Reading Political Media

Reading Political Media: essay trilogy
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Mikko Kapanen 2010

A few words first
Page 3.

Telling the Lion’s Story : dominant media on Darfur
Page 4.

Shooting photographs: war images taking sides
Page 25.

Revolution in what: The coverage of political social media and its
significance in modern elections.
Page 52.

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A few words first
Seemingly it is rather humane to be obsessed with the flow of news
entering and exiting our lives on daily basis and creating their never‐
ending narratives which we follow like a TV soap opera – we are not
sure why, but undeniably we are interested. It is perhaps seen as
common knowledge or some kind of social capital… “oh, did you not
hear what happened in…” Why do we follow news is mystery to me.
And for at least some time it shall remain as such as I am interested
in understanding what makes news and why, who decides and why.
What kind of relationships media has with politics and what factors
make it like it is.

This is a small collection of essays written in 2010 as part of my post‐
graduate studies. The first one of them looks at how two major
broadcasters – BBC and CNN – treat an African conflict in their
coverage from Darfur; who are the heroes, villains and stars of the
tragedy and why?

The second essay focuses on conflict images and the meaning of
access to photo journalism in war zones.

The last one explores the real impact of the online social media on
the so called Green Revolution in Iran as the elections were unfolding
in 2009.

Mikko Kapanen 19.5.2010 in Cape Town

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Telling the Lion’s Story : dominant media on Darfur

Until the lions learn to tell their stories, the history of
hunting will glorify the hunter. (African proverb)

This paper looks into the global media coverage of a conflict area,
specifically focusing on the Sudanese Darfur situation that has been
ongoing in the recent years. My interest is to find out how has the
conflict been dealt with by some of the major international media
outlets; BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) of United Kingdom
and CNN (Cable News Network) of the United States of America to be
precise. I am interested in finding out are these news reflecting the
conflicting ideological factors of the societies of news makers and the
subjects of their news, the political economy of the media
organisation or the news production culture dominant in the two
countries in question?

My key argument is that the political economies of both of the
organisations – very different as they are – have a great impact on the
media texts they produce. One of the core values of the BBC is
impartiality, but that tends to suffer as even if facts would be covered
with a sense of objectivity, this only happens after the premise of the
news has been predetermined based on the facts held as true, and on
top of that having selected very western centric angles and narratives
to tell the news. So rather than impartiality, the news are produced
with a sense of impartiality. The licence fee funded media
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organisation, however, is able to cover the stories from the conflict
which is not closely linked to the country of its origin. The same
principle does not apply to CNN, which due to its advertising funded
function must focus more on the conflicts and stories more directly
linked with the United States (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan). CNN did
cover handful of Darfur stories during the sampled period and they
were shorter, quick‐to‐the point reports based on many directly
quoted facts. On top of the influences of the political economy, this is
likely to be a result of their culture of media text production
practices.

The sample that has been used to be interpreted is all the items found
from the web services of these broadcasters during the month of
November 2006. This paper does not claim to be representative
further to its limited sample, although I would like to think it will give
us some indication of potential factors behind geographically uneven
global media production relationships and power struggles. It must
also be acknowledged that the two organisations which traditionally
have been seen as broadcasters, have taken much broader cross‐
media platform role, and the texts used for analysis here are not in
video, but as they have been written online.

I will begin by exploring some debates around the considerations of
media texts through their production influenced by the globalisation
of media and its dominant political economies, after which I write
about the method of this research and before concluding, I will offer
my findings.

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Theorising global media and its political economy.

In this segment I will explore some of the existing literature around
the focus of my research. These themes include media and news
production and its globalisation, and how the political economy of a
media organisation impacts on its practices and texts.

Development of news media and its globalisation
The news media in the 19th century merely consisted of opinionated
statements printed together with facts, and it was a useful tool in
political communication. Mid‐century the publications started buying
content from the news agencies; a practice which resulted with
centralisation of the news production as few producers started
serving a broad spectrum of publications. As this was taking place a
strong linkage was created between news and global financial
markets, formula for the news became somewhat standardised,
nationally the interests became propagandist and internationally
largely market orientated (Machin and Van Leeuwen 2007: 8). In the
1950’s research proved that the news content had become one‐
directional and siding with the interests of the dominant media
production countries; which generally are the so called western
nations (McQuail and Windahl 1993: 219). In the so called Mowlana
Model the different countries are divided into central and peripheral
ones, and the predominant news are the ones of the centre; those
being also popular foreign news items in the countries of periphery,
but various peripheral areas rarely broadcast or publish news of each
other (Mowlana 1985). For this paper the idea of centre and
periphery divide is very present since it focuses on the so called
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western media covering an African conflict, and to a large extend,
determining the discourse used for the conflict globally.

Since the end of the Cold War new alliances have been formed and
the global media environment has changed drastically. Hamid
Mowlana (1996) – the creator of Mowlana Model – also points out
several shifts regarding the communication, for instance it changing
from international into global, but not, however, universal, by the
weakening of the traditional nation states and strengthening of the
corporate and other sectors of societies (193‐9). The technological
advancement has enabled the increased flow of data, which has
helped the production of capital by allowing more rapid distribution
of news and entertainment (Artz 2003: 7). This has also made the
class inequalities to be globally communicated, the control has
become more centralised and the English language even more
standardised (Artz 2003: 8). The privatisation of media has caused a
threat for the public sphere as the commercially driven media tends
to be conservative and protective of status quo, as it tends to be its
beneficiary and this resulting in a form of self‐censorship (Herman
and McChesney 1997: 6‐7).

Some African media, namely the New African magazine (June 2008)
has raised concerns of the unhelpful bias of the western media, its
impact on the awareness of the African continent and most of all
unawareness of the ongoing influences of the governments of the
west on the continent. Baffour Ankomah (2008) attributes this to the
dominant media following the flag – giving positive coverage to the
leaders siding with their country’s administration and negative to the
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ones who are opposed; the ideological leanings of the media –
especially in United Kingdom the newspapers relatively openly side
with political parties and finally the historical baggage (12‐4).

Media’s role in forming public opinion pro‐government policy is not
simply telling citizens what to think; it isn’t something that it can
necessarily do, however, it has more power to tell what to think
about (Cohen 1960: 165). Methods to indirectly or even relatively
directly influence the people’s actual opinions further include
framing, priming and agenda setting (Semetko 2004: 359‐64). For the
global news this is relevant as the foreign policy needs to be justified
to the voters, which government’s media enabled PR campaigns have
done especially in the United States ever since President Wilson
formed a propaganda commission (Creel Commission), that changed
the rather anti‐war general attitude into readiness to join the First
World War (Chomsky 2002: 11‐3).

Noam Chomsky also highlights some problems with one of the
integral aspect of the many modern conflicts; the so called terrorism,
and how its actual definition lacks universality as what is defined as
terrorism by the US government, and almost automatically by most of
the western media, applies only if the offender is other than United
States or one of its allies. In the same way the justification for
response to a so called act of terror depends on who is in its receiving
end (Chomsky 2007: 206‐7). The idea of universality which resonates
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative (as explored amongst others
by Guthrie 1994) becomes crucial for our topic as the mainstream
media most often fails to raise questions such as these (Ankomah
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2008: 11). Even Joseph S. Tuman’s (2003) book on rhetoric of
terrorism overlooks the possibility that United States would have
participated in activities that based on its own (CIA) guidelines, at
least according to Chomsky, should be considered as terrorism.
Abbas Malek and Krista E. Wiegand (1997) explore the direct linkage
between mass media and forming the foreign policy concluding it to
be a complex matter as media has also many functions in a society
(21), but it seems possible that even if the direct connection would
not exist, or would be very arguable, media and news content could
do a job of justifying the policies as much as securing voter happiness
in the future elections.

A research conducted on the conflict between an important US ally
Israel, and ideologically a lot less popular Palestine by the Glasgow
University Media Group (Philo et al. 2005) identifies the different
standards applied to write the news of the two sides within the
British media; and how the Palestinians got somewhat demonised in
the process, and even when Israeli soldiers had been shooting into
the crowds, it had been made clear by the reporters that this was
without any government political agenda behind it (144‐5). This type
of conflict when televised has wildly visual elements, but very little
background information and explaining (Philo et al. 2005: 133).

Media Production and Political economy.
The rise of media industry in the 20th century increased the business
sector’s interest in it, and resulted with research on media
production and marketing (Mosco 1996: 12). While the political
economy perspective has been dominant in the so called western
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countries it tends to emphasise the economy more than the politics
(Schudson 1996: 145). One of the key ideas for the political economy
of especially commercially driven media is seeing the audience as the
commodity and the function of the text is to be merely a bait to
attract these consumers to be influenced by the adverts (Smythe
1981). Later this idea was further specified by adding that the
commodity cannot be the audience per se, only their potential
attention time which may or may not benefit the advertisers (Jhally
1990: 72).

