Media, War & Conflict

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Examining the Danish cartoon affair: mediatized cross-cultural tensions? Shawn Powers Media, War & Conflict 2008 1: 339 DOI: 10.1177/1750635208097050

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Examining the Danish cartoon affair: mediatized cross-cultural tensions? • Shawn Powers University of Southern California, USA

ABSTRACT

Examined in the context of the rise of media infl uence in international confl ict, the Danish cartoon affair offers troubling evidence against the hope that changes in the global mediascape will provide productive space and means for reconciliation of international and intercultural tensions. This study outlines several ways in which the mainstream Western media constructed, performed, narrativized, and framed the Danish cartoon affair to specifi cally appeal to culturally problematic assumptions about Muslim society and culture. Drawing from concepts such as the ‘mediatized public crisis’ and ‘strategic framing’, this study found that Western mainstream media outlets drew heavily on Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ narrative, increasing public fear of Islamic culture, obscuring public understandings of the geopolitical and cultural realities underlying the affair, and further entrenching assumptions that have become barriers to productive cross-cultural dialogue.

KEY WORDS • clash of civilizations • cross-cultural dialogue • Danish cartoon affair • media rituals • mediatized public crisis • strategic framing

Introduction

International tensions are becoming increasingly defi ned and regulated through the global newsfl ow. Perceptions of success, failure, injustice and hero- ism are all controlled by the ability of a global citizenry, ever more tied together through information communication technologies, to see and hear about events taking place elsewhere. These conditions have facilitated an increase in the power and infl uence that is negotiated through media networks. Accordingly, scholarship regarding the role of the media in regulating international cross- cultural confl icts has grown signifi cantly in recent history. The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st have offered researchers numerous examples of the increased import and infl uence that news media have on the

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conduct and fl ow of international confl ict. Studies examining the possibility of a ‘CNN effect’ and of the potential benefi ts of ‘media-brokered diplomacy’, among others, have offered hope that the integration and diffusion of new media technologies and increased access to globalized media networks will provide enhanced opportunities for the de-escalation of confl ict (Gilboa, 2005a; 2005b; Volkmer, 2004; Wolfsfeld, 2004). Yet, to a large extent, literature regarding media and confl ict continues to focus on the impact that information communication technologies and media have on winning and losing wars. Little systematic work has been done to examine the consequences that these technological changes have on the formation of broader public attitudes, opinions and ideologies that are at the genesis of international tensions. While many have speculated of dramatic changes to come, not enough scholarship has analyzed particular aspects of today’s culturally grounded confl icts or articulated a nuanced understanding of the ways contemporary media technologies and operations allow for the escalation of tensions and/or the reconciliation of cultural antagonisms. This study is an effort to contribute to the burgeoning literature regarding the relationship between media and confl ict in the 21st century. While acknow- ledging the growing roles and import of media communications in the conduct of war, this study employs communications theories of media power, specifi cally the concepts of ‘mediatized rituals’ and ‘strategic framing’, in an effort to take account of the consequences that media performance and coverage of the Danish cartoon affair had on international tensions. Through an analysis of the media’s role in and coverage of the events that have collectively become known as the Danish cartoon affair, this study makes three principal arguments: (1) the Danish cartoon affair was an exceptional form of a media event in that, from start to fi nish, its escalation onto the global news agenda, as well as its ability to infl ame cross-cultural tensions was almost entirely dependent on the actions and motivations of parts of the mainstream media; (2) the events surrounding the affair were specifi cally narrativized, through the processes of strategic framing, in ways that mapped onto and drew from underlying cultural codes regarding Islam and cross- cultural confl ict; and (3) the collective performances and framing of the cartoon affair worked to further instantiate a ‘clash of civilizations’ narrative within Western discourse, a narrative that both obscures the underlying realities surrounding the affair and furthers problematic cultural assumptions about Islamic faith and culture. This study fi rst briefl y outlines the expanding roles that media play in the course of international confl ict, as well as the possible consequences that these trends are having on international confl icts. Second, it chronicles the

Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com at Slovak Academy of Sciences on March 23, 2011 Powers Examining the Danish cartoon affair 341 events that have come to collectively constitute the Danish cartoon affair. Third, it describes the concept of a ‘mediatized ritual’ and, more speciﬁ cally, explains how the Danish cartoon affair became a ‘mediatized public crisis’. Fourth, this study documents major trends and elements of the mainstream media’s coverage of the controversy, and analyzes their socio-political consequences in the context of the concept of ‘strategic framing’. Finally, it con- cludes with a brief discussion of the lessons learned from analyzing the Danish cartoon affair in the context of theories of media power, particularly in terms of better understanding the consequences of the rise of ‘information warfare’.

