Cnn Effect

Project title: the ‘CNN effect’ of the media

Introduction

During the 1980s, the revolution on the communication technology enabled the emergence of the global real-time news and the CNN, the first global news network, which broadcasts news 24-hour and around the world (Robinson, 2002). It was not until the 1990 Gulf war that the CNN became an important actor in the world stage. During the war, CNN played an important role in disseminating information of the war and conducted a very successful coverage of the warfare. It established the significance of an around-the-clock news network with global outlook, which inspired other broadcasting companies, such as BBC, NBC and Fox News, to establish similar networks. The expansion of the CNN and other global news networks have affected economy, culture, public opinion, security and diplomacy, even issues like warfare and terrorism (Gilboa, 2005), and produced a new theory incorporating communicational study to international relations known as the ‘CNN effect’. This effect gave rise to the possibility that the informed public and countries’ foreign policy might be affected more than ever by the mass media. This new phenomenon has attracted many scholars to study, and a lot of empirical and theoretical work has been done to examine the influence. This essay will dive into the ongoing debate over the validity of the CNN effect theory and determine what impact this modern media have on shaping and changing of the foreign policy of the governments, and attempts to answer the following questions: What is the CNN effect? How and to what extent does it exert effect on public opinion and the policy making process? The article will first look into the origin and definitions of the CNN effect. Then it will investigate the previous researches of the CNN effect and critically assess the theoretical frameworks and methods used by scholars: How has it been studied? What are the results of these researches and what progresses...