Social inequalities create circumstances where concern for media
ethics can be raised; does the production of the media reproduce and
enhance these conditions if it is influenced by the cultural, political
and economical powers dominant in societies (Hesmondhalgh 2006:
2). According to Chomsky and Herman (1988) even in the liberal
democracies the elite serving media propaganda exists, but it is only
more difficult to distinguish than in the dictatorships (2). Their
writings were, and have been, however, largely ignored by the US
media and politics due to their awkward nature (Schlesinger 1992:
305). According to Golding and Murdoch (2005) this Propaganda
Model, as it is called, does overlook that even the commercially
driven media structures cannot do as they please, but must follow the
appropriate legislations and conventions of their societies. Analysing
these factors is one key part of what is called the critical political
economy of culture (14). Louw (2005) still notes that media as an
industry is constantly moving towards maximising the profit, often at
the expense of investigation, and that news rooms are increasingly
“becoming media release processing centres” (90). This idea was
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recently supported by a former BBC News reader Peter Sissons who
described his old employer’s news room as a “factory” (BBC news has
become a 'factory', says Peter Sissons. from the Guardian 1.10.2009).

Political economy has influenced in the practices of the media
production in the recent past as the smaller production teams must
be more flexible and often work as freelancers. The media producer
has become to be seen as something of a economic resource for his or
her organisation (Ursell 2006: 141). From the perspective of cost
efficiency the permanent staff can be seen very expensive and
bureaucratic, and flexibility brought in by the temporary
employment practices being rather improving the production, than
stretching the production team (Barnatt and Starkey 1994: 253).

While the influences of the political economy to media productions
are inevitable, focusing on them alone overlooks other important
factors such as social organisation of the media production (Wall
1999: 25) and fact that they can never be “value‐free procedures”
(Schlesinger 1992: 294). Incorporating these kinds of influences
Schlesinger (1978) concluded for instance that the production of the
BBC’s news department is strongly based on routine and existing
practices, which then further impact the text (79).

A Public Service Broadcaster such as BBC has got different
considerations in their function outside of purely economic ones,
such as counter discourse, universality, public service and
justification of the licence fee on top of the competition from the
private media sectors (Hesmondhalgh 2006: 79).
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Methodological considerations.
In order to be able to understand the factors influencing the media
texts of specific major media organisations, I have conducted a
qualitative textual analysis on news items found from the web
services of BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news) and CNN
(http://www.cnn.com) from the time span of one month: November
in 2006.

Textual analysis is more often used as quantitative research method
to enable categorising messages (Merrigan and Huston 2004: 134),
and to conclude based on the frequency of selected key words or
content (Pierce 2008: 264). I have, however, focused on the
qualitative version of the content analysis while using some purely
quantitative aspects to support my interpretation based on
frequencies of for instance Sudanese names as opposed to the non‐
Sudanese ones to highlight the general dominant angle of the media
organisation in their coverage. But in qualitative content analysis,
which is at the core of this paper, one focuses on, for instance, a
possible bias that may be detected from the news (Pierce 2008: 264).
I have then analysed based on the political economy of the
organisation and other structural factors what relationships there
are between the news, their subjects and producers.

The significance of the time selected for the sample is the peace
keeping offer of the United Nations having just been declined by the
Sudanese Government as something to compromise the country’s
sovereignty and after the UN representative had been expelled, the
African Union extended its mandate to a peace keeping force that was
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to move into Sudan (Timeline: Sudan, BBC). These events in and of
themselves offer us an interesting starting point for the western
media to write, since the western solutions to the problems of Sudan
had been sidelined.

The variables I am specifically looking into are the ratio of what could
be considered as factual information and analysis, treatment of
ideologies conflicting with the ones dominant in the so called west
and the representation of the various groups and individuals within
these texts.

Covering Darfur – Research findings.
November of 2006 was part of busy period for global media when it
came to Sudan. The Darfur situation had been ongoing for a few years
and even the debate on rhetoric that was to impact the approach; are
we dealing with genocide or something a little less, was not current
anymore, but the United Nations peace keeping forces had been
denied the access to the area as it would have been seen to
undermine the sovereignty of the nation and its Government in
Khartoum, and the African Union troops were to be deployed instead.
The rebels were moving towards Chad and the humanitarian crisis
was deepening (Kajee 2006).

Based on the coverage of two globally significant media organisations
– BBC and CNN – on the Darfur crisis, I am exploring the factors
behind these news. Factors such as ideological ones and the
influences of the political economy.

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The argument I make here is that the textual content of these media
organisations is highly depended on their political economy, and as
that political economy differs from one to another, the results are
also very different. The impartiality that BBC prides itself with is
problematic and incomplete since it only starts after some very
strong prejudgements of the situations have been established and the
angles that are very western centric have been chosen. Presenting
the facts impartially and fairly after that does not create actually
impartial news, but rather partial news with a strong sense of
impartiality. But because BBC does not rely on advertising revenue, it
can extensively cover issues that are not directly linked to its primary
markets. CNN, however, covers its handful of news from Darfur in a
short and efficient manner, which may have to do with the media
production cultures that are dominant in the United States, but also,
because their main interest at the time of sampling has been with
other, for their country, much more important conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

Before even getting into the qualitative analysis of these texts, it has
to be mentioned purely numerically that during the month from
which the sample is , I found three articles from the CNN service that
were primarily on Sudan and Darfur and further four articles where
the situation was covered amongst other matters. The BBC, however,
during the same month had 25 items on Darfur and extensive
coverage of the conflict spreading towards Chad and Central African
Republic on top of that. The content of the articles on these other
countries starts to quickly mould into many matters in the region and
on the continent, and the line becomes very blurry, so I chose to focus
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on the stories that were more directly covering the conflict as it was
happening on the territory of Sudan. An explanation for the
comparatively smaller CNN coverage might be the simultaneous
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of these conflicts have more
direct impact on both of the countries, but seems to have more
impact on the American media – the commercial one – as far as
Darfur news coverage went.

BBC – partly impartial.
Born as the content providing service of the British radio
manufacturers in the early 1920’s – then known as the British
Broadcasting Company (Crisell 2002: 18), – BBC became the public
service corporation as we now know it in 1927 (Aitken 2007: 9).
Unlike in the United States, the broadcasting was always heavily
regulated in the United Kingdom; this is partly due to geographical
reasons (Crisell 2002 : 18), and BBC was build on the idea of Public
Service Broadcasting, and its funding was based on the licence fees
required – at least theoretically – from its audiences (Benkler 2006 :
189). According to its own guidelines the impartiality has always
been at the corporations core (BBC Trust 2005) and in his rather
uncritical book Robin Aitken (2007) certainly agrees. There have
been, however many dissent voices such as Schlesinger (1978) and
Philo et al. (2005) questioning the practical success of BBC with
impartiality.

The factual premise of BBC coverage of the Darfur conflict is that the
Sudanese Government – while denying it – is supporting, enabling or
at the very least allowing the Arab Janjaweed rebel groups to carry
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out an ethnic cleansing of Black Africans in Darfur. Most articles have
nearly identical paragraph with this message and at times it is even
mentioned twice. That angle then seems to continue impacting the
style of writing the content, the interviews conducted (the selection
of interviewees) and the way the answers that did not support these
facts held to be true were presented. In other words, throughout the
whole month, every article was written to prove this point.
Structuring the articles in this manner, creates a distinct sense of
impartiality and sticking to the facts, but actual impartiality it is not,
since the writing seems to be based on predetermined judgements of
the truth, that were never put under questioning regardless of what
any dissent voice would have said. It also contributes into a stronger
sense of the news being provided with clear and holistic context than
what actually happened.

Another aspect that is problematic from the perspective of
impartiality, although to some extent understandable considering the
primary audience of the news, is the angles that are very western; out
of 25 articles only four had any Sudanese names mentioned on top of
the President Omar al‐Bashir. Out of these names – six in total – two
were Government ministers, one minister’s spokesperson, one
human rights lawyer receiving an international award, one rebel
leader and one villager from Darfur. In contrast nearly every story
mentioned people from UN, various European ministers, aid workers
from the European organisations, reporters from BBC and most of all,
of course the UN Humanitarian Chief Jan Egeland who is by far the
most central figure in the sampled news. When quoted, the non‐
Sudanese individuals were given a lot of space where as the Sudanese
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views were often covered by quoting an unnamed official, maybe a
press release, but someone representing the Government responding
to various allegations by calling them “lies”. While the sense of
providing context and background by giving the facts was constantly
kept up by referring to what I previously mentioned as the factual
premise of the coverage, the actual context, especially from the
Sudanese side was left a lot less clear. This was demonstrated on few
occasions with a small paragraph explaining the Sudanese denial of
the facts as they were presented by the BBC: “Sudan has always said
that the problems in Darfur are being exaggerated for political
reasons” (Sudan 'begins new Darfur attacks'). Besides one mention of
the “aid industry”, which then was not explained further, these
political reasons were not really explored or explained during the
sampled month.

The distinct lack of Sudanese names and the emphasis of the western
opinion – even if given by a representative of the United Nations –
created a sense where, while it is clear that human tragedy amongst
Africans was the focus of the stories, the more important thing was to
highlight the frustration of the west not to be able to help. This, to
some extent when looking at all the articles at once, resembled
awkwardly the colonial mentalities of Africa being a European
playground. Much like in the colonial stories, also here the news
narrative was based on western individuals and African nameless
masses that were mainly, with one exception, reduced into statistics.
BBC also does not once mention the Britain’s past colonial
relationship with the country during the sampled month.