Media and conﬂ ict in the information age

The relationship between media and cross-cultural dialogue, especially in the context of international relations, is an increasingly contested and important one. The 20th century offered several examples of the potential ways in which media could act as a conduit for communication between international actors, at times even encouraging peaceful resolution to escalating international tensions. Media-brokered diplomacy, an expanding function of the media in international relations, refers to how journalists assume ‘mediation roles in complicated international confl icts’ (Gilboa, 2006: 610). Acting to directly intervene in international affairs, journalists and media organizations become autonomous actors and active participants in evolving international situations (Thussu and Freedman, 2003; Graber, 2002). Media-brokered diplomacy can occur both publicly and secretly, and typically occurs when a journalist encourages an innovative and diplomatic solution to an escalating international confl ict. An example of a successful intervention by a journalist is Walter Cronkite’s intervention in 1977 between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a situation where Cronkite drew on his media-generated social capital to push the two leaders into meeting and negotiating (Cronkite, 1996). Two more recent examples include British reporter Patrick Seale’s role in 2000 in breaking the deadlock in Israeli– Syrian negotiations, and Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s efforts in 2002 to mediate between the Putin administration and the Chechen terrorists responsible for taking over 700 hostages at the Moscow Theatre (Gilboa, 2006). Similarly, while secret media-brokered diplomacy is rarer, a prominent example of its importance in shaping international confl ict was when ABC News correspondent John Scali performed as the principle emissary in ex- changing information between a KGB consul, representing the Khrushchev government, and the Kennedy White House during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis (Scali, 1995).

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In practice, however, media often do more to play into the ideological, nationalistic and institutional groundings for international confl ict, especially in today’s diffused and increasingly particularized media environments. In an effort to conceptualize the changes that new media technologies have had on the conduct and fl ow of international confl ict, Webster (2003) proposes that scholars draw a distinction between ‘industrial war’ and ‘information war’. Industrial warfare, generally associated with the confl icts that took place between 1914 and the 1970s, was conducted by nation-states, involved disputes over territory or resources and mobilized signifi cant numbers of populations either as workers or as combatants in a nationally organized and coordinated industrialized war effort. On the other hand, information warfare is less dependent on the physical presence of soldiers and deployment of military assets than it is on the presence of ‘knowledge warriors’ connected to confl icts through electronic networks that facilitate micro and mass communication (Tumber and Webster, 2006: 31). Not only are weapons controlled by the fl ow of information across electronic mediums, but the communications themselves have become essential to the conduct and outcome of war. Moreover, in information wars, through their ability to provide distance between civilian populations and the actual physical confl ict, the dependence on media and information systems for knowledge of the war effort signifi cantly rises. Finally, the ascendance of the age of information warfare has facilitated the emergence of another critical variable in managing international confl ict, domestic and international public opinion:

Precisely because Information Warfare is typically waged in the name of democracy itself, then public approval is critical to its conduct. A corollary is that, while today the public are no longer mobilized to ﬁ ght wars as combatants, they are mobilized as spectators of war. (Webster, 2003: 64)

While some have contested Webster’s conception of information warfare, it is hard to dispute the rising importance of controlling the fl ow and content of information in contemporary international confl ict. Governments and international organizations alike are increasing their resources and focus on controlling the spread of information (Price, 2002). Moreover, geopolitical developments of the 21st century indicate that the diffusion of information communication technologies will present increasingly problematic challenges for any single organization’s efforts at managing information during and surrounding a confl ict. Particularly in the context of today’s ‘Global War on Terrorism’, a tangled battle that has exemplifi ed the growing importance of the hearts and minds of the global citizenry, information has assumed a position of premier value. Accordingly, structural changes in the international environment mean that ‘Information War commands enormous media

Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com at Slovak Academy of Sciences on March 23, 2011 Powers Examining the Danish cartoon affair 343 coverage, and media are so much more extensive than ever before’ (Tumber and Webster, 2006: 3).

The anatomy of the Danish cartoon affair

In September 2005, Flemming Rose, culture editor of the conservative Danish weekly Jyllands-Posten, solicited sketches of the Prophet Muhammad, hoping to spark a debate about self-censorship in Denmark. His call for illustrations was in response to a recent controversy over the diffi culty of fi nding an illus- trator willing to draw an image of the prophet Muhammad for the cover of a children’s book about the Islamic faith. Appalled by what he considered to be excessive self-censorship, Rose saw an opportunity to use his position as an editor of a well-distributed, albeit provincial European publication to initiate what he hoped would be a principled and productive discussion about the challenges of accommodating the practices of the Islamic faith in contemporary European societies (Hansen, 2006). Later that month, on 30 September, Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoon caricatures of the Prophet on page three of the paper’s second section. The caricatures were complemented with an article, penned by Rose (2005), where he argues ‘Muslims … demand a special position, insisting on special considerations of their religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech’. Two weeks later, as a sign of the original uproar surrounding the controversy, the Islamic Society of Denmark organized a group of approximately 5000 Muslims who engaged in a peaceful demonstration outside the Jyllands-Posten’s offi ces in Copenhagen, collectively demanding an apology from the newspaper. Interestingly, prior to the escalation of the outrage over the cartoons, Al-Fagr, a weekly Cairo-based newspaper, republished six of the cartoons on 17 October 2005, drawing little public condemnation or reaction. Al-Fagr’s reprinting of the cartoons was accompanied by an article strongly denouncing them as religiously blasphemous and culturally disrespectful. Demonstrating the growing concern over the images, and the escalation of the issue to the international agenda, on 19 October, ambassadors from 11 Muslim-majority countries requested a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Andres Fogh Rasmussen. The ambassadors collectively asked for Prime Minister Rasmussen ‘to take all those responsible to task under law of the land in the interest of inter-faith harmony, better integration and Denmark’s overall relations with the Muslim world’ (Ok et al., 2005). Prime Minister Rasmussen declined to meet the group, writing in a letter of response that ‘[t]he freedom of expression has a wide scope and the Danish government has no means of infl uencing the press’ (Rasmussen, 2005). In response, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs,

