| dc.description.abstract | In recent years, observers of international affairs have raised the concern that media have expanded their ability to affect the conduct of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy. Dubbed the “CNN effect” (or “CNN curve” or “CNN factor”), the impact of these new global, real-time media is typically regarded as substantial, if not profound.
Two key factors have joined to bring this about. One is the end of the Cold War. With its passing the United States lacks an evident rationale in fashioning its foreign policy. The other factor is technological. Advances in communication technology have created a capacity to broadcast live from anywhere on Earth. As a result, the vacuum left by the end of the Cold War has been filled by a foreign policy of media-specified crisis management.
While William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s World may have created the climate for war with Spain in 1898, the extent, depth, and speed of the new global media have created a new species of effects. It is this global, real-time quality to contemporary media that separates the “CNN effect” from earlier media effects on foreign policy. Yet exactly what those effects are, when they are likely to be seen, and even whether they exist at all is the subject of intense debate.
Despite numerous symposia, books, articles, and research fellowships devoted to unraveling the CNN effect, success at clarifying it—this paper will argue—has been minimal. In part, this may be due to the imprecise use of the term “CNN effect.” Writers too often and too easily slip back and forth between related but otherwise conceptually distinct understandings of the effect or effects in question. The first objective of this paper is to clarify exactly what is meant by the CNN effect. The second objective concerns policy. Just as we must speak more precisely regarding the type of effect we might expect to find as a result of media coverage, so too must we speak more precisely about foreign policy. Rather than treat foreign policy as an undifferentiated monolith, we need to discriminate between different foreign policies, each with its own objectives, means, potential and actual costs (measured in dollars, lives, and political prestige) and sensitivities to media and public pressures. We must develop, in other words, a greater appreciation for the possibility that different foreign policy objectives will present different types and levels of sensitivity to different types of media. A typology of policy-media effects will be developed in the last half of this paper that demonstrates several different potential consequences for policy, some harmful, some salubrious, depending upon the nature of the policy objectives and media content. A matrix of media effects, policy types, and objectives is offered last. | en_US |