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While the bodies of the news stories appear to be balances, even if
they actually are not, it is the headlines that jump out the most. Most
stories have sensationalist sounding titles that borrow a small bit of
quote and force it into a context that only very uncomfortably
matches the actual writings. These titles included: Sudan's Darfur
'close to abyss', Darfur 'genocide crosses to Chad' and Darfur militias
'kill children'. It is true that the news items have quotes that allow
you to make the statements of the headlines, but stylistically, they
seem like an attempt to ‘sell’ – although not in the financial sense of
the word – the article to the reader. There is nothing in the idea of
Public Service Broadcasting that would prohibit that, but
instinctively the headlines seem like a mismatch with the bodies of
their articles.

On top of the stories that were based in Sudan, BBC also featured
other stories highlighting the broader global context by providing
information about student’s fundraising events for Darfur, the
solidarity campaign of the Holocaust Museum and American
celebrities generally sympathising with the cause (Americans take up
Darfur's cause). In this article focusing on the attitudes of another
country, United States, BBC draws attention to the fact that many
Christians were sympathising with the victims of Darfur due to their
shared religion, and even if left unmentioned, their shared threat of
Islam and the Arabs. One could not say whether similar thoughts
from the United Kingdom would have deserved their own sub‐
heading and several paragraphs, however, the story that was covered
purely from the British perspective was the opposition leader David
Cameron’s visit to Sudan (Cameron visiting wartorn Sudan). This
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story also manages to create a sense of context, background and facts,
but it, for instance makes no mention in what capacity and why was
he visiting the country. One is left to guess the motives to be
something in between a fact finding mission of a potential future
Prime Minister and a mere photo opportunity for a political player
with enough access.

Now that I have looked at the BBC coverage of Darfur conflict, I will
next explore the way CNN treated the same subject matter during the
same time period.

CNN – communication or commercialism?
Started in 1980 by Ted Turner, Cable News Network or CNN, builds
onto a very different way of structuring and regulating media
compared to the BBC‐model. American broadcast media has always
been mainly commercial, less regulated and aiming for profit making
by selling advertising (Crisell 2002: 18) as it adopted the ways of
operating from the print media (Benkler 2006 : 190).

The factual premise of the CNN coverage of Darfur is largely similar
to the one of BBC, with the added emphasis on the US administration,
especially the Secretary of State of the time Colin Powell, describing
the situation as genocide; a term that the broader international
community was struggling to find consensus with.

CNN news stories covering this conflict are more detached, straight
forward stories that are structured around quoted facts – at least it is
a fact that those things were said by someone, which transfers the
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responsibility of the truthfulness to the quoted. The style of the
articles might have to do with a differing culture of writing news in
United States when compared to United Kingdom, but the main
difference is the amount of these stories. The news stories by CNN
during the time which I have sampled were heavily focused on the
war in Iraq and Afghanistan; two conflicts where Americans had
much higher stakes having their own army, citizens and even the
reputation of the nation on the line. On top of that, these wars were
also contested by many citizens, so all in all, they were much more
interesting, and therefore profitable topics to cover. Should I have
selected one of these conflicts as my focus, I am certain that the
findings would have been very different, as even the term CNN Effect
(as elaborated extensively by Robinson 2002) has been coined to
describe how in the 1991 Persian Gulf War the CNN became “the eyes
and ears of the world” in a conflict situation (Miladi 2005: 149).

This hypothesis is supported also by the fact that even one of the
Darfur stories (Sudan's president points to Iraq as reason for blocking
U.N. peacekeepers for Darfur) was a hybrid story of Iraq and Sudan.

Unlike with BBC, with CNN the most telling thing about their Darfur
coverage of the time when a lot was happening in Sudan was not
what they did say, but rather what they did not – and furthermore
what did they cover instead. The Darfur situation is covered – only
just – but because of the political economy of the organisation, and its
dependence on advert sales, the news agenda is not formulated
around the most meaningful – not that Iraq or Afghanistan were not
meaningful – story, but rather the most marketable story, which will
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attract the largest audience which then could, as theorised by Smythe
(1981), be sold to the advertisers. For a Public Service Broadcaster,
especially the one with the BBC‐model which does not involve any
advertising, the motivations would be more in line with justifying the
licence fee and to support counter discourse and universality
(Hesmondhalgh 2006: 79).

Conclusion
In this paper I have been looking at the BBC and CNN coverage of the
Sudanese Darfur crisis. My sample period of media texts analysed
was November 2006; selected for its significance as the time when
the United Nations was barred from the country and the African
Union troops were deployed for the peace keeping mission – it was
all around very busy time and vast amount of newsworthy stories
were coming out of Sudan.

My argument, based on the research is that the political economy of
these media organisations, which for both is very different, is the key
determining factor of the texts they produce. This argument covers
both how the stories are covered and which stories are covered.

BBC has been priding itself with its impartiality, which, of course, in
realistic terms could never be quite absolute anyway, but based on
the articles written on Darfur, the angles and the factual premise of
the situation, that all the stories support, create a circumstances
where instead of actual impartiality, only a very strong sense of
impartiality is created and as carefully as the context of the stories
are given, they are written with so called western narratives and by
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and large through non‐Sudanese characters. In another words the

impartiality of BBC regarding to this conflict exists in an extremely
partial context and therefore gets, if not nullified then at least
significantly hollowed for ideological reasons. BBC does, however,
cover these stories extensively, which can be attributed to its political
economy that is not directly linked with the final media products.

For CNN, the political economy determines the selection of stories
covered and therefore it focuses more on the conflicts that are closely
connected to the audiences of United States. During the period of the
sample there was no shortage of those since the more media sexy
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were also ongoing. Factual premise
of CNN, in their short, to‐the‐point news items was very similar to
BBC.

One of the reasons the west‐centric news narratives of Africa have
become somewhat of a standard in the global media, is the lack of
contesting media organisations. Cameron Duodu (2008: 20) calls for
an African equivalent of Al‐Jazeera, which has been able to create
competition with the western media organisations not just as far as
the audiences go, but also the messages. The political economy of Al‐
Jazeera is partly subsidised by the state of Qatar, and should this
support stop, it is less clear if it would survive economically purely
based on the advert sales subscriptions (Miladi 2005: 157). It is these
realities of global media that impact the news as they reach us, and it
is not necessarily a question of how truthful something is, but how,
and from which angle it is told that impact our world view.

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Shooting photographs: war images taking sides

The way we understand war is informed by a broad spectrum of
influences from media and our cultural conditioning to the personal
and collective relationships with the different sides of the war. Some
of these factors are more emotional and some rational, but since
many of us are lucky enough not to know it experientially, a lot of the
ideas of war become understood through media.

In this paper I have used methods of semiotic analysis to understand
the Guardian newspaper’s photographic editorial line relating to the
representations of the different sides in the coverage of war in
Afghanistan, supported by some quantitative data collected to
provide the context where the more specifically analysed images
exist in. Meanings of images, still or moving, have not traditionally
been as popular field of research as other textual elements of media
(Hansen et al. 1998: 189), and since the practices of production
demand very specific kind of access to the subjects, it is important to
try to understand what it is that is presented to us.

My central argument here, is that the key consideration with conflict
images is the access to take them; where can the photographers take
photos and where they cannot and who has permitted or enabled
them to take these photographs. These questions are largely
answered by the media policies of the military forces, as in many of
the modern wars, journalists get embedded in the troops. While the
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final images that were produced by photographers working for photo
and news agencies appear to be one sided providing us with an
unmistakable sense of western super armies, it might just be that –
the faceless and cold soldiers who on an emotional level are difficult
to engage with overpowering the civilians appearing weak and
unprotected, that provide us with some diversity in directions of our
sympathies. The double standard of showing the suffering and death
of the ‘other’, very graphically, while the death of the westerners is
absent, is likely to be due to ideological, political and editorial
decisions. It is because of access, and therefore the types of
photographs available, that the editorial line of written text can differ
greatly from images used for a publication such as the Guardian
which is considered liberal quality broadsheet. Very little, or no
context is provided by the photographs as even though they are
almost exclusively establishing shots, they are more about the
scenery where to anchor the news story to than any meaningful
context providing journalistic tool.

The sample of this paper is small as it covers a selection of images
published online as a photo gallery on the website of the British
Guardian daily broadsheet newspaper (www.guardian.co.uk). It is
not my intention to claim the findings to have further significance on
a any universal level, but perhaps they are able to suggest what the
more common trends and standards in conflict photography are.
Also, I wish to point out that my intention in this paper is not to
‘other’ any culture, but I am analysing the images from the angle of a
so called westerner or a European; much like the target audience of
the publication in question is.
Mikko Kapanen
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I will next cover the theories around my research topic addressing
images and photography in the news and war situation and how
media framing works as a part of media’s function. After these
debates I will address the methodology of this research and before
concluding, I will offer my research findings.

Theorising news images in the military wars
In this segment I am looking into the already existing research
relevant to this paper. I have divided this review in three parts: first
exploring the theories of images in general and their usage in the
news journalism, the second part deals with the relationship between
war and journalism and third covers ideas of media framing.