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Aboul Gheit, wrote letters to both the Prime Minister of Denmark and to the United Nations Secretary-General clarifying that the group only desired ‘an offi cial Danish statement underlining the need for and the obligation of respecting all religions and desisting from offending their devotees to prevent an escalation which would have serious and far-reaching consequences’ (cited in ‘Egypten gav Fogh mulighed for forsoning’ [Danish] (Politiken, 2006)). A month later, a group of Danish Muslims, lead by Ahmed Akkari, announced their decision to visit the Middle East to further publicize the cartoon controversy. Throughout the month of December, the Danish Muslim delegation visited Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut, where they presented a 43-page dossier that included the 12 original cartoons, in addition to three cartoon- like images that had not been published in any mainstream newspaper, several examples of anti-Muslim hate mail, and a controversial interview with Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In response to the increased publicity of the cartoons, as well as to the rising anger over the Danish government’s handling of the issue, leaders from 57 Muslim nations assembled in the holy city of Mecca to condemn the desecration of the image of Muhammad (Hansen, 2006). In early 2006, tensions began to escalate. As the events associated with the cartoons began receiving the attention of global news media, some Western news outlets were compelled to republish the caricatures of Muhammad, either in an effort to further explain the story, or to make a political statement in response to perceived attacks on the freedom of speech in Western European societies. On 10 January 2006, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador from Denmark, and a series of groups in the Middle East launched campaigns to boycott Danish products. Soon after, Libya announced the withdrawal of its ambassador from Denmark. In an effort to de-escalate tensions, on 30 January, Jyllands-Posten offered an apology on its website to any Muslims it may have offended, while maintaining that it stood by its original rationale and decision to publish the cartoons. Distracting international attention from the apology, on that same day, armed gunmen in the Gaza strip stormed the European Union (EU) offi ce, threatening to kidnap the workers unless the EU issued an offi cial apology for Jyllands-Posten’s publishing of the cartoons (Ratnesar, 2006). On 3 February Prime Minister Rasmussen agreed to meet with the foreign diplomatic corps in Copenhagen, urging for a de-escalation of tensions, and calling for dialogue and tolerance instead of violence. Yet, in response to the growing publicity given to Muslim anger, and the fear that Prime Minister Rasmussen had given up on protecting Western values, a series of right-of- center European newspapers continued to republish the cartoons. Led by Germany’s Die Welt, which published the most controversial of the images

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(depicting Prophet Muhammad with a fi zzing turban bomb) on its front page, the push back from the media set off a renewed wave of protests around the Muslim world. On 4 and 5 February mobs set fi re to Danish embassies in Damascus and Indonesia and to the Danish consulate in Beirut. On 8 February violent protests broke out in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran where some involved in the protests were killed. Finally, on 10 February, Flemming Rose, after receiving a series of death threats, decided to take an indefi nite leave of absence from Jyllands-Posten, citing ‘exhaustion and frustration’ (‘The Cartoons Row’, Guardian Unlimited (2006)).

The Danish cartoon affair: a mediatized public crisis

Simon Cottle (2006b: 415) deﬁ nes ‘mediatized rituals’ as ‘those exceptional and performative media phenomena that serve to sustain and/or mobilize collective sentiments and solidarities on the basis of symbolization and a subjunctive orientation to what should or ought to be’. Critical to understanding what a mediatized ritual is is clarifying what does not constitute a mediatized ritual:

To count as a ‘mediatized ritual’ the media will be doing something more than simply reporting or ‘mediating’ them; they will be performatively enacting them, that is, ‘doing something’ over and above reporting or representing and ‘mediatizing’ them in a subjunctive mode – invoking and sustaining public solidarities based on ideas and feelings (collective sentiments) about how society should or ought to be. (Cottle, 2006b: 415–16)

Suggesting that theories of moral panics, celebrated and contested media events, media disasters, mediated scandals and mediatized public crises are all speciﬁ c manifestations of mediatized rituals, these rituals are ‘exceptional events’, where media across space and time offer a plenitude of coverage and, to a certain extent, perform, through the processes of framing and agenda setting, suggesting a particular way in which a society should be or act. In an effort to further systematize the mediatized ritual typology, Cottle (2006b: 427) argues we can best understand the inﬂ uence of media within particular situations by looking to the numerous roles they play during the unfolding of dramatic events, including: ‘instigator’, ‘conductor’, ‘narrator’, ‘mediator’, ‘advocate’, ‘campaigner’ and ‘champion’. While the different types of mediatized rituals outlined above are not necessarily analytically distinct, Cottle’s conception of the mediatized public crisis is of particular relevance to understanding the media’s role in the Danish cartoon affair. Differentiating mediatized public crises from other types of mediatized rituals is their narrative progression, where stories are constructed and propagated, through a series of discernable phases, by media

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institutions in order to explain the course of events over a given period of time (Cottle, 2006b: 424). Theorized with regard to their socially transgressive and potentially dramatic effects on public attitudes and behaviors, the concept of a mediatized public crisis draws heavily from anthropologist Victor Turner’s model of social drama in analyzing social conﬂ ict:

