Transnational Media Events

TRANSNATIONAL MEDIATRANSNATIONAL EVENTS In September 2005, a newspaper in Denmark published 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed, the holy Prophet of Islam. Soon after publication, these pictures became part of various events, political projects and diplomatic action. All over the world, the cartoons – or interpretations of them – were connected to discursive struggles that pre-existed their drawing and publication. The cartoon event thus extended well beyond its immediate dramatic phase of spring 2006, both into the past and the future, and became at least a small landmark case of post-9/11 global media history. TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA EVENTS In this book, a community of international media researchers collects some of the lessons learned and questions provoked and offered by media coverage of The MOHAMMED CARTOONS and the the Mohammed cartoons in 16 countries, ranging from Denmark, Egypt and Argentina to Pakistan and Canada. The book looks at the coverage of the car- IMAGINED CLASH of CIVILIZATIONS toons and related incidents through a number of conceptual lenses: political spin, free speech theory, communication rights, the role of visuals and images in global communication, Orientalism and its counter-discourses, media’s relations to immigration policy, and issues of integration. Through this approach, the book aims at a nuanced understanding of the cartoon controversy itself as well as at more general insights into the role of the media in contemporary transnational and transcultural relations. Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius & Angela Phillips Eide, Phillips Elisabeth & Angela Risto Kunelius NordicNORDICOM Information Centre for Media and Communication Research University of Gothenburg Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden Telephone +46 31 786 00 00 (op.) Fax +46 31 786 46 55 Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius & Angela Phillips (eds.) E-mail: [email protected] www.nordicom.gu.se (eds.) NORDICOM NORDICOM Transnational Media Events Transnational Media Events The Mohammed Cartoons and the Imagined Clash of Civilizations Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius & Angela Phillips (eds.) NORDICOM Transnational Media Events The Mohammed Cartoons and the Imagined Clash of Civilizations Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius & Angela Phillips (eds.) © Editorial matters and selections, the editor; articles, individual contributors; Nordicom (with one exception, see page 117) ISBN 978-91-89471-64-1 Published by: Nordicom University of Gothenburg Box 713 SE 405 30 Göteborg Sweden Cover by: Daniel Zachrisson Printed by: Livréna AB, Göteborg, Sweden, 2008 Environmental certification according to ISO 14001 Contents Preface 7 I. INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius & Angela Phillips Contrapuntal Readings. Transnational Media Research and the Cartoon Controversy as a Global News Event 11 Chapter 2 Peter Hervik, Elisabeth Eide & Risto Kunelius A Long and Messy Event 29 Chapter 3 Amin Alhassan The Twelve Cartoons. A Discursive Inquiry 39 II. PROFESSIONAL ISSUES Chapter 4 Peter Hervik Original Spin and Its Side Effects. Freedom of Speech as Danish News Management 59 Chapter 5 Risto Kunelius & Amin Alhassan Complexities of an Ideology in Action. Liberalism and the Cartoon Affair 81 Chapter 6 Angela Phillips Who Spoke and Who was Heard in the Cartoons Debate? 99 Chapter 7 Karin Becker The Power of Pictures in Journalistic Discourse. As News, as Commentary, as Art 117 Chapter 8 Stephanie Craft & Silvio Waisbord When Foreign News Remains Foreign. Cartoon Controversies in the US and Argentine Press 133 III. CROSSING BOUNDARIES Chapter 9 Elisabeth Eide The Loop of Labelling. Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Cartoon Crisis 151 Chapter 10 Ibrahim Saleh The Bubble World of Polarization. Failing to Realize the Blind Spots in the Cartoon Controversy 173 Chapter 11 Oliver Hahn Pictures Travel, Discourses Do Not. Decontextualisation and Fragmentation in Global Media Communication 191 Chapter 12 Carolina Boe & Peter Hervik Integration through Insult? 213 Chapter 13 Angela Phillips & Hillel Nossek Ourselves and Our Others. Minority Protest and National Frames in Press Coverage 235 Chapter 14 Risto Kunelius & Hillel Nossek Between the Ritual and the Rational. From Media Events to Moments of Global Public Spheres? 