Images and the news
Photograph isolates a single moment in time; therefore differing from
video which continuously scans the environment (McLuhan 1964:
205), and due to this characteristics the images – and the codes
within them – are best understood through their historical context,
although that is not a prerequisite of analysis (Lacey 1998: 130).
Many unquestioned clichés suggest the accuracy and truthfulness of
the image (McLuhan 1964: 205). These clichés do, however
uncritically overlook the practices and techniques of photography
such as camera positioning, angle, framing (Hansen et al. 1998: 192‐
3). Besides the practices of producing the images, the history has
known examples of doctoring them in post‐production, but that
practice does not fit in the framework of ethical journalism (Hansen
et al. 1998: 194). After the final images has been produced they still
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go through editorial process of selecting the appropriate ones for the
public to see (Hansen et al. 1998: 197), but although traditionally
images have been utilised for specific and often strategic ends, there
are cases, such as the torture images of Abu Ghraib prison from Iraq
which, due to the online distribution, spiralled out of control against
the wishes of media or political establishment (Stein 2004: 110).

Private images – like the ones taken in Abu Ghraib as “image
trophies” – can become, even by accident, more important than
professionally produced shots (Stein 2004: 107‐8). The
interpretation of such photographs depends even more than on the
normal, more familiar looking ones, on the receivers personal
experiences and opinions and they caused, for instance, horror
amongst the refugees with similar experiences living in United States
at the time (Levi Strauss 2004: 87), while some others could not see
or understand what they were about due to their unfamiliarity or
uncomfortably awkward nature (Stein 2004: 111 and Levi Strauss
2004: 87‐8). This idea is in line with the concept of a cold medium, as
Marshall McLuhan (1964) theorised; a photograph needs more
interpretation and its meaning depends on the viewer more than
some less active media content. This would suggest that the
interpretation the viewer makes on an image is largely depended on
his/her personal values, experiences and intellectual as well as
emotional connection to the subject.

The fact that the receivers of these visual messages approach them in
a simplified manner and construct the meaning through their existing
values and ideas means that rather than ‘seeing is believing’, we must
Mikko Kapanen
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say ‘believing is seeing’ (Hansen et al. 1998: 192‐3), although,
especially in the traumatic events that we as people are not used to,
the images ‘convince”’ us to believe in something that seems foreign
to us and collectively helps us to start recovering and making sense
of the events (Zelizer 2002: 52). In the post 9/11 media environment
the significance placed on the images in news media is that they have
become the key driver of public opinion (Levi Strauss 2004: 87).

On the close distance photographs can act as something to ‘fill in’ in
the chaotic circumstances, such as 9/11 in the United States was. The
still images, even in retrospect, take the individuals and collectives
they are part of to a post‐traumatic space. Still images serve the
purpose of making sense a lot better than moving ones which
disappear almost as soon as they have appeared in front of us
(Zelizer 2002: 49). In the case of 9/11 many still images were
captured from video, which made them less clear, but possibly more
dramatic. The technique used, in order to end up with images in a
case like this, becomes less meaningful together with some other
journalistic conventions (Zelizer 2002: 48). The volume of
photographs and captured still images that went to circulation after
the 9/11 was resonating the events of 1945 liberation of the German
concentration camps (Zelizer 2002: 54), and they similarly acted as
“bearing witness” (Zelizer 2002: 52). The high number of photos in
circulation may have been also due to the media and political power
of United States which was playing crucial role here, where as in
some, although highly politically involved situations less emotionally
so, such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia the number of images was
a lot smaller, but perhaps they became more iconic in relation
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(Zelizer 2002: 54). What was not, however, reproduced from the
concentration camp template of photo journalism was the individual
graphic suffering of human beings and visuals of corpses. Zelizer
(2002) argues this to be because people could already associate the
signs of devastation to the images from earlier examples of death
(65), and perhaps also the zeitgeist had changed in this regard
considerably since 1945. For the purposes of this paper, these are
interesting claims, as I am looking into the representations of
different sides of the conflict in photographs, to see whether this
argument of visual association is valid more generally, rather than
only being specific to the otherwise visually rich coverage of 9/11
primarily targeting the US audiences and only after that the rest of
the world.

War and news media
In a modern warfare media is not simply an additional and external
reporter of events, but rather an integral part of the crisis.
Participating governments have been looking into ways of controlling
access, and especially providing it to the subjects useful to their
cause, but their characteristic organisation and discipline has not
always matched with the journalistic curiosity and even ‘anarchy’.
Press is not a monolithic entity, but in itself is divided into many
opinions and influences to the point that even the terms used to refer
to conflicts differ from one organisation to another (Tumber and
Palmer 2004: 1‐9); therefore becoming a battlefield of varying
interest and narratives (Saleh 2010 :265). Jonathan Glover (2001)
who analyses the psychological reactions and philosophical
justifications of war in the past century suggests that similarly as the
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participating soldiers and policy makers, also the press gets

“trapped” in the conflict, waging what they see with what they
assume their audiences will accept, and what their own psychological
reaction to the realities are (169). Journalists are not immune to the
trauma caused by the events they experience and it can impact on
their practices (Rosen 2002: 28). According to Glover (2001) some
reporters also claimed, specifically in connection to the conflict in
former Yugoslavia, the audiences in Britain to have a need to take
sides and a situation that is complex with no clear good and bad guys
is not of interest to the audiences. Also, the ones who report
unpopular things, even when accurate, can be considers as ‘enemy
sympathisers’ (169). Some existing images are simply too brutal to
be published, which, even if many of us are relieved by it, hides the
actual horrors of the war which we may have an opinion on. Editorial
guidelines may not only “sanitise”, but actually “prettify” the conflict
(170).

In the modern war situations that are specifically of interest to the
news media, such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
Governments have provided access to the press by embedding their
members in the troops (Tumber and Palmer 2004: 13‐9), and as part
of such arrangement, there has been pressures to bond with the
soldiers and even wear their uniforms which has resulted with the
press finding its independence compromised. Refusal to belong into
such pool of journalists organised by the military has resulted with
limited or no access to interviews and other material, and
overstepping the provided limits of pool reporting have ended up
with confiscated video tapes. (Glover 2001: 173). While CNN had
Mikko Kapanen
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access to the footage from the US military operation during the first
Iraq war, it was also provided with access by Saddam Hussein who
used it for his own ends as a propaganda tool in an attempt to impact
the American public opinion (Glover 2001: 170‐1). The question of
access becomes crucially important one and certainly something that
characterises the images this paper looks into a little bit later.

Public opinion and media framing in war
The mass‐mediated politics as a whole consists of different key
players which are “politicians as performers, the spin industry, media
workers (journalists and researchers), media audiences, and policy
makers” (Saleh 2008: 75). These form the structure within which the
communication takes place, and the basic methods used to influence
the public opinion include framing, priming and agenda setting
(Semetko 2004: 359‐64). These methods can be very powerful in
impacting the public opinion and the sense of realities of the
audience and voting public (Chomsky 2002: 11‐3).

The idea of telling the truth is problematic anyway; what is the truth
and how absolute can it be? While things can be true and supported
by evidence, the arguments can be built by selecting things that are
true – as they are not untrue either – but they are not the whole truth,
but an interpretation of true things in a way that it can make almost
any case needed. The idea of truth therefore becomes an idealistic
and even pompous concept for any type of news media. The
hypothetical concept of truth especially in the circumstances of
conflict is compromised by practicalities of access; this time not only
by collecting visuals and reporting, but also to do interviews and
Mikko Kapanen
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have commentaries. The research done by the Glasgow University

Media Group (Philo et al. 2005: 145‐6) on the Israeli‐Palestinian
conflict explains how Israel has on their side a better functioning PR
machinery, technologically more advanced facilities to record
interviews and that majority of media is located in Jerusalem where
Palestinians have very limited access to it. These factors are realities
in the news production practices but cannot be taken for granted to
be understood by the audiences (146). The same research suggest
that that specifically on TV the intense visuals of the conflict provide
very little context for the situation, and that there were serious
shortcomings amongst the audience with understanding the news
items (133). The media privatisation has also influenced the editorial
standards, as the commercial media, as generally more conservative
sector, mostly benefits from the status quo, which can lead to self‐
censorship (Herman and McChesney 1997: 6‐7).

Media frames used to cover stories of conflicts and other troubled
areas are “ancient ethnic hatred” where inaction on the part of the
message receiving society is justified by the perceived tradition of
conflict amongst the subjects of the news story, and “distance” which
as a frame creates an air around the events that is complicated and
lacks passion and human element. Framing can also choose to focus
on the victims of crises as it did with Ethiopian famine 1984. This
coverage, while emotional call to action, often tends to lack in
providing context (Robinson 2002: 28‐9). Some of these frames
clearly support action and others justify inaction. These frames;
narratives that that suggest specific ways of understanding individual
events, sometimes also referred to as bias or slant, rely on likely
Mikko Kapanen
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interpretations of their audiences (Robinson 2002: 137). The

Governments wishing to create a sense of just war can attempt to
create confusion around information by sterilising the terminology
with phrases such as “collateral damage” instead of “civilian deaths”
(Saleh 2008: 75). This phenomenon, referred to as Fog, generally
results with “hawkish extremism rather than tolerance” (Saleh 2010:
266).

