International Media Perspectives on World Opinion during the War with Iraq.

The 2003 war with Iraq marks the first time world public opinion has been strongly arrayed against the United States on a major issue. The world has disagreed with America on specific issues like the banning of landmines during the Clinton administration and South African sanctions due to Apartheid during the Reagan administration. But at no time were there concerted efforts involving mass demonstrations and world leaders allied against this nation. In addition, the events during March of 2003 involving the United Nations Security Council made it impossible for this country to muster even majority support for its resolution to go to war. These circumstances are even more acute when one considers that the United States enjoyed a tremendous wave of global sympathy after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 , and that many of the allies who oppose us now, like France and Germany, aided the campaign against terror in Afghanistan in 2001-2002. Further, a Pew Research poll released in 2002 indicated that the image of the U.S. had deteriorated in an extraordinary number of nations around the world in the previous two years. The primary question, then, is what went wrong? How may we trace world opinion and analyze it to answer this question, and what are the ramifications for present and future U. S. policy? How does the present American isolation from the international community affect its ability, and the ability of other nations, to promote cooperative global ventures and insure a peaceful and safe international environment. This paper studies these questions by describing the historical role of communication in the definition of communities. It then extrapolates how global communications will play a similar role in the definition of supra-national entities which will structure the relations among nations. Hypotheses are derived which test how discourse conventions in international media provide clues to the relevant entities in the post-Cold War era. These hypotheses follow primarily from a theory of global opinion processes and the emergence of an international community ; they are counterposed to Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory and the emergence of communities based upon primordial ties of ethnicity and religion . Hypotheses: Three general hypotheses guide this paper’s investigation of the model of community that will dominate the emerging international order: · Does the content of world opinion vary by civilization or global opinion theory? · Does the agenda for world opinion vary by civilization or global opinion theory? · Does the discursive construction of world opinion vary by civilization or does it follow a process of consensus or conflict according to global opinion theory? The project then uses the hypotheses for a case study of international media discourse on a particular issue-the impending conflict with Iraq. For this analysis, international newspapers from the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Iran will be analyzed. Methodology: The media analyses follow Herman and Chomsky’s assumption that newspaper discourse tends to reflect the dominant ideological and regime interests of the nation of origin . While the newspaper’s national origin does not determine its discourse, it does provide clues to how certain issues are discussed and certain terminology framed. An important example for this study involves the discourse on world opinion. Past studies have shown how use of this phrase varies with nation, region, and historical context, but that one may detect an international consensus forming when the meaning and agenda for world opinion converge across several nations’ newspapers . The paper analyzes discussion of these issues follows the pattern defined by global opinion theory or the clash of civilizations theory. It investigates whether the construction, agenda, and content follow global opinion or civilization models in the following ways: · The content of world opinion: newspaper references to world opinion are coded according to whether they represent a positive, negative, or neutral position on the issue which appears on the agenda. These results are then compared across newspapers. · The agenda for world opinion: previous research suggests that a world opinion has formed when a general consensus exists concerning: (1) the major issues on the agenda for world opinion; (2) the relative emphases these issues deserve over time; and (3) the dates, or time periods, in which these issues appear . All three of these factors are studied by comparing the dates and percentage of references among each of the international newspapers analyzed. · The construction of world opinion: previous research suggests that potential differences among national newspapers may occur in the frequency of their use of the components of world opinion in their references, and the manner in which they construct the concept of world opinion from these components. The construction of world opinion in different contexts is analyzed using factor analyses . A key question in each case is whether each of these factors tends to vary more within the civilization boundaries Huntington describes, or across these boundaries. If there is considerable variation between the two newspapers, but less between the newspapers and others in a previous study, the clash of civilizations theory is not supported. However, a more fundamental question is whether one can map a process of opinion formation and consensus that clearly isolates errant nations, as predicted by global opinion theory. Previous research has shown that these processes may be mapped by studying when the construction, agenda, and content of references to world opinion converge . The argument between these approaches is not merely academic. If the present controversies over war with Iraq have their source in primordial differences that pre-date the modern era, and the Cold War was merely an interruption in this conflict as Huntington implies, then there is little to be done to alleviate the problem. We must simply accept it as fact and endeavor to project our civilization’s values as pre-eminent in the world. If however the conflict is part of a greater struggle regarding the influence of world opinion, there are policy alternatives that can alleviate the apparent split between the United States and other countries. In either case, international communication provides clues to the predominant model of global organization, as well as potential means of solving problems of international cooperation and conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]