Because this dissertation draws from several different literatures – strategic narratives and global media studies – and appeals to different academic communities – international relations and international communication – I want to clarify terms that appear with great frequency. These terms are: states, frames, and narratives. All three have specific academic as well as colloquial definitions and their use requires clarification. I do not believe that my definitions are the last word, but readers going forward should bear in mind the following caveats in my use of terminology.
Like scholars of strategic narratives, public diplomacy, and contra-flow, I use the state as a primary unit of analysis. Furthermore, I consider international broadcasters as state agencies, even though it must be acknowledged that individual IBs have varied relations with their state sponsors. However, I do not adopt the realist view that states are monolithic entities that are rational in their actions. I am more persuaded by newer theories such as Castells (2011) or Mann’s (2012) understanding of the state as a network of institutions, each with power deriving
from it relationships with other entities. Even an entity that might seem monolithic, like the US State Department, contains many subsections and offices. For example, Price (2002) observes that the 1998 NATO intervention in Serbia involved both jamming Serbian media as well as supplying their own news and information, the latter being a form of international broadcasting. However, American IBs are normally under the purview of the Broadcasting Board of
Governors, an independent agency that is in turn supervised by the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Senate and the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House.23 As will be
discussed in detail in Chapter 3, all of the networks analyzed for this dissertation have their own histories and evolving relationships with the sponsoring state, and states or organs of states can place competing or complementary pressures on broadcasters. Therefore, when I use a sentence construction such as “X content projects Y policy as an articulation of state power” the reader should not assume that I believe that states immediately respond to conscious dictates from a unitary leader. Some states are more similar to this model than others, for example China under the CPC, but even there struggles over ideology, institutional power, and political legitimacy shape civil society and role of the party-state apparatus (T. Zhang 2016). When I invoke “the state” as an actor, the reader should recognize the actual complexities of states and the many forms states take in practice.
Just as the concept of “state” carries with it ambiguity, so does the concept of frames or framing. Several decades ago, Entman wrote that framing a “scattered conceptualization” (1993, 51). Subsequent analyses show that this remains the case (Gottlieb 2015; Scheufele 1999; Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007). Framing as a concept represents the “assumption that how an issue is characterized in news reports can have an influence on how it is understood by
audiences” (Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007, 11). It is in this most basic sense that I use framing, as a signal that news items do not provide all the relevant details of a story, but make selections and thereby raise the salience of specific details. On some levels this is an unsatisfactory
simplification, especially given the high number of framing studies used in Chapter 6’s analysis on economic protests. However, rather than involving this study in the lengthy debates over what a frame is, or framing’s relationship to other theories such as agenda-setting, I want to emphasize that frame or framing here have limited meanings and should be seen in relation to the topic variable. Recall the example above where “oil prices” was the main topic of the news item. Several broadcasters covered low oil prices, and that fact suggests several factors that may influence IB content. However, the variable does not indicate the nature of the coverage. Are low oil prices the result of short-sighted over investment in the USA, as AJE suggests, or are they the Machiavellian plan of Saudi Arabia and the USA to destabilize Iranian influence in the Middle East, as RT claims? In this sense, my use of the term “frame” is less theoretically robust than those of other scholars. That said, my use should signal to the reader that I am considering the ways in which news items selectively present real phenomena, like oil prices, in ways which differ from other IBs.
Finally and relatedly, narratives must be distinguished from frames. Fundamentally, narratives are distinguished from frames by virtue of their temporal and causal structure. As Miskimmon et al. write, “It is that temporal dimension and sense of movement that distinguishes narrative from… frames. Narratives can orient audiences to a future” (2013, 7). Narratives also possess actors, events, settings, and a sense of time and conclusion. Frames, on the other hand, while they may have these but, in Entman’s (1993) definition, are not required to. To be sure, this is also a limited comparison; Gottlieb’s (2015) analysis of Occupy Wall Street points to what
he calls “framing cycles” which shift frames over multiple news items, newspaper articles in his case. However, for the purposes of this dissertation, narratives work to craft a sense of past, present, and future, and function strategically, intentionally or not, when they bind the actions of actors. To use the oil example one final time; RT airs items with the topic of oil prices, and frames low prices as the result of American and Saudi dumping on international markets.
However, the USA in Miskimmon et al.’s reading is a “great power”; a power whose identity is, in part, related to its responsibility towards weaker powers (2015, 35). Dumping oil, then, lowers prices, which damages economies around the world, Iran and Russia of course, but also the UK and allied Gulf States. In addition, the eventual rebound of oil prices will, inevitably, mislead economic actors who will make decision based on faulty information and greater economic dislocation will result. A frame, which says low oil prices are the USA’s fault, may not lead to a negative judgement of the USA, the viewer may dislike Russia and see American actions as justified. However, a narrative with this dystopian future of oil prices shocks invites the viewer to judge the USA as a bad actor, and correspondingly see Russia as a victim. In this sense narratives are temporal, future oriented, but also causal, in that they can proscribe blame. Good stories, after all, need a good villain. On final point, is that I do not use Miskimmon et al.’s (2013) concept of aligned and non-aligned narratives, which suggest that when to actors, like states, project narratives that are aligned in their basic framework of causes, actors, and potential action, they can then work to achieve non-violent change in the global system. I address this more fully in the limitations but I omit this concept for two reasons. First, my data set is
relatively limited in terms of length and lacks the robustness to make any clear claims about the possibilities of narrative alignment. Oil, for example, is unlikely to see such alignment given the vicissitudes of the market. Second, the degree to which narratives allow cooperative state action
is not the subject of this dissertation, the degree to which IBs project state power and serve state interests is. Future scholarship based on these ideas may incorporate this alignment, but here the focus remains steadfastly on state’s and the factors that shape IB content in service of that state.
Likewise, I have avoided the use of a strict narrative analysis. Narrative analysis has a long history in rhetorical criticism (Fisher 1984) and a developing one in international relations (Hayden 2013b). While narrative analysis is an important approach I have not used it for two key reasons. First, Hayden’s application views “narrative as a kind of independent variable for influence” (2013b, 5). Neither influence, or a narratives effectiveness, nor the larger
epistemological questions thinkers like or Fisher examine are the primary focus here. Instead we are examining the degree to which IB content conforms to sponsor policy as well as how IBs use journalism as a projection of state power. On the question of power CDA is more useful, being specifically attuned to questions of power through language. In any case, new work has
suggested that narrative analysis and CDA can be fruitfully combined (Souto-Manning 2014), but narrative analysis remains outside the scope of this project.