253 John Durham Peters Afterword. In Quest of Ever Better Heresies 275 Notes on Contributors 289 Preface The researchers behind this effort are a mixture of academics from 15 countries, but actually from more, as several of us do not live and do research in our country of origin. Initially, we were drawn together by the global reactions ignited by 12 cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten, and our work has been in progress since May 2006. What began as a quickly gathered group of researchers has since become a global network of people with many transnational experiences, and we look forward to working on other issues. We would like to thank the supporting institutions that made this work pos- sible. The Helsingin Sanomat Foundation in Finland and its president Heleena Savela were key players in setting the project into motion in 2006; Culcom Strategic Research Programme at The University of Oslo and Freedom of Ex- pression Foundation in Norway helped us to sustain our efforts during 2007. Together these institutions have all helped us come together to present and discuss our findings and analyses. Without this opportunity, any meaningful research on transnational media events would be doomed. During the past two years, our collective has been considerably larger than the list of authors in this volume. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the researchers who contributed to the first country reports published by projekt verlag and the University of Dortmund in Germany (cf. Kunelius, Eide et al. 2007). Invaluable reports, from which this book draws freely, were authored or co-authored by Oleg Bakoulin from Russia, Zhengrong Hu and Liang Zheng from China, Katarina Wallentin from Sweden, Solveig Steien from Norway, Jerome Berthaut, Choukri Hmed, Solenne Jouanneau and Sylvain Laurens from France, Mari Maasilta and Jari Väliverronen from Finland, Clarissa Berg from Denmark, Tayo Oyedeji from the United States, David Lee from Great Britain, and Roland Schroeder and Désirée Gloede from Germany. Also a great thanks to Dr. Ade Armando, who joined us at a later stage and provided us with important material from the Indonesian press, as well research assistants Beenish Cheema and Vibeke Hoem who have done important work with the enormous material from Pakistan. Collectively, we also want to thank all the other participants who have joined us at our seminars and workshops in 7 PREFACE Finland and Norway and who have enthusiastically provided us with their advice and input. Richard Daly has meticulously worked through our different versions of English and edited the chapters to our great satisfaction. From an early stage, Ulla Carlsson at Nordicom has shown a keen and steady interest in the project. She has encouraged us during our past year of work; great thanks to a professional editor. We have also fortunate to work with Karin Poulsen and Per Nils- son who have patiently dealt with our endless corrections. We wish to warmly thank artist Lars Mjøen for the permission to print his Magritte/Mohammed painting (Chapter 7). We hope the book will inspire other media researchers to initiate similar collective endeavours. Other media events and processes will certainly raise global attention, and as media researchers, we should be prepared to deal with them by developing sharper and more diverse analytical tools. This was also the hope of Jan Ekecrantz, one key member of our group, who made a significant contribution to the project, but who sadly died before he could see this book completed. We would like to dedicate this book to the memory of Jan, a truly transnational intellectual. Oslo, Tampere & London, October 2008 Elisabeth Eide Risto Kunelius Angela Phillips 8 I. Introduction Chapter 1 Contrapuntal Readings Transnational Media Research and the Cartoon Controversy as a Global News Event Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius & Angela Phillips Media research sometimes resembles the very objects of research, the media themselves. A spectacle in the media attracts research projects, just as a war or a spectacular conflict sparks a flow of articles, books and commentary. In this sense, the people who have contributed chapters to this book are surely guilty as charged. The publication of the now famous twelve cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in Denmark in 2005 was followed by a heated controversy in the spring of 2006 that become a dramatic high point in (recent mediated) tensions between what has often been defined as the “Islamic world” versus the “West”. Although the actual news events provoked by the conflict during the spring of 2006 have now largely died down, it has become clear that the event has left an enduring residue in the form of a repertoire of images and assumptions. To a considerable extent, and from both “sides”, this residue has to do with modes of portraying each other as well reinforcing existing clichés that have been used to make sense of later news. At least in the short term the controversy seems to have become a defining moment, a landmark event. In this volume we offer a selection of readings that exhibit many of the ways in which the controversy has illuminated important trends and devel- opments in the current transnationally-mediated world of politics and social values. These interpretations are based on a two-year long transnational media research

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