F1218 A Violent world: TV News Images of Middle Eastern Terror and War (F1218)
Thursday 17.00-18.30
The course will deal with the televised audiovisual ideological framing of Middle Eastern terror and war within the framework of a political-economic approach to globalization (Ben Shaul, 2006). It considers post-Fordism to be the dominant mode of production propelling globalization and views the American attempts at the formation of a "new world order" as attempts to globalize a "flexible" capitalism (Harvey, 1990). The violent acts undertaken by Middle East sub-national or supra-national movements and by states non-compliant with American led Western interests disrupt these attempts and lead to reciprocal violent measures undertaken by the US and its allies. The course will outline how globalization notions of "glocalization" and "multi-culturalism" (e.g., Robertson, 1992) are used by the US to ideologically convey its interests, and how US peripheral allies (e.g., Israel and the Palestine National Authority) incorporate this dominant US ideology to forward their own respective and opposing interests. The analysis of television news will be conducted from a critical media theory approach (Hall, 1992). Following a critique of the freedom of the press perspective on news and the widespread "contagion" theory of media coverage of terror as "terror's oxygen" (Picard, 1993), focus will be upon how the way in which mainstream television news frame events, particularly terror and war events, is oriented by dominant ideologies. Particular attention will be given to the ways ideology is embedded in news' audiovisual formations (rather than upon the predominant verbal-textual analysis of news), since audiovisuals overwhelm the verbal commentary in the coverage of terror events and war. The course proposes an analysis of contemporary TV news that decodes the discursive televisual strategies peculiar to the different positions embedded in different dominant ideologies within the post-Fordist mode of production.
Within this framework, a comparative and relational analysis will be conducted of American, Israeli and Palestinian mainstream television news' coverage of the violence emanating from the Middle East, focusing upon two case studies:
- The 9/11 attacks and the American "War Against Terror";
- The Palestinian Al Aqsa Intifada uprising and Israel's reaction.
Through detailed analyses of news reports on the same events by the different mainstream media, it will be shown how news coverage embeds respectively American global ideology and the conflicting Israeli-Palestinian dominant national-peripheral ideologies. This will elucidate the convergence and divergence between global perspectives in the first world and the perspectives of dependent peripheral states.
Learning outcomes: the "freedom of the press" perspective vs. TV news as ideologically driven;perspectives on news coverage of terror: as "contagion" (Picard, 1993), as "theatre" (Weinman, 1983), as Myth (Lule, 1991), as Ideology (Hall, 1978, Ben Shaul, 2006); post-Fordism as globalization's dominant mode of production and the "new world order"; "glocalization" and "multi-culturalism" as US dominant ideology; siege mentality and Democracy as Israeli dominant Ideology; martyrdom (Shahada) and human rights as the Palestine National Authority dominant ideology; comparative analysis of the news coverage of 9/11, Al Qaeda and of the American led "War Against Terror"; comparative analysis of the news coverage of the Al Aqsa Intifada
Teaching Method
Frontal lectures and student oral presentations.
Screenings: All screenings (mostly of TV reports) will be conducted in class.
Evaluation
Readings