At its simplest, the drama consists of a four-stage model, proceeding from breach of some social relationship regarded as crucial in the relevant social group, which provides not only its setting but many of its goals, through a phase of rapidly mounting crisis in the direction of the group’s major dichotomous cleavage, to the application of legal or ritual means of redress or reconciliation between the conﬂ icting parties which compose the action set. The ﬁ nal stage is either the public and symbolic expression of reconciliation or else of irremediable schism. (cited in Cottle, 2006a: 61)

Read in the context of mediatized conﬂ ict, Turner’s model ‘encourages a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the contingencies of power – both strategic and symbolic – and how these are enacted through time and in relation to the possibilities of the unfolding “social drama’’’ (Cottle, 2006b: 424). Thus, understanding mediatized public crises as social dramas provides an additional level of analytic depth, pointing to the importance of examining social dramas not as singular events but as the unfolding of a series of occurrences that are typically narrated by media through the deployment of deeply cultural and ideological stories and conventions. In their work on studying the relationship between media and civil society, Alexander and Jacobs (1998: 32) outline news media’s capacity to ‘trigger violent reactions, dislodge powerful people and motivate the formation of social movements’ through the creation of mediatized public crises. Arguing that media inﬂ uence stems from their ‘construction of common identities and universalistic solidarities, in multiple publics and multiple sites of reception’, Alexander and Jacobs (1998: 27) suggest that ‘media events, which attract larger audiences than any other communication media, have tremendous potentials in terms of media power, because they erase the divide between private and public, and also because they dramatize the symbols, narratives, and cultural codes of a particular society’. Essential to Alexander and Jacobs’ conception of media events is the incorporation of mediatized narratives into the images and facts of a se- quence of incidents, whereby media ‘perform’ a story over time to meet the expectations of a particular audience. ‘Media events serve the legitimation needs for societies (not necessarily states) … they provide the cultural grounds for attachment to the “imagined community’’’ (1998: 28). In this sense, imagined communities are formed through the progression of connecting individual sentiments to collective narratives of current events, a process that

Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com at Slovak Academy of Sciences on March 23, 2011 Powers Examining the Danish cartoon affair 347 places news media at the center of the social change process. Mediatized public crises differ from traditional conceptions of media events in that they ‘tend to increase the distance between the indicative and subjunctive’, exposing social ills and creating space and a sense of exigency for civic action to overcome the social pollutants (Alexander and Jacobs, 1998: 28). For example, drawing from Elihu Katz’s research on media power, Alexander and Jacobs contend that media are important ‘for actively constructing common identities and common solidarities’, suggesting ‘that the media is concerned not only with the diffusion of information to a mass public, but also – and this is particularly true for media events – with the dramatization of civil society and the creation of a common cultural framework for building common identities’ (Alexander and Jacobs 1998: 28). Cottle’s conceptualization of the mediatized ritual stems from Alexander and Jacobs’ research, among others, and is signifi cant in that it provides a more nuanced understanding of media events and spectacles. Categorically vague, these concepts have offered little insight into the specifi c operations of power, actors, and social forces at play when studying a particular event or spectacle. With specifi c emphasis on studying ‘how the media serve to sustain or mobilize collective sentiments and (pluralized) solidarities within structured fi elds of dominance, difference and inequality’, the mediatized ritual, with particular emphasis on the mediatized public crisis, is particularly helpful in decoding the Danish cartoon affair (Cottle, 2006a: 425). Analyzing the specifi c performative nature of mediatized rituals is essential to understanding the social forces and actors involved in the constitution of competing publics. According to Cottle (2006a: 428), ‘ideas of performance and performativity invite analysis of the ways in which media purposefully deploy symbolization and sentiments, views and voices, and rhetorically embody solidaristic appeals’. In the case of the Danish cartoon affair, the media was unusually ‘performative’ in that the controversy was a media-instigated public crisis. Explaining his decision to commission and publish the cartoons, Rose notes:

I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam … Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter. (2006: B01)

Commenting on the escalating violence regarding the cartoons, Rose continues by noting that this is not ‘the sort of debate that Jyllands-Posten had hoped to generate’. Previous media events, such as spectacles related to the globalization of McDonalds, the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, controversies regarding Nike’s human rights standards, or the 2000 American Presidential election were each largely governed by certain and real social forces outside

