The Role of Blogs and Visuals Between Victory and Defeat
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School of Journalism and Mass Communications Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences THE ROLE OF BLOGS AND VISUALS BETWEEN VICTORY AND DEFEAT BY Osman Mohammad A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF DIGITAL MEDIA, COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM Specialization: Risk Communication & Crisis Journalism Supervisor: Assistant Professor Vassilis Vamvakas 2019 Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Vassilis Vamvakas for his support, valuable suggestions and very constructive criticism for the completion of this research. Abstract We are living in an era where information management plays a crucial role and the message is widespread through various mediums due to an increasingly complex political and media landscape. As the fourth pillar of the state, the news media has had significance in society for many decades. Ordinary citizens acquire global political and social issues through media platforms. Information conveyed through the news media has a strong effect on how individuals think and rethink about the possible outcomes of agenda-setting, priming, and framing. This study intends to examine the effects of media frames used by leading news agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom for the two Iraq wars (1991 and 2003) and, in contrast, an individual frame of news investigation through the internet as critical reporting or self-framing. This research paper examines the role of participatory journalism (online) by official and ordinary internet users to challenge the corporate mass media that keeps the communication strategies in a grey area. The study will investigate the concept of blogging and the effectiveness of the internet during conflicts when it is difficult to report from the battlegrounds. The alternative reporting of war and conflicts have had an impact on mainstream media, i.e. the whole concept of the Arab Spring was based on new media and citizen journalism. A qualitative textual analysis has been applied to examine the coverage of the conflict by mainstream media and independent users of social media during the 2003 Iraq War in order to challenge the ideological model of war and the structural limitations of the mainstream media faced by the journalist community, such as misleading information due to the professional environment, political barriers, national agenda, ratings, and profits. The study aims to shed light on alternative reporting that destabilizes the position of war correspondents, such as private military blogs, independent bloggers, and the circulation of pictures on the private networks of army personnel. Keywords Information management, global security propaganda, Saddam-Al-Qaida network i Abstract .................................................................................................................................. i Keywords ............................................................................................................................... i CHAPTER 1 ..........................................................................................................................1 1.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................1 1.2 Objective ......................................................................................................................2 1.3 Research Questions .......................................................................................................2 1.4 Ideologies of Wars ........................................................................................................2 CHAPTER 2 ..........................................................................................................................4 2.1 Literature Review .........................................................................................................4 2.1.1 Framing .............................................................................................................4 2.2 Types of News Media Framing .....................................................................................7 2.2.1 Episodic Frames .....................................................................................................7 2.2.2 Thematic Frames ....................................................................................................7 2.2.3 Agenda Setting .......................................................................................................9 2.2.4 Agenda Extension ................................................................................................ 10 2.2.5 Audience Frame ................................................................................................... 11 2.2.6 Classic Model of Communication ........................................................................ 11 CHAPTER 3 ........................................................................................................................ 12 3.1 Individual Framing ..................................................................................................... 12 3.2 Theories of Alternative Media..................................................................................... 13 3.3 Alternative Media for Blogging .................................................................................. 13 CHAPTER 4 ........................................................................................................................ 23 4.1 Methodology............................................................................................................... 23 4.1.1 Media Frames used before the first Iraq War of 1991 ........................................... 24 4.1.2 Media Frames used before the second Iraq War of 2003 ....................................... 26 4.1.3 Independent Bloggers / Individual Frames during the Iraq War 2003.................... 27 ii CHAPTER 5 ........................................................................................................................ 33 5.1 Results/Findings ......................................................................................................... 33 5.2 Discussion .................................................................................................................. 38 5.3 Drawbacks of citizen journalism (online media) .......................................................... 47 5.4 Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research .............................................. 47 5.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 48 Bibliography......................................................................................................................... 52 Figure 1 - Five Questions Article Colby Buzzell ................................................................... 20 Figure 2 - My War Book Cover Colby Buzzell ..................................................................... 21 Figure 3 - Infamous photos of US Soldiers torturing Iraqi Prisoners. .................................... 27 Figure 4 - Snarling dogs and enforced nudity Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. ........................ 28 Figure 5 - Salam Pax Book Cover. ........................................................................................ 30 Figure 6 - Baghdad Burning Book Cover .............................................................................. 32 iii CHAPTER 1 1.1 Introduction This study aims to investigate news reports that supported the military coup for the two Iraq wars, and the way that journalists had defended the argument of war in favour of national interest and considered the enemy as a major threat to global peace and stability. This research is also useful in analysing the differences in the used frames between news stories and online individual frames. In the early 2000s, there was a heated debate that Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were hidden in Iraq. This argument got intensive publicity through the media. In 2002, both the ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, and the ex-President of the United States, George Bush (junior), expressed their concerns in a press conference that Iraq had denied International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors access to a nuclear site and there was evidence that Iraq was in a position to develop nuclear weapons within six months. Three weeks later, in a press conference, the chief spokesperson of the IAEA, Mark Gwozdecky, disagreed with such claims. The attack on Iraq in 2003 was an executive order of President George W. Bush. The United States is not a truly democratic society when it comes to global policy. It is more appropriate to say it is a pluralistic society where top-level decisions reflect the authoritarian approach (Paul, 2004). President Bush (junior) called it the ‘Axis of Evil' and the Bush administration was successful in convincing the world that Iraq possessed WMDs and the military action in Iraq was part of the ‘War on Terror’ strategy. Framing the news helps researchers to understand how public opinion is shaped by the media. The newspapers of the United States and the United Kingdom have framed the war to support global peace, regional stability in the Middle East and portrayed the President of Iraq as an enemy of the West. The advancement of technology, its access to the general audience, and the internet led to a negative reaction to the