Methodology
Having now explored some of the useful key theories around my
research question I will cover the methodological considerations to
be able to effectively answer how are the different sides represented
in the British Guardian newspaper in its coverage of war in
Afghanistan. I have selected to look into an online photo gallery from
Afghanistan from February 2010. In order to provide context and
analyse the photo gallery in general, I have conducted a simple
quantitative content analysis focusing on variables such as the
nationality and ethnicity and gender of persons in the image,
photographic framing which I roughly divided into establishing shot,
mid shot or close up, the sense of strength or weakness, and
frequency of seeing persons face or expression.

To more specifically look into the selected images from the gallery, I
have analysed them using some methods of semiotic analysis.

Semiotics, also known as semiology, is the ‘science of signs’ (Lacey
1998: 56). It attempts to answer two key questions: how and why do
representations mean what they do (Hansen et al. 1998: 205).
Mikko Kapanen
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According to one of the key thinkers of the field, Ferdinand Saussure,
the sign is a sum of signifier and signified; physical real world form
and the idea it evokes in one’s mind. The recognition of sign itself is
on a level of denotation which often is for instance just associating a
word with its agreed meaning, but on a level of connotation these
meanings can be taken further and many of these connotations have
reached wider consensus within societies. (Chandler 2002: 141 and
Lacey 1998: 57‐9). In order for me to explore the specific
representations in the images of my sample, I have employed the
commutation test, in which I have changed the signs within the image
and analyse the meaning through that (Lacey 1998: 64‐5). In practice
that has meant for instance considering the implications of the dead
Taleban fighters being a dead US soldier in the image.

The selection of images analysed is not necessarily based on how
common the photographs of that specific style are in the gallery, but
rather to provide diversity of messages.

Meanings of images: research findings.
As I started looking for text to be analysed in this paper, the first
image I came across was not one to become my focus, however it
raised many questions. A Haitian man – a Black man – buried under
rubble of perhaps a collapsed building begging for help in the
aftermath of 2010 earthquake. His image was now used by an aid
organisation in order to, I suppose, create an emotional response in
us, the readers, to send money to that specific organisation and their
efforts to help the nation that was shook so badly. Questions were
rushing to my head. Does the end justify the means? What are the
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ethics of the aid industry? Was this struggling man asked for his
permission to use his image for fundraising? When last did I see a
suffering White person in a photograph?

None of these questions directly became my research focus and most
of them have nothing to do with it. It is, however the question of
representation of nationalities and ethnicities in news photography
that I am interested in, and in this paper I have focused on the
photographs of the war in Afghanistan in the British Guardian
newspaper.
*******
The war in Afghanistan started soon after the events of 9/11 when
George W Bush and his administration called for the nations of the
world to either be with United States or against it (‘You are either
with us or against us', www.cnn.com). Officially, the war, which to
some extent has been overshadowed by the war in Iraq and seen as a
part of less clear entity of so called war against terrorism, was to
sideline the Taleban control in the country, to provide it with
democratic government and to find Osama bin Laden who was said
to behind the 9/11 attacks and who was now hiding in a cave
somewhere in Afghanistan. The participation of international peace
keeping troops from several European countries that were not in
favour of the Iraq war suggests that the air around this war has been
more understanding and less problematic. More recently the war has
become more contested due to its constant civilian casualties,
casualties from the international troops and length.

Mikko Kapanen
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In this paper I am looking into a photo gallery accessed through the
website of British newspaper, the Guardian. The photo gallery called
Operation Moshtarak in Marjah, Afghanistan was uploaded on the
February 16th in 2010 to www.guardian.co.uk. It consists of 32
images providing a narrative on assault targeting the Taleban by 15
000 international soldiers, some of whom were Afghans in February
2010. I am mainly interested in the representation of ethnicity and
the side they are fighting for. Images have been captured by variety
of photographers working for different news and photography
agencies and in all probability, all of whom have been embedded (as
described by Tumber and Palmer 2004: 13‐9) in the international
troops (for them not to would result with no access to most images
shot and on a few occasion even if there was an access, the danger
would seem rather serious).

The key argument that I am presenting here is that the images are a
result of the access their capturers have had, which has been
determined by the media policies of the military forces the
journalists are embedded in. While one sided, to represent the
situation in a more balanced way, or at least attempt to achieve that,
impersonal, faceless and cold representation of US soldiers
overpowering the local people – mostly civilians – can create a
sympathy to the underdogs, or at least a distinct sense of things being
complex rather than a good versus bad fight. The fact that only
Taleban fighters and some local soldiers from the international
troops are shown to suffer, or even to have died, is likely to be an
ideological, political and editorial decision. Since the war is extreme,
we must not necessarily conclude that a paper such as Guardian is
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trying to misrepresent the truth, as their written articles are evidence
of providing more context. The photographs, while almost exclusively
establishing shots not focusing on one specific person or thing,
provide more scenery than any actual context.

The Guardian newspaper is a British daily broadsheet paper with a
strong reputation. It has openly sided its editorial line with the values
of the British Labour Party (Ankomah 2008: 12), which was in power
when these images were published, as much as it was behind the
British participation both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only recently for
the 2010 General Elections the Guardian directed its support to the
Liberal Democratic Party (General election 2010: The liberal moment
has come, www.guardian.co.uk), although for the purposes of this
paper that is somewhat insignificant unless seen as a sign of already
wavering support for the Labour.

It is noteworthy that while supporting the Labour Party, which under
the leadership of Tony Blair had engaged the nation in the conflict in
Afghanistan, the publication also has a broad intellectual readership
and many of these liberal readers have not agreed with the official
Government line in the matter. The Guardian has published several
articles that highlight the problematic nature of the war, articles
talking about the civilian casualties and the casualties from the
British troops as well. The military operation where the images from
the photo gallery on focus here are from, was, for instance, covered
from the angle that it had caused death to twenty civilians (Coalition
continues to advance in Afghanistan as civilian death toll reaches 20,
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www.guardian.co.uk); something that is not suggested by anything in
the photo gallery.

I will look at some selected images with more specific focus in a
moment, but first, in order to provide the context within which those
individual images exist in, I have done a quick quantitative content
analysis on the whole image gallery.

While the introductory texts around the photo gallery had some
emphasis on the international nature of the operation, out of 32
images included in the set in question, 26 had US troops in the main
role, four featured Talebans (whether actual or only alleged), but
they were dead, wounded or captured, and only three had local
civilians as their main focus although more images had them in the
frame. Five images featured soldiers of other nationalities fighting
alongside United States –some of them were Afghans. By far the
majority of images were on some level of establishing or a long shots
which showed people as a whole and served to provide the sense of
their surrounding, but made them feel distinctly impersonal. This
particularly is the case with the almost robot like US soldiers whose
faces are mostly covered by helmets and sun glasses. This series of
images lacked any sense of weakness by the international troops
while it represented the few Taleban it had as fearless – when they
were not dead – in the face of overpowering opponent. The only real
facial image was the one of a local child who then was to be taken
care of by the American troops. Whether the images featured any
sense of danger to the US lead international soldiers is difficult to
analyse; as a war situation one supposes that the threat is always
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somewhat imminent, but this is also where the fears, assumptions
and prejudices of the viewer take over and start concluding matters
based on long demonised stereotypes of Islamic counter forces to the
so called west; many Afghans in the images for instance resonate
Osama Bin Laden with their dress code and beards to an untrained
eye at least. The look of course has more to do with customs than any
actions that we so called westerners may, even only subconsciously,
associate them with. No person wearing the US uniform in the images
could be recognisably identified as anything but White or of
European origin and no individual from any of the images can be
identified as a woman. That, of course, does not mean that behind the
heavy military equipment there were not any, but that only the ones
whose face we can see with any clarity are all white men.

These facts of course do not provide us with enough in
understanding of what the images mean and communicate, and are
perhaps best evidence to the crucial question of access, but in order
to explore some details that may suggest us different readings of the
images, I will use some methods of the semiotic analysis to make
sense a selection of individual shots picked from the gallery.
Mikko Kapanen
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Image 1.
A US marine breaks down the door of a house to search for weapons during an operation in
Marjah. Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters (from http://www.guardian.co.uk)
Visually engaging action photograph of a US marine about to enter a
house of suspects symbolises a very unbalanced power‐relationship
between him and his opponent. While he does not know what awaits
for him after a few seconds, his combat gear, vest, helmet and
weapon all in an orderly fashion represent the function and
discipline of the US military forces and signify power. The
interpretation to this image, however, depends heavily on the
interpreters personal experiences as it has a distinct resonance with
police raids and therefore can create an association of totalitarian
security forces such as the ones of apartheid South Africa. The
shadow cast on the soldiers face which already is covered by dark
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glasses makes him anonymous, almost robot like non‐person who is
fearlessly programmed to do his job. Perhaps it is showing the
imbalanced power‐relationships that can provide the news media
with images not purely glorifying the strong, but to draw attention to
the underdog. Imagining the door to be your own front door and a
faceless man wearing a combat gear kicking it down, we would in all
probability feel uneasy. The soldier is not presented to us as
vulnerable, although he might be entering a dangerous situation, but
rather as a part of machinery that is designed for the job. While he is
alone in the shot, we see the weapon of his peer entering the frame
which suggest that he definitely is not alone and possibly there is a
whole lot, but at least some power behind him. The building with its
flimsy looking door and humble exterior signifies the state of the
people of Afghanistan, but at the same time puzzles the reader; how
is the ‘enemy’ so poor, yet cannot be beaten nor Bin Laden be found.

