacks a record of credible and corresponding national behavior.36 In addition, Manheim suggests that the obviousness of the persuasive effort also minimizes its chances for success.37 This implies that Brazil and Egypt might have fared much better at the hand of the international press had they hosted a U.N. summit on a topic more compatible with their existing image and worked more slowly and cumulatively toward a better image, rather than choosing a spectacular event strategy.38
NOTES
1 Jarol B. Manheim, Strategic Public Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy (NY: Oxford University Press, 1994); Bosah Ebo, “Media Diplomacy and Foreign Policy: Toward a Theoretical Framework.,” in A. Malek (ed.) News Media and Foreign Relations: A Multifaceted Perspective (NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1997); Frank L. Rusciano, Roberta Fiske-Rusciano, Minmin Wang, The Impact of World Opinion on National Identity (1997:74).
2 Philip M.Taylor, Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media ince 1945 (London: Routledge, 1997).
3 Jarol B. Manheim, Strategic Public Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy.
4 D. Hallin and P. Mancini, Comparatively Speaking: Communication and Culture across Space and Time (London: Sage, 1992), 121-139; Jarol B. Manheim, Strategic Public Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy.
5 Frank L. Rusciano, Roberta Fiske-Rusciano, Minmin Wang, The Impact of World Opinion on National Identity; Yaacov Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decision Making (CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 260-295.
6 Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
7 James Larson and Heung-Soo Park, Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympics (CO: Westview Press, 1993).
8 Miguel de Moragas, Nancy Rivenburgh and James Larson, Television in the Olympics (London: John Libbey Publishing Co., 1995).
9 Steven Hess, International News and Foreign Correspondents (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1996).
10 Ralph Negrine, The Communication of Politics (London: Sage Publications, 1996); Yaacov Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decision Making (CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 260-295.
11 Yaacov Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decision Making, (CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 260-295.
12 Sheila Tefft, “In Beijing, Communism Beseiged,” Media Studies Journal (Fall, 1993) 59-64.
13 “United Nations Conferences: What Have They Accomplished?” U.N. Department of Public Information, 5 April 1998.
14 Frank L. Rusciano, Roberta Fiske-Rusciano, Minmin Wang, The Impact of World Opinion on National Identity.
15 T. Zaharopoulos and C. Punitha , “International Press Coverage of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit,” International Communication Bulletin, 1995, 30(1-2), 10-12,23.
16 Alvaro De Soto, U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, telephone conversation with the author, New York, Oct. 21, 1998.
17 “China tells West to back off on human rights,” Reuters, June 16, 1993.
18 “All and sundry won’t get past Austria’s gate,” IPS, May 12, 1993.
19 “Odds and ends from the Food Summit,” Reuters, Nov. 15, 1996.
20 “Earth Summit host Brazil has plenty of environment headaches,” Reuters, June 3, 1992.
21 “Rio cleans up for 1992 World Environment Conference,” AP, June 1, 1992.
22 “Pollution keeps tourists, holiday bathers away from Rio’s shore,” AP, June 2, 1992.
23 “Rich and poor nations clash at first eco-summit,” AP, June 3, 1992.
24 “Brazil accused of hiding dirt for Earth Summit,” AP, May 23, 1992.
25 “U.N. conference adopts population blueprint with reservations,” AP, Sept. 13, 1994.
26 “Conference to test Egypt’s success in quelling Muslim radicals,” AP, Sept. 1, 1994.
27 “Egyptian authorities not taking any chances,” IPS, Sept. 2, 1994.
28 “Bush urges consultation not confrontation with China,” AP, Sept. 11, 1995.
29 “China defends its population control policy,” AP, Aug.23, 1995.
30 “Hard road to travel, long way to go,” IPS, Sept. 3, 1995.
31 “Disabled women: We were charged extra at women’s conference,” AP, Sept. 15, 1995.
32 “Mammoth NGO parley set to open tomorrow,” IPS, Aug. 29, 1995.
33 “Hours Before Opening, Security, Disorganization Raise Tempers,” AP, Aug. 29, 1995.
34 Jarol B. Manheim, Strategic Public Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy.
35 Jacob Bendix and Carol Liebler, “Environmental Degradation on Brazilian Amazonia: Perspectives in U.S. News Media,” The Professional Geographer, 1991), 43 (4): 474-485.
36 Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations.
37 Jarol B. Manheim, Strategic Public Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy.
38 K.W. Deutsch, and R. L. Merritt, “Effects of Events on National and International Images,” in H.C. Kelman (ed.) International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (NY: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1965), 130-187.
Acknowledgement
The authors wish to thank the following people for their research assistance: Jodi Archer, Kristin Engstrand,
Mike Graubard, Alex Halavais, Greg Lang, Kelley McCoy, and Laurilee Sweeney. All are graduate students in the School of Communications at the University of Washington.
| |
