Explaining News: National Politics and Journalistic Cultures in Global Context

The book challenges the idea that processes of globalization are leading to an increasing homogenization of news on a worldwide scale by focusing on two defining crises of our time - 9/11 and the War in Afghanistan. The empirical analysis combines process-tracing, as well as both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of governmental discourses and news coverage of eight elite newspapers across the US, France, Italy and Pakistan. It develops a new multidisciplinary framework to explain news that brings together previously distinct levels of analysis: the micro level of the individual decisions made by journalists, the organizational environment of the news organization, national social and political contexts, the macro level of international relations. The book is going to be of interest primarily to academics and researchers, postgraduate students across communications, media studies, journalism, politics and international relations, as well as journalists, media practitioners and officials involved in public communication.