Alternatively if we changed the man in the image to be a Taleban
soldier – or even an Afghan resonating one, we would react to it
differently. Perhaps it would also look unusual to us used to the
western images of masculinity, what this image is oozing, as the
Taleban fighters tend to be presented as less muscular and have
beards which in the west is not part of the military look. Would we be
able to recognise them as the other side of the conflict doing the
same, or perhaps felt that something else, more sinister and
unrecognisable, was taking place.

The association also possible to make from this type of image is the
one to the civilian casualties that appear in the written news stories
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rather regularly. Whatever happens when the door opens, the person
viewing the image cannot quite eliminate the possibility that soldier’s
trigger finger is itching and in a few seconds he may need to make a
decision that might end someone’s life whether or not it is to save his
own, but at the same time the close presence of the photographer,
only evident through the fact that this image exists, suggest that
maybe it is not conceived to be the most dangerous situation after all,
but a rather a set‐up performed for the press.

Image 2.
A wounded US soldier is evacuated from Marjah. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP (from
http://www.guardian.co.uk)
The image showing a wounded American citizen in a war area is
somewhat rare, and together with one, a bit more graphic mid shot of
a wounded Afghan soldier fighting against Taleban being looked after
by an American military doctor, it is the only one in the photo gallery
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that suggest any vulnerability amongst the international forces. Its

frame is outlined by a helicopter door which communicates a clear
exit and certainly not being stranded. There are also six other
soldiers in the image making sure that the wounded gets safely to
where he is heading – a medical tent perhaps. This camaraderie is
however lacking human element in that we do not get to see anyone’s
face or other characteristics. Only combat gear, camouflage uniforms
and helmets – a look that reminds us more of the sci‐fi than even the
war films.
This image, too, communicates the order and discipline of the US
forces, creating a sense of safety around it. If the framing was
different and the presence of the helicopter would not be known, we
would just see men running in a relatively blank and harsh scenery,
us, the viewers not knowing how far the safety is. The ‘escape plan’
signifies organisation and the security it brings even in an unstable
situation. The image balances the vulnerability the war time situation
causes to an individual with the promise of that individual being
taken care of in these, from our perspective, far away and perhaps
unknown places where they are sent to. Should we know, that
instead of wounded, the person is dead, the sense of security would
disappear soon. We do not often see such images presenting any
western soldiers that have passed away. The more graphic end of the
images we see is the dead fighters of the other side, such as in the
next example.
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Image 3.
The bodies of Taliban militants are transported in the back of a police vehicle following an
operation in the Enjil district of Heart. Photograph: Reza Shir Mohammadi/AP
(from:www.guardian.co.uk)
To have a graphic image of a corpse featured in a broadsheet

newspaper – or its website – is not common, even if it was as a part of
war coverage. The death of two, according to the news, Taleban
fighters should remind us of the seriousness and actuality of the
otherwise computer game or science fiction film like visuals. The
bare chest of the first body; the focal point of the image immediately
draws our attention and signifies fragility of the human life. As
people we are all very similar, but our circumstances differ greatly
and the international troops do not get represented through
vulnerability as their bodies, in images always alive, are covered by
layers upon layers of combat gear and equipment. While other
images symbolise the advancement in military technology in the
western world, this one points out to the extreme end of the other
side. While we have been told time after time about how problematic
the Talebans have been in Afghanistan by the western mainstream
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media, whether we believe in it or not, we might be left confused.
These men, lying on the back of a car quietly as dead – instinctively
they do not look threatening. They look like most civilians that the
gallery features. Because of the convention of not showing death of
the international troops, showing the bodies of these two men seem
like a double standard with no particularly good explanation. It has
been theorised (for instance Entman and Rojecki 2000), that
different ethnicities are not treated equally within the media, and this
image seems like evidence to that. The normative whiteness of the
media discourse that we are used to, however allows this image to be
included as a part of the mainstream news coverage.
Should the bodies be ones of half undressed American soldiers with
blood on their heads, we could prepare ourselves for an uproar not
only on a political grounds, but on the one of human rights and ethics.
The same would apply to local women and children. Alternatively
then if the caption would suggest that these men were local villagers
– civilians – we would react again differently. But as the caption says
they are Taleban, we are likely to believe it and whatever we feel
emotionally, somehow in all probability are able to explain the
situation intellectually – for better or worse. For anyone with
experiences from the war or other catastrophes, this type of image
can possibly be traumatic viewing. Perhaps the darkness and out of
focus background is suggesting the emotional confusion of the image
that otherwise provides no background information or context, but is
left for us to be interpreted based on our own thoughts and feelings
on the matter.
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Image 4.
US Marine Gunnery Sergeant Brandon Dickinson holds a toddler in Marjah. The marines
were approached by the boy's father, who wanted help for his son's skin condition.
Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters (from: www.guardian.co.uk)

A young Afghan child held in the arms of, as told by the caption, an
American soldier, although the scarf and clothes appear more like the
one of local person’s – perhaps his father who had approached the
soldiers to ask for help with his son’s skin condition. The big eyes of
the boy are looking upwards; somewhat typical look for children who
are shorter than adults, but his expression is very neutral – blank
even. As the caption tells us he is not well, and in the absence of
specific information about the skin condition, one is left to guess
whether his face is dirty and the reddish elbow area is infected or if it
is indeed the face that has the problem. The child signifies innocence
and hope for the future, but also the brutality of the war. When this
boy grows up, unless there has been drastic changes in attitudes of
the press and the audience interpretations he might appear to many
westerners who subscribe to such thinking as a potential ‘terrorist’
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and a threat. Now he resembles those young boys in the soap adverts
who have had a good play in the mud and now are coming to their
mothers to be washed, but instead, we are aware of the tragic
circumstances he is living in. The power‐relationship here too is clear
and the image accompanied by its caption suggests the international
troops in general and maybe American troops in specific having won
the hearts and minds – the trust of the local people. Perhaps the
father is only desperate. This image represents the locals as the
victims of their own fellow countrymen and the Americans as their
saviours.

The light blue piece of fabric entering the frame might be an index of
United Nations; at least creating an association to ‘impartiality’, and
the high technology looking wrist watch juxtaposes the humble
conditions and uncleanliness of the boy, contributing to the sense of
their power‐relation.

For a reader ideologically opposed to the American military actions –
although not necessarily supporting Taleban either – a reading of the
image could be that maybe the skin condition is a result of chemical
warfare or a destroyed home. Maybe the dirt on his face is from an
explosion near the playground he was playing as his big eyes make
him appear playful. The boy’s hair, curiously red in the sun, also
draws one’s attention signifying how the stereotypes may not be
applicable automatically to people of region – it forces one to
question assumptions.

Mikko Kapanen
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Should the child be blond haired with blue eyes even on the ruins of
the World Trade Centre the difference in the reading would not be as
different as it would be with grown men on the same locations. The
innocence of the child is more universal.

*******

All the images analysed in specific, but also the other ones in the
gallery were clearly shot from the side of the international troops.
That left any dissent voices to be heavily depended on one’s own
interpretations. They seem to fit into the idea of ‘distance’ by their
media framing; they are impersonal and lack passion for the most
part. They are not particularly engaging as they remind us more of
the fictional films than maybe anything real that we would know. At
least, I might repeat myself, to the ones fortunate enough not to know
these conditions in the first hand. They are not a call to action to end
the war, but rather present it as something complex and – as
heartless as it may sound – uninteresting.

Conclusion
In this paper I have been looking into the representations of people
in the war photography, focusing on selected photo gallery from the
website of the British Guardian newspaper.

The argument I have made is that the images are a result of the
access of the press, which depends on the media policy of the troops
the journalists are embedded in. While the images are clearly offering
us evidence of the one‐sided power‐relationship involved here, on
Mikko Kapanen
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the other hand depending on one’s own view point the images
without any explanation could also look like a police state military
operation where soldiers with superior equipment use excessive
force randomly against powerless people. Conventions of the news
journalism and media in general create circumstances where images
of White devastation tends to be more subtle and suggestive
establishing associations whereas the suffering of other ethnicities is
shown with more literal and graphic visual expression.

Ideology within images does not present itself as ideology, but reality
(Lacey 1998: 101), but that reality gets misrepresented in the war
photography where the questions of access become the defining
ones. Gatekeepers and editors cannot select images that do not exists
as the photo journalists have not been able to take them without
access. The same practical pressure is a lot less dominant in written
journalism where you have not had to be on an immediately close
range to tell the story. Therefore these two editorial standards may
be forced to be different, without it proving the ideological leaning of
the publication and that seems to be the case with the Guardian.