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the control of media organizations. The Danish cartoon affair, however, was considerably reliant on and escalated by a series of performative acts by media institutions to maintain its emotional resonance and international stature. In Cottle’s terms, the performative role of the media needs to be understood as part of a larger symbolization process where media draw from culturally familiar myths and stories to recreate and reconstitute community solidarities. Thus, Rose’s decision to instigate a public discussion regarding the rising self- censorship among European media organizations can best be read as an effort to re-enact a cultural battle between defenders of a particular conception of Western free-speech principles and their Muslim counterparts. Rose, of course, expressed an explicit hope that the idealized Western enlightenment values would prevail, once in the public’s spotlight. Already, at the outset of the controversy, we begin to see what the ought of the mediatized public crisis is, at least from the perspective of the instigating media organization. These media performances – initially by Jyllands-Posten, but also later by newspapers in Germany, Egypt, France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, India, South Korea and Switzerland, to name a few – are a powerful demonstration of the media’s agenda-setting clout.1 Originally theorized by McCombs and Shaw (1972), the media’s agenda-setting power is best described as a gatekeeping role, or an ability to determine the salience of particular topics in the public agenda through their conscious and sub- conscious decisions to cover and emphasize certain events and sources of evidence above others. The commissioning, publishing, and re-publishing of the cartoons all represent potent examples of the media’s ability to direct the tone and topic of public discourse. What makes this case exceptional, however, is the clearly performative aspects of the media’s decisions to publish (and re-publish) the cartoons. Far from the oft-idealized role of media as a neutral conduit of information to the general public, the decisions to print the sensationalized cartoons were, in many cases, made in explicit response and protest to perceived social ills. The French newspaper France Soir explained its decision to belatedly publish the cartoons as a response to the escalation of ‘religious dogma’ that has ‘no place in a secular society’ (‘France Enters Muslim Cartoon Row’, BBC News (2006)). Rather than explaining the cartoons (or the affair) as individually newsworthy events, several prominent newspapers intentionally published the controversial images to make a social statement of cultural and political signiﬁ cance. It was these performances, among others, that helped propagate the Danish cartoon affair throughout the global news agenda, as well as escalate the intensity of the protests and the ideological framing of the ‘Cartoon Jihad’ (Guitta, 2006). Yet, the media’s agenda-setting power cannot be read outside of Cottle’s conception of mediatized rituals. The Danish cartoon affair became an

Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com at Slovak Academy of Sciences on March 23, 2011 Powers Examining the Danish cartoon affair 349 international mediatized public crisis not only because of the performative decisions of media organizations, but also because the cultural antagonisms it touched upon were already conspicuous among a diverse set of publics, albeit relatively hidden in terms of their discussion in the larger public sphere. Indeed, Rose’s instigation to commission and publish the caricatures was ‘the culmination of a series of disturbing self-censorship’, events that had been raised in the mass-mediated public sphere earlier that month in an article published in the Danish newspaper, Politiken, titled: ‘A Profound Fear of Criticizing Islam’ (cited in Hansen, 2006: 8). Rose (2006: B01) also claims that he was particularly motivated by a discussion he had with a Danish stand-up comedian who said in an interview that he had ‘no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran’. These and other events identiﬁ ed by Rose coincided with mounting tensions regarding the integration of Muslim immigrants into European society, all of which represent the growing salience of the issue of self-censorship with regard to discussing sensitive aspects of or criticizing the Islamic faith.2 Accordingly, the original narrativization of the cartoons, where Western values and actors were pitted against Muslim opinion leaders and protestors, ﬁ tted neatly into existing cultural assumptions among Western and Muslim groups about each other.

Strategically framing the Danish cartoon affair

Samuel Huntington’s (1993) now infamous clash of civilizations thesis, where he described the post-Cold War geopolitical environment in terms of eight ideologically opposed civilizations, has had resonance in both Western and Islamic media narration, particularly since the events that took place on September 11 2001. Suggesting an inevitable clash or incompatibility between Western and Islamic ‘civilizational identities’, Huntington’s thesis has permeated policy-maker discourse and media narrativization of issues relating to Islamic and Western cultural conﬂ icts. Despite its numerous critics, and almost widespread dismissal among serious scholars of international relations, content analysis research has demonstrated how Western and Arab media organizations often narrate the news in the context of an inevitable and uncompromising battle between Western and Islamic cultures (Abrahamian, 2003; Hafez, 2000; Norris et al., 2003). Phil Seib explains the trend by pointing to how recent events have:

pushed many in the news media toward a de facto adoption of the Huntington theory … The 9/11 attacks, the resulting Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War begun in 2003 all lend themselves to political and journalistic shorthand: We have a new

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array of villains, and they have Islam in common. That must mean that a clash of civilizations is under way. (2004: 76)

Interestingly, according to a content analysis of Jyllands-Posten’s historical coverage of issues related to Islam and Muslim integration into European societies, the paper has a history of not only hurtful remarks towards the Islamic faith and those that follow it, but also of contextualizing events fea- turing the tensions between European modernism and Islamic faith into Huntington’s clash frame (Hervik, 2006). Media coverage of the Danish cartoon affair took this phenomenon to another level. Not only did the framing of stories focus on the battle between ‘principled Western values’ defending freedom of expression and ‘Islamic religious extremists’, but the nuance of the affair, the non-religious, political and geopolitical factors involved, and the non-stereotypical Islamic or Western reactions were each under-reported and de-emphasized. Alternative frames, such as ones focusing on reconciliation and respect, two themes outlined in the letter sent from Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs to the United Nations Secretary-General, rarely commanded the newspaper headlines or televised images surrounding the affair. Rather, the mainstream Western media used the events that transpired to reconstruct a sensationalized scenario for a clash between Islam and the West. For example, Clifford D. May, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, describes the controversy as a ‘cartoon intifada’, arguing:

All but the most self-deluded among us recognize that militant Islamists are waging a War Against the West, a deadly jihad against Christians, Jews, Hindus and moderate Muslims … They are Muslim supremacists – ideological heirs to those who, in the 20th century, fought for Aryan supremacy and white supremacy. (May, 2006)

Similarly, Sara Bjerg Moller, in the Los Angeles Times, also explained the cartoon affair along these lines:

