Civil Society And Media In Global Crises

What are ‘global crises' and how do they differ from earlier crises? What do recent studies of global crises reporting tell us about the role of the news media in the global age? What are the current trends in the fields of journalism and civil society that are now re-shaping the public communication of crises? From climate change to the global war on terror, from forced migration to humanitarian disasters - these are just some of the global crises addressed in this accessible, ground-breaking book. For the first time, the author situates diverse threats to humanity in a global context and examines how, why and to what extent they are conveyed in today's news media. Global crises are conceived as the dark side of a globalizing world, but how they become reported and constituted in the news media can also help sustain emergent forms of global awareness, global citizenship and global civil society. The book: Draws on original research and scholarship in the field of media and communications Deliberately moves beyond nationally confined research studies Examines diverse global crises and their communicative politics Recognizes global crises and their constitution within global news reporting as defining characteristics of the global age Global Crisis Reporting is key reading for students in media, communications, globalization and journalism studies.

Explores ways in which crises highlight the problematic issues of media performance in democratic states. The book examines the relationship between communication and civil society through cases of media responses to "crises", ranging from the Gulf War of 1991 to recent events in Eastern Europe.

Part I Concepts and Contexts

Prompted by the 1998 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Korten's book indicts the world's governments for failing to address growing hunger, housing shortages, unemployment, poverty, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation. He examines the causes of this global crisis and offers fresh solutions reflecting sustainability, community, and equity--the only principles that can assure a healthy future for the world's people.

Charts the history, development and influence of the African-American Press.

There is a stark contradiction between the theory of universal human rights and the everyday practice of human wrongs. This timely volume investigates whether human rights abuses are a result of the failure of governments to live up to a universal human rights standard, or whether the search for moral universals is a fundamentally flawed enterprise which distracts us from the task of developing rights in the context of particular ethical communities. In the first part of the book chapters by Ken Booth, Jack Donnelly, Chris Brown, Bhikhu Parekh and Mary Midgley explore the philosophical basis of claims to universal human rights. In the second part, Richard Falk, Mary Kaldor, Martin Shaw, Gil Loescher, Georgina Ashworth and Andrew Hurrell reflect on the role of the media, global civil society, states, migration, non-governmental organisations, capitalism, and schools and universities in developing a global human rights culture.

Mark Findlay's treatment of regulatory sociability charts the anticipated and even inevitable transition to mutual interest which is the essence of taking communities from shared risk to shared fate. In the context of today's global crises, he explains that for the sake of sustainability, human diversity can bond in different ways to achieve fate.

In what ways can mediated transnational protests express, however emergently or imperfectly, «global civil society» and «global citizenship»? How, in an increasingly fragmented and multilayered communications environment, can they contribute to a «global public sphere»? This book explores these and other major questions, examining protests and their transactions within and through today's complex circuits of communications and media worldwide. With contributions from leading theorists and researchers, this cutting-edge collection discusses protests focusing on war and peace, economy and trade, ecology and climate change, as well as political struggles for civil and human rights, including the Arab uprisings. At its core is a desire to better understand activists' innovative uses of media and communications within a rapidly changing media environment, and how this is altering relations of communication power around the globe.

A timely and critical investigation into the way media operates in a so-called global age, presenting new empirical data on key sites of news production and crucially tying these findings to ongoing debates on globalization and democracy.