We cannot, of course, assume how the editorial line of the publication
would be should there be better access and the conditions generally
less dangerous for the individual representatives of the press, and
how would the ideological and economical factors then apply. I
suggest that further study focusing on events with less ideological
disagreements, such as natural catastrophes and their images on the
news could provide more and clearer answers to the questions of
media’s treatment of different ethnicities. A good comparative study
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could for instance be the one of 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean
and 2010 Haitian earthquake, as one of them, if not statistically, but
based on the media attention dedicated to it, had the emphasis on the
death of White holiday makers and other was impacting by and large
the Black nation of Haiti.
_____________________________
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[Last accessed 8 May 2010]
General election 2010: The liberal moment has come. The Guardian. 30.4. 2010 [online] Available from:
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Operation Moshtarak in Marjah, Afghanistan. The Guardian. 15.2. 2010 [online] Available from:
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Revolution in what: The coverage of political social media and its
significance in modern elections.
By Mikko Kapanen

This paper looks into the branding of political media focusing on
experiences of the Iranian Presidential elections of 2009. It explores
their coverage, analysing the news stories from selected variety of
international media by New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera and the
Economist as they have been accessed through their web services,
although the content has not strictly been primarily produced for the
online environment.

The specific interest I have in this paper is to analyse how does the
traditional media relate and represent the usage of online social
media in events such as major elections. My research question is that
based on this rather visible and plentiful coverage, is the usage of
online social media significant as a political milestone or as a media
event; is the emphasis on politics or on social media?

The key argument I make is that the so called western news and
media platforms are pushing the agenda of democratising effect of
social media, with little, or no critical analysis on the context of the
other countries, and the conditions that are crucial for the online to
be a major factor: access, level of skills and broader willingness to
engage online. Therefore the notion of democratic participation is
more idealistic and emotional than actual, and in reality, unlikely to
be as effective as the traditional ways of organising. That, of course,
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does not mean that at least in theory, the political social media does
not have the potential ability to change the democratic process in a
country like Iran, but for now, the emphasis is on the social media,
rather than the politics – it is a question of broadly publicised media
event, rather than a political change. In the countries with more
access, which are not the focus of this paper, there might be more
political impact, but as the technological savvy of the citizen’s is
increasing, so is the ability of corporations, state and political parties.
In all this media noise the ones with credibility will still make the
biggest contribution. Online political social media especially in Iran
elections of 2009 was a tool of branding, rather than communication
and organising, and even in broader international context, it is very
much additional service rather than taking over of the traditional
ways.
The juxtaposition of largely American owned online companies and

Iranian political system, creates a set up that determines varying views on
the significance of the event, usually serving the one who is interpreting
them in media.

I will first look at the existing research on social media and online,
and political media. Then I will explore the method of this research
which is qualitative content analysis, and list the specifics regarding
this paper. Before finally concluding, I will present the finding of the
research.

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Theories on online, online media and political communication.
In order to understand the relationships between traditional and
online media, and online media and political process, I will now look
into some theories around these topics.

The online media has resulted thus far in a steady increase in the
social (non‐market) media production, and therefore participation
(Benkler 2006). It has created a situation where potentially the
media can be democratised (Tambini 1999), although this mainly
concerns the countries with more advanced online access and is not
certain by any standard. As with any internet activity, the access is
the most important factor in viewing. Besides access, certain basic
computer skills are needed (Nicholas et al. 1998, p.56).

Internet has been used for political communication by the
governments for some time (as a place for citizens to access speeches
and documents), and it has seen in that sense also to improve the
democracy, although questions of access must be raised. For minority
groups, as demonstrated in this paper, it can be a useful tool to
promote their agenda globally, but generally, the dominant western
consumer cultures become highlighted in the online environment
even regards to the political communication (Zandi 2005: 211‐212).
Therefore the question of access is not purely the one of being able to
read or observe, but also to contribute and to be heard. For uploading
and other input purposes good broadband connections are also an
advantage, so infrastructure becomes a consideration.

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The regulations of separate nation states find themselves less

significant in this information, as the platform does not recognise
borders. State, in many cases finds a way, if it so wishes, to counter
the international content not by limiting its production, but the
people’s access to it. In Iran this had happened previously for
instance by destroying satellite dishes (Hafez 2007).

Noam Chomsky introduces an idea of the two remaining super
powers: the state (United States of America) and the (global) public
opinion (2007), and how in order for democracy to work to benefit
the political elite, the media and specialised class of “responsible
men” need to make sure that it does not threaten the status quo
(2002: 12). The oversight in class based thinking is that classes of
different countries are different and might therefore have varying
agendas, and that classes in themselves are diverse and not purely as
one agreeing unit (Hall 1996, p.17).

The impact political media can have to society can be facilitating
(encourages people with an agenda to organise or join organisation)
(Semetko 2004: 355), and using networked platforms, social online
media can have an increasing impact into users trusting civic sector
(Semetko 2004: 356).

To some extend borderless media environment globally is
determined by its dominant cultures, practices and agendas.
Therefore mostly all countries on varying levels get impacted by
those; and through them the culture of their production. A lot of
dominant political media is a result of highly PR‐ised politics and
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media relationships (Louw 2005: 148). The online social media is not
immune to this relationship, only it can be more difficult to identify
when it is produced in an environment of social production. These
networked societies do have hierarchies; although they are relatively
flat, they have many centres of influence (Van Dijk 2006: 36).
Methodology
Having theorised around my research question, I will now explore
the method of my research, before looking into its findings.

In order to be able to effectively answer how did the traditional
media relate to online social media during Iranian elections 2009,
and whether the significance of its strong presence was as a political
milestone or rather a media event, I have conducted a content
analysis.

Content analysis; also at times known as textual analysis (Pierce
2008: 263) can be divided into several categories (Pierce 2008 and
Rugg & Petre 2007), but for the purposes of this paper, I have chosen
to use qualitative content analysis. Qualitative content analysis is
interpretive method which differs from the quantitative one, in which
the frequency of the selected key words is the focus, in that texts are
analysed to find out their possible bias. For instance article can be
found to be in support of something, against it or relatively neutral
(Pierce 2008: 264). Qualitative content analysis can also interpret the
perspectives of different contributors to a given issue (Pierce 2008:
264). Criticism for such method has been that it allows the conductor
of research to choose a sample that will prove his/her already
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existing opinion (Rugg & Petre 2007: 153), and I have tried to
counter this with my selection of sources.

In order to be able to find some meaningful clarity to the significance
of social media usage in political process, or how it is presented to us
in traditional media, I chose the elections from the recent years that
have given these practices and technologies a lot of publicity, and
further selected a spectrum of media outlets and then narrowed the
analysis into relevant articles and their reflections on social media –
Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube etc. – in this context. These media
outlets are New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera and the Economist. They
have been selected to cover different political economies of media as
much as a variety of target audiences.

The variables, the characteristics researched (Burns 1997: 118), I
have considered have been the focus on the idea of social media as a
democratic (reflective of the people) tool, its role in communicating,
organising and branding, acknowledging the context within which it
was used and its assumed accuracy.

This research focuses on a specific case study understanding how
American information infrastructure can work in another country
with a different political system and conflicting ideology to the
dominant western one. It does not attempt to generalise, but deals
with matters in their own context.

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Iran: social media and the Green Revolution
I doubt that the broader global audience had a lot in mind when the
2009 elections were approaching in Iran – most people probably
were not even aware of them. The ones in the know were expecting
for Iran, an uncharacteristically tough race as the standing President
Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was challenged by three high profile
candidates; all of them criticising the defending candidate for making
the country a villain on the global stage and endangering its stability
(Al Jazeera ‐ All up for grabs in Iran vote, 10.6.2009). For us, outside
the country’s borders, the general expectations were probably low –
Iran had been branded as a member country of the so called Axis of
evil – a term used by George W. Bush administration – and it
struggles with lack of press freedom have been widely acknowledged
(fourth weakest ranking in the Press Freedom Index 2009 just before
North Korea, Turkmenistan and Eritrea, http://www.rsf.org).

Regardless of the outcome, Iran’s global political brand was not doing
well as things were.

It was, however, something much more in line with the zeitgeist that
demanded the global attention to this event; the use of online social
media to communicate the opposition messages globally – to brand
the Green Revolution.
*******

In this segment I will explore the international news coverage
relating to the phenomenon of the new media in the political use in
Mikko Kapanen
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Iranian election; did it have political significance or was it mainly a
media event?

There is variety of views expressed in the selected media sources –
the Economist, New York Times, Al Jazeera and BBC – but mostly,
with the exception of Al Jazeera, they offer little or no context of how
Iran uses the Internet, and more importantly who, and how many,
have access to it. This distinct lack of analysis enabled the Sea of
Green or the Green Revolution – candidate Mousavi’s supporter’s
social media and street campaign, named after its colour code, to
become a strong brand, and remain what was left in the memories of
people. Perhaps this uncritical approach was an indication of the
dominant ideological opposition by these predominantly western
audiences and media producers, but oversight it was, as without
clarification these audiences are likely to understand the technology
based on their own technological context. It also speaks on behalf of
an effective branding campaign that one platform – Twitter
(http://twitter.com) – received by far the most analysis and
attention, although photographs in Flickr (http://flickr.com), video
clips in YouTube (http://youtube.com), other activities in Facebook
(http://facebook.com) and several blogs were also part of the social
media campaigning around the event.