From the beginning, much more than freedom of expression has been at stake in the row over the cartoons. At issue is whether two cultures can coexist if Muslims refuse to accept one of the basic tenets of liberalism: the right of others to express their views, however offensive, without the threat of violent reprisal. The Muslims who torched embassies, and the governments that did not condemn them, have shown themselves incapable of understanding what pluralistic societies are all about. (Moller, 2006: B13)

Moreover, the Western media were certainly not alone in framing the cartoon affair in terms of a clash of civilizations. Libyan Leader Mu’ammar Al-Qadhaﬁ (2006), speaking on Al-Jazeera, called for worldwide protest against the cartoons, concluding: ‘Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They

Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com at Slovak Academy of Sciences on March 23, 2011 Powers Examining the Danish cartoon affair 351 should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims’. The Arab printed press was no different, also relying on power- fully entrenched cultural codes. Raza (2006) of the Pakistani Daily Times is an exemplar in this case, penning his summary of the affair under the banner: ‘Cartoons Were Meant to Fuel Clash of Civilizations’. Media experts also observed that Jyllands Posten’s apology was not covered and even denied in many Arab media outlets, including Al-Jazeera (‘Behind the Headlines’, Asharq Al-Awsat (2006)). In the context of a mediatized public crisis, choices to emphasize particular elements of the cartoon affair should be read as strategic decisions that played into ideological fears and stereotypes about cultural conﬂ ict in the post-9/11 world. Indeed, the events that constitute the ‘Danish cartoon controversy’, a series of quasi-discrete incidents, become connected collectively only through the storytelling of policy-makers, opinion leaders, interpersonal conversations and media. Of particular importance was mainstream Western media coverage of the reactions of Muslim extremists, especially of the violent protests in Syria, Lebanon and Indonesia, where the Danish embassies were ‘destroyed by mobs’, as well as of particularly extreme protests in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. Criticizing the sensationalized and fear-mongering coverage of the mainstream media, Olivier Roy points out:

Except for a small fringe of radicals who presume to speak for Islam, mainstream Muslims, especially in Europe, have reacted with impressive moderation to what they rightly see as an outrage. There have been no huge demonstrations on the Continent, no calls for boycotts, no sit-ins, no incitements to violence. (Roy: 2006)

The media’s focus on the protests, however, is worthy of signifi cant con- sideration. Previous research on anti-globalization movements has found that ‘media visuals of demonstrations and protests are often highly partisan and semiotically aligned to editorial outlooks’ (Cottle, 2006a: 49). Accordingly, the most potent media performances in the mediatized confl ict may be revealed in their coverage and framing of the Muslim protests related to the cartoons. A more careful genealogy of events points to a series of attempts by Muslim opinion leaders and policy-makers to protest the cartoons in the most ‘Western’ of ways, including trying to initiate cross-cultural conversations at the policy-making level, as well as arguing at the United Nations General Assembly for formal moral condemnation of the allegedly blasphemous cartoons. Yet, the media’s emphasis on the violent protests prevailed throughout the coverage. Important examples come not only from daily newspaper coverage, but also in scholarly efforts at summarizing the course of events. Oftentimes, in an effort to explain the socio-political signifi cance of the

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controversy, scholars jumped immediately to parts of the affair’s violent ending, evading a more nuanced discussion of how things came to be:

Demonstrations were organized … during which radical Islamists brandished placards stating: ‘Slay [also butcher/ massacre/ behead/ exterminate] those who insult Islam’, ‘Free speech go to hell’, ‘Europe is the cancer and Islam is the cure’, and ‘Europe will pay, your 9/11 is on its way’ … In Damascus, demonstrations were organized outside the Swedish and Danish embassies, and the building housing both was set on ﬁ re by a mob. The Norwegian embassy was next, and it too burned. In Beirut, protesters set the Danish embassy ablaze. In Gaza, the same happened to a German cultural centre. Demonstrations became ever more violent, and in Somalia, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan people were killed. When the protests ﬁ nally ended, some 139 people were dead. (Hansen, 2006: 10)

Perhaps most troubling is not the speciﬁ c emphasis on the violent nature of some of the protests, but the coupling of images and/or descriptions of violence with particular slogans or banners that could be picked out of the crowds of protestors during protest rallies. In even the most benign of efforts at describing the events that took place in the lead up to the crisis, the Guardian could not help but reference the most extreme of protest slogans, including: ‘Butcher those who mock Islam, Behead those who mock Islam and Europe you’ll pay, [and] Bin Laden is on his way’ (‘The Cartoons Row’, Guardian Unlimited 7 February 2006). Similarly, CNN’s Brent Sadler, speaking on The Situation Room, introduced a segment interview with Flemming Rose in grossly sensationalized terms:

Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa on yet another deadly day of protest, amid deepening fears among some western leaders that unless voices of moderation from both inside and outside the Islamic world succeed in calming this rage, this global revolt may get even worse…With other protests from Asia to Africa, Denmark’s prime minister, now calls the situation a growing global crisis. (Sadler and Foreman, 2006)

Sadler’s introduction to the cartoon affair was followed by explication from CNN correspondent Tom Foreman (Sadler and Foreman, 2006) who context- ualized the ‘growing global crisis’ quite explicitly using Huntington’s clash of civilizations narrative:

Starting here in Africa, going through the Middle East here, on past India over here and all the way down into Indonesia … These protests span the Muslim world … This is precisely what Osama bin Laden has said for years that he wants, a clash of civilizations between the entire Muslim world and the entire western world. (Sadler and Foreman, 2006)

