Media, Mobilization and Human Rights

What impact do mass media portrayals of atrocities have on activism? Why do these news stories sometimes mobilize people, while at other times they are met with indifference? Do different forms of media have greater or lesser impacts on mobilization? These are just some of the questions addressed in Media, Mobilization and Human Rights, which investigates the assumption that exposure to human rights violations in countries far away causes people to respond with activism to end atrocities.Turning a critical eye on existing scholarship which argues either that viewing and reading about violence can serve as a force for good (through increased activism), or as a source for evil (by objectifying and exploiting the victims of violence), the authors argue that reality is far more complex, and that there is nothing inherently positive or negative about exposure to the suffering of others. In exploring this, the book offers an array of case studies: from human rights reporting in Mexican newspapers to the impact of media imagery on humanitarian intervention in Somalia; the influence of celebrity activism to the growing role of social media.By examining a variety of media forms - from television and radio through to social networking - the interdisciplinary set of authors present radical new ways of thinking about the intersection of media portrayals of human suffering and activist responses to them.

Tristan Anne Borer (BA, University of Texas at San Antonio; PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Government and International Relations at Connecticut College in New London, CT. She is the author of Challenging the State: Churches as Political Actors in South Africa, 1980-1994 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), the editor of Telling the Truths: Truth-Telling and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Societies (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), and the co-author (with John Darby and Siobhan McEvoy-Levy) of Peacebuilding After Peace Accords: The Challenges of Violence, Truth and Youth (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). She has also published several articles in the field of human rights in journals including Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Human Rights, Violence Against Women, African Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Church and State. Her research has been funded by the Joan Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the United States Institute of Peace.

Introduction: Willful Ignorance' News Production, Audience (In)attention, and Uneven Responses to Media Coverage of Suffering - Tristan Anne Borer * 1. 'We Should have said No': Cultural Remembrance and the Reading of Somalia as Vietnam in Debates over Humanitarian Intervention in the 1990s - David Kieran * 2. Framing a Rights Ethos: Artistic Media and the Dream of a Culture without Borders - Michael Galchinsky * 3. Choosing the Human Rights News at Mexican Newspapers: Balancing Newsworthiness with Journalistic, Economic, and Political Aims - Ella McPherson * 4. Framing Strategies for Economic and Social Rights in the United States - Dan Chong * 5. 'Fresh, Wet Tears': Shock Media and Human Rights Awareness Campaigns - Tristan Anne Borer * 6. Celebrity Diplomats as Mobilizers? Celebrities and Activism in a Hypermediated Time - Andrew F. Cooper and Joseph F. Turcotte * 7. Amplifying Individual Impact: Social Media's Emerging Role in Activism - Sarah Kessler * 8. The Spectacle of Suffering and Humanitarian Intervention in Somalia - Joel Pruce

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Media, Mobilization and Human Rights Mediating Suffering

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