Some journalists see the situation as a battle between social media
and an oppressive regime, and others as a one of social media against
the traditional media, but based on the scarcity of the internet
technology in Iran, or more importantly its uneven divide
geographically, it seems evident that the campaign was more
Mikko Kapanen
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significant as a media event, and as the Head of Social Media from Al
Jazeera Riyaad Minty calls it a revolution of Twitter – not of people
(Al Jazeera 25.6.2009) – and the ground breaking achievements were
largely in the field of political media branding and grass roots
spinning and agenda setting, rather than organising or even
communicating messages.

The selected news sources all had an underlying message of social
media, at least potentially to be a force of democratic advancement –
a tool for ordinary people to get their word out. In a BBC online
article The Web Makes Personal Political (www.bbc.co.uk) Rajan
Malhotra even says, although not specifically regards to Iran, “the
web empowers the ordinary citizens and gives a voice to the
masses”, which potentially could be true in a few places, but in many
countries, like in Iran, it is not used by majority (according to
http://www.internetworldstats.com approximately 30% of the
population is online, but not necessarily using social media) and the
usage is based in urban areas. In Iran the majority lives on the
countryside and generally votes for Ahmedinajad (Al Jazeera
25.6.2009). The notion of democratisation impact of social media is
an idealistic one, and as all the sources agree with it being worth
aiming towards, they have a very little analysis on who are the
ordinary people who are supposed to be sending these messages – in
all probability they are part of the political machinery of the
opposition. As much as they, of course, have a right to contribute,
they hardly fit into the description of an ordinary citizens, and in
numbers, we cannot call them as the masses. According to Al Jazeera
– the only organisation to get into such details – they were following
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60 Iranian Twitter users posting on the event which then, possibly
due to the Government action, was later reduced into six active
accounts posting about the elections from Iran. In a country of
approximately 74.2 million inhabitants it seems hardly democratic
and reflective (Al Jazeera 25.6.2009). As someone who personally
was following some of these Twitter posters, it has to be
acknowledged that there was, however, a very distinct sense of
urgency in their posts – or Tweets – and a feeling of something quite
big unfolding on our computer screens and mobile devices. It was a
brilliant branding by a group of political activists with help from the
international community of social media users. The activity that the
campaign was organising without a doubt, was an international
online campaign in which for instance Twitter users from around the
world were asked to change their location or time zone to be Tehran,
to confuse the Iranian Government campaign for censorship. While it
might have achieved that, it certainly created confusion in the
numbers of actually Tweeting Iranians making the group look a lot
bigger than it was. The online campaign that was largely conducted
in English also took the focus away from the street campaign that
was taking place and in all probability was much more effective in
organising demonstrations that the San Francisco based company,
Twitter, took, or at least got the credit for.

Out of the media that was looked into, Al Jazeera raises criticism of
election and covers both sides of the story, manages to analyse and
give context. BBC creates an illusion of looking at both sides, not
really doing that, and New York Times speculates in a way that leaves
us to decide what we suspect to be the truth, although poking us to
Mikko Kapanen
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the “right direction” with hints. Its starting point is that Iran is a
corrupt country. Iran has made it easy for the media to do that; while
it has been painted as a bad apple, the President Ahmedinajad has
also contributed with his statements which we can agree or disagree
with, but they were always bound to cause discomfort in global
politics (e.g. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attack on Israel triggers
walkout at UN racism conference, Guardian 21.4.2009), but the
problems with the lack of press and human rights do not
automatically mean that the opposition is right, or that the people
could not vote for the ruling party. Or that the elections were rigged.
These matters received a very little thought in the press.

Looking at the general attitudes, as they were described in the media,
it appears that traditional media empathises with the ones who are
effectively using social media in political communication. It is seen as
a more democratic reflection of what the real people on the streets
say, regardless of the questions of the access which demand a closer
look at the demographics, age considerations (online environment
mostly used by younger generations), socio economic factors (access
to equipment and online infrastructure) and technical skills of the
people. This kind of idea of particularly democratic communication
taking place in the social media also supports the idea of broad
participation in media, which may, like said, be compromised by the
lack of access, but also the lack of willingness; not everyone desires to
be a civic activists. In the end – and this seems to be especially true in
Iran – political use for social media is still controlled by a different
kind of elites with seemingly good command of computer and online
Mikko Kapanen
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technology. Due to the Government’s attempts to censor the online
media, the demand for technological competence was especially high.

The democratising impact of social media is on the one hand rather
an idealistic suggestion in a country like Iran, but also is an emotional
one. Maybe we want it to be true, and we wish that it could be so,
regardless of the facts. It is a question of spinning it and making it
look effective. That was a great success by Mousavi’s supporters.
Media, such as BBC, talks about the impact that specifically Twitter
had in organising demonstrations, while the Economists is a little
more sceptical as it points out that the international users rendered
the feeds relatively useless with their participation (Twitter 1, CNN 0.
18.6.2009). According to the Al Jazeera it was clear that the messages
were targeted for the international audiences as they were mainly in
English, which would not have been an effective language of
communication on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere in Iran. The
company itself, Twitter, postponed its planned maintenance
shutdown in order to accommodate communication in Iran. New
York Times especially talks about this as an act of tremendous
goodwill (Social Networks Spread Defiance Online, 16.6.2009), just as
does BBC (Twitter Iran delay ‘not forced’. 8.6.2009). Not to take
anything away from Twitter organising the political action in Iran,
but it is left unclear how effective the it was since the most popular of
its activist users were posting in English. Username PersianKiwi
(http://twitter.com/persiankiwi), with 30,970 followers (people
who automatically see the updates on their homepage) updated
nearly exclusively in English, even the call for demonstrations, and
while there might have been other ways of communicating in Iran, it
Mikko Kapanen
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seems that the use of social media was to build international
pressure, more than arrange opposition activities as it might have
appeared initially. For those activities there must have been more
effective, but less media sexy, methods.

Interestingly the media, especially in the so called west, seems to
assume that social media is democratic and therefore the side that
uses it the most effectively is the popular one. That is not, however,
immediately evident if we look at it critically based on access both
technologically and skills‐wise. While for instance Iranian pre‐ and
post‐election Twitter‐campaigning was no doubt a media event, that
does not yet prove their factual superiority. Many articles analysed
here, left the factual accuracy of information received through social
media unanalysed.

The correlation between action that takes place on the social
networks and outside of that is not always clear either. In 2009 on a
separate example in a different media context, in United Kingdom,
BBC in its Question Time TV programme had invited MEP Nick
Griffin, the leader of the British National Party (BNP) as one of its
panellists. BNP is a party far on the right of the political spectrum and
known for its extremely critical views on immigration, oftentimes
stretching – willingly or accidentally – to the statements that are
broadly critical towards other ethnicities regardless of their
citizenship status and history, and several members having links with
neo‐Nazism. Griffin’s presence in BBC panel resulted with extremely
high volume of Tweets online, generally expressing emotions from
disagreement to disgust and criticism of BBC to feature a party in the
Mikko Kapanen
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political system which has been increasing its support. The following
days from the broadcast, BBC had received 416 calls about the show.
Curiously enough after all the pressure and the hype in the social
media, more than half of these complaints were about BBC not giving
Griffin a fair and equal chance in the programme, and bulk also
congratulating the broadcaster for good judgment by inviting Griffin
(Guardian, Nick Griffin to lodge formal complaint with BBC over
Question Time, 23.10.2009).

There is a threat that using social media creates a sense of
participation to the democratic process which it, at this point, is not.
It creates a noise instead of signal and as the facts can be difficult to
confirm at times, the bond between the sender of the message or
message itself, and the receiver is likely to be more emotional and
intellectual.

Conclusion
Although the social media used in a political process has a distinct air
of equality in communication, in practice the situation is not as
straight forward. Several questions of access (skills, economical,
infrastructure, willingness) must be considered before we can
deduce any meaningful conclusions. There is also a threat that what
appears to be more democratic and equal, is effectively abused by
political spin doctors and other activists, only now with the disguise
of openness. Constantly evolving communication culture, as
fascinating as it is, in political context has a lot less significance than
it does as a media event, especially in a country with limited online
access. For instance in the Iranian example that has been the focus of
Mikko Kapanen
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this paper, organising the activities has happened offline, and then
the messages, might have been rather repeated in English in services
like Twitter.

The manner in which traditional media addressed the impact of the
social media in Iranian elections in 2009 was focusing on idealistic
potential of the media, which could have been the aim of the
campaign, it having been largely conducted in English; to draw
international attention to Iranian general political situation. None of
sampled media analysed the message too critically; for instance was
the election rigged? The use of social media and the way it was
covered in selected media did not provide us with many concrete
answers or even agendas, but rather dispersed into a media noise
that left us wondering that what was the message.

_____________
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Reading Political Media: essay trilogy

and large through non‐Sudanese characters. In another words the

participating soldiers and policy makers, also the press gets

have commentaries. The research done by the Glasgow University

interpretations of their audiences (Robinson 2002: 137). The

that suggest any vulnerability amongst the international forces. Its

To have a graphic image of a corpse featured in a broadsheet

The juxtaposition of largely American owned online companies and

The regulations of separate nation states find themselves less

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