While Rose proceeded to offer an apology to all those he and his paper had offended, also stressing his deep respect for the Islamic faith, CNN’s placement

Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com at Slovak Academy of Sciences on March 23, 2011 Powers Examining the Danish cartoon affair 353 of the interview into overly simplistic images of escalating violence encouraged a stereotypical understanding of the confl ict rather than an exploration of the possibilities that Rose’s apology and explanation provided for cross-cultural reconciliation. Read in the context of escalating and allegedly irrational Islamic violence, Rose’s apology was most likely not just misunderstood, but even perceived as weakness in the face of an ideological enemy, a narrativization of Rose’s position that almost entirely removes its potential for rapprochement. Overall, by coupling violence with explicitly hateful and culturally powerful slogans, mainstream Western media portrayed Muslims not only as socially deviant and politically violent, but also constructed the affair’s events into a narrative that presented the violence as a signifi cant threat targeting, in Huntington’s terms, ‘Western civilization’. Framing, of course, is not only important in terms of the directions in which particular media frames infl uence public discourse on an issue, but also in terms of its political and strategic utility. Pan and Kosicki (2001: 2) argue that framing is best understood as a process where ‘strategic actors [utilize] symbolic resources to participate in collective sense-making about public- policy issues’. Accordingly, framing analysis is an important area of inquiry in that news frames often shape the types and directions of deliberation among the public, an essential element of democratic governance. Pan and Kosicki make three primary arguments to advance framing research: (1) framing is a strategic process in that all actors have particular political and social agendas that become relevant in their presentation and discussion of issues, even if subconsciously; (2) framing is symbolic and dramatic, part of a process of the narrativization of information that strongly infl uences the boundaries, actors, and import of a given issue; and (3) framing potency (the likelihood that a particular frame will be triggered in the collective decision-making process) can be maximized through a process of ‘frame alignment’ (where a particular frame becomes discursively and ideologically aligned with others in an effort to create an imagined ‘discursive community’ that, ideally, forms a public opinion), also understood as an actor’s ‘web of subsidies’.3 Pan and Kosicki’s conception of strategic framing and their model for analyzing media frames are helpful in understanding the means and consequences of framing of the Danish cartoon affair. Moreover, their model for examining the specifi c framing decisions, narrativization processes, and frame alignment offers a specifi c method to analyze the ‘performative nature of mediatized rituals’ that Cottle calls for. In this particular context where mainstream media organizations both propelled a particular agenda item into the international spotlight, while simultaneously cultivating a simplifi ed and ideologically charged narration of global events, it is hard not to read their behaviors in any way other than strategic.

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An obvious benefi t to utilizing the clash narrative while emphasizing the violent nature of Muslim protests stems from the media’s ability to tap into cultural codes, but also from the benefi ts of sensationalizing and dramatizing global events. Media scholars have found substantial evidence documenting the effects that increased perceptions of fear and threat have on media consumption patterns among consumers (Ball-Rokeach, 1985; Loges, 1994). Thus, through a continued and escalating emphasis on the violent nature of the protests, their connections to Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the overall struggle against terrorism, media narrativized the cartoon controversy by increasing collective perceptions of threat associated to the events that constituted the affair, in turn increasing audience dependency on mass media systems for information. As dependency increases, so do ratings, which results in added credibility and profi ts for the media organizations that relied so heavily on the clash narrative. Moreover, Pan and Kosicki’s call for scholars to examine how the specifi c narrations and dramatic symbols deployed by media shape perceptions of actors, intentions and consequences is helpful in dissecting precisely how Western media contributed to the escalation of cross-cultural tensions throughout the course of the Danish cartoon affair. By repeatedly emphasizing the incongruence of Islamic and Western cultures, as well as the extremism and reactionary elements of some Muslims’ reactions, Western media encouraged an account of events that furthered stereotypes of Muslim culture and politics. In doing so, Western media by and large provided what seemed to be substantial evidence for the clash of civilizations thesis, a political myth that has repeatedly been identifi ed as counterproductive in facilitating cross-cultural reconciliation (Bottici and Challand, 2006). Philip Cass outlines the specifi c consequences that sensationalized media coverage of the Muslim protests can have on cross-cultural dialogue:

The problem is that by staging such violent demonstrations, those Muslims who take part are presenting the Western-world with exactly the images they fear the most: Screaming crowds, burning buildings and apparently uncontrolled mobs driven mad by religious mania. All this does is to convince Europeans that Muslims as a whole are dangerous religious fanatics with whom any dialogue is impossible. It is of no wonder that the opposition to Dubai Ports’ acquisition of a handful of American harbours and the EU’s reluctance to supply any more funds to the Palestinian Authority has come in the wake of these incidents. (Cass, 2006: 152–3)

Yet, not only were there other forms of protest that mainstream media could have focused on, but there were also other aspects of the affair that could have been emphasized to actually counter the harmful clash narrative. Perhaps most important is the growing evidence documenting how governments in

Downloaded from mwc.sagepub.com at Slovak Academy of Sciences on March 23, 2011 Powers Examining the Danish cartoon affair 355 the Middle East, as well as religious extremist groups, both utilized state-run and regulated media organizations and new media technologies in order to spread disinformation about the cartoons in an effort to incite anger towards the West. For instance, there is signifi cant evidence that both the Taliban and Al- Qaeda intervened in several countries to purposefully escalate the protests by inciting violence, interventions that resulted in police crackdowns and retaliations against the otherwise peaceful protestors (Ghazi, 2006). More- over, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2006), among others, criticized the governments of Iran and Syria for each using ‘this opportunity to incite violence’. Rice argued publicly that both governments had intentionally allowed for the dissemination of misinformation and infl amed represent- ations of the images in order to redirect the growing public dissatisfaction with the internal state of affairs towards a growing source of constructed dis- content, perceived Western disrespect. Thus, by focusing on the violent nature of some demonstrations, mainstream Western media obscured the socio- political motivations behind the protests, many of which could have revealed information disputing the cultural myths that the clash of civilizations narrative depends upon. Finally, Pan and Kosicki’s emphasis on analyzing the framing potency and frame alignment serves as a productive theoretical backdrop for understanding the media’s predominant reliance on the clash of the civilizations frame. If a particular frame’s chances of acceptance increase with its greater alignment to existing ideological norms and cultural mores, then the widespread public acceptance of media reliance on the clash frame speaks not only to acts of strategic framing, but also refl ects the dominant cultural thinking with regard to cross-cultural reconciliation. Thus, while the affair provides evidence of the media’s ability to incite and propagate a mediatized public crisis, the media’s power to incite such a public crisis is entirely tied to the intensity and elasticity of existing and underlying cultural narratives.

Conclusion

Examined in the context of the rise of the infl uence of media in international confl ict, the Danish cartoon affair offers unfortunate evidence against the hope that changes in the global mediascape will provide productive space and means for reconciliation of international (cultural) tensions. This study outlines several of the ways in which the mainstream Western media constructed, performed, narrativized, and framed the Danish cartoon affair to specifi cally appeal to culturally problematic assumptions about Muslim people

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and culture. Cottle’s (2006b) conception of the ‘mediatized public crisis’ is defi ned by three principle characteristics: (1) media performativity; (2) a call for what should be; and (3) the use of narratives and cultural codes to invoke public support. This study found substantial evidence to support the argument that the Danish cartoon affair constituted a mediatized public crisis, albeit far from the transgressive role envisioned by Cottle, and Alexander and Jacobs (1998). First, the mainstream media’s intentional and repeated instantiation of the necessity of publishing the cartoons represents not only a palpable example of agenda setting, but also of how media can very clearly perform mediatized rituals. Essential to the performance of many in the Western media was the deployment of cultural symbols – through the process of editorializing, framing, and publishing images and cartoons – with the intent to send Muslim protestors and opinion leaders a political message, e.g. ‘you can’t scare us’. Second, Western media (as well as others) made clear that there was a sizeable gap between the ‘is and the ought’; the growing sense of self-censorship regarding matters sensitive to the Islamic faith and the Western-democratic foundational right to, and protection of, the freedom of speech. Many mainstream media institutions, particularly several European newspapers, took a clear and antagonistic stance on this question. Finally, by drawing from the deeply entrenched clash of civilizations narrative in describing the events of the affair, many media organizations intentionally deployed culturally- inscribed solidaristic appeals – particularly those that invoked fear – in order to appeal for public support and construct collective public cohesion behind their cause. Moreover, by examining the specifi c symbols and frames employed, this study revealed a repeated effort by Western mainstream media to not only draw from the culturally resonant ‘clash’ thesis, but to also actively and intentionally provide packages of symbolized images and stories to further problematic stereotypes of Muslim societies. Most importantly, the disproportionate focus on the violent nature of some Muslim protests functioned to further entrench cultural fears of Islam writ-large, thus decreasing the propensity for effective cross-cultural dialogue. Finally, this study suggests that the framing of the circumstances of the Danish cartoon affair were strategically chosen in an effort to sensationalize the events, deploying symbols that invoked fear and in turn increased the dependence of many on mainstream media for information about the escalating ‘crisis’. Altogether, these fi ndings provide evidence pointing to caution, both in the hope for transformations in media technologies and institutions to decrease the propensity for international confl ict, but also for the proposed liberatory function Cottle envisions for mediatized public crises.

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Notes

1 The cartoons were reprinted in newspapers in more than 50 countries. For a complete list of newspapers that reprinted the images, see: ‘List of Newspapers that Reprinted Jyllands-Posten’s Muhammad Cartoons’, Wikipedia, available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_that_reprinted_Jyllands- Posten%27s_Muhammad_cartoons 2 For more, see: Smith (2006); Islam (2004); Ammitzbøll and Vidino (2007). 3 The concept of the web of subsidies may require further elaboration. Defi ned as the ‘institutionally structured and strategically cultivated networks through which resources for infl uence in public deliberation fl ow’, the web of subsidies is constituted from ‘access and control to material resources, strategic alliances, and stock of knowledge and skills in frame sponsorship’. Accordingly, an actor’s resources depend on a multitude of variables with regard to its place in the political sphere, ideological alignments, and strategic networks (Pan and Kosicki, 2001: 12).

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Biographical note

Shawn Powers is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, focusing on media diplomacy and cross-cultural communications. He is currently a Research Associate at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia in Communication Studies and Political Science, and has worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. Address: USC Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California, 3502 Watt Way, Suite 103, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA. [email: [email protected]]

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