Vian Bakir

Media and risk: old and new research directions

A macro‐view of the field of media and risk is offered by examining four main routes of media‐risk research. These routes are the media’s role in: providing risk knowledge to inform citizens; modulating public acceptability of different risks; motivating the public to take responsibility for, and action regarding, risks; and providing imaginative schemata regarding voluntarily chosen risks. Research tendencies in each of these routes are summarised and critiqued, with reference to methodology, theoretical frameworks and research foci, enabling articulation of new research directions. Methodologically, there is a need for more longitudinal, historical, contextual and interpretive studies of impacts of mediated risk at micro and macro levels, and more in‐depth, comparative studies between different risk types across different media forms and genres. Greater empirical engagement with risk‐oriented social theory such as risk society, governmentality, risk cultures and edgework would be productive. Under‐explored research foci include: the gaps in knowledge within the Sociology of News; the features of risk that make it a risk issue and how these features interact with various media forms, genres and audiences; and impacts of the variations in audience trust in different media on their trust in mass‐mediated risk knowledge and experience.

Policy Agenda Setting and Risk Communication Greenpeace, Shell, and Issues of Trust

This article uses a qualitative case study approach to examine policy-oriented risk communication in the battle between Greenpeace and Shell over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil structure. Policy-agenda-setting literature is fused with literature from the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) and transnational advocacy networks to generate further insights. This analysis demonstrates that in attempting to influence policy, Greenpeace and Shell are prepared to redefine risk according to their own strategic needs and arenas of operation. It suggests that media exposure impacts policy both by shaping public perception of risk (rather than of policy) and by shaping policy makers’ perception of public opinion. It is suggested that for successful policy-oriented risk communication, social trust in the communicator must be cultivated and maintained with key audiences prior to, and during, risk communication

Greenpeace v. Shell: media exploitation and the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF)

This paper examines the usefulness of the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) in understanding the medias role in risk communication. Since the SARF was created in 1988, it has been both further developed and critiqued for (amongst other things) its: static conception of communication; lack of attention towards how key actors use the media; lack of systematic attention towards the media as an amplification station; and simplistic assumptions of how the media operate as an amplification station. A complex heavily‐mediated risk communication case study—the battle between Greenpeace and Shell over the deep‐sea disposal of the Brent Spar oil rig (1995)—is used to explore whether the SARF in its current stage of development stands up to these critiques. It is concluded that these critiques are more a consequence of how researchers have used the SARF rather than a fault of the SARF itself. Using the SARF framework with a qualitative case study methodology enabled systematic analysis of the role of relevant media in the social amplification of risk in the Spar issue, exposing how Greenpeace used the media to successfully communicate three risk signals, together with the inadequacies of Shells reactions; and revealing the layering within amplification stations, including the media itself.

Fake News and The Economy of Emotions: Problems, causes, solutions

This paper examines the 2016 US presidential election campaign to identify problems with, causes of and solutions to the contemporary fake news phenomenon. To achieve this, we employ textual analysis and feedback from engagement, meetings and panels with technologists, journalists, editors, non-profits, public relations firms, analytics firms and academics during the globally leading technology conference, South-by-South West, in March 2017. We further argue that what is most significant about the contemporary fake news furore is what it portends: the use of personally and emotionally targeted news produced by algo-journalism and what we term “empathic media”. In assessing solutions to this democratically problematic situation, we recommend that greater attention is paid to the role of digital advertising in causing, and combating, both the contemporary fake news phenomenon, and the near-horizon variant of empathically optimised automated fake news.

News, Agenda Building, and Intelligence Agencies A Systematic Review of the Field from the Discipline of Journalism, Media, and Communications

Reflecting on Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing revelations regarding indiscriminate online and telephone surveillance and social media manipulation by signals intelligence agencies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, this article highlights the hitherto limited nature of public knowledge of, and internationally uneven concern regarding, intelligence agencies’ contemporary techniques of communications surveillance and manipulative agenda building. While noting that the interdisciplinary field of intelligence studies has started to theorize intelligence agencies’ agenda-building activities, also observable is a remarkable lacuna from the discipline of Journalism, Media, and Communications. A systematic review of all research articles (up until December 2014) from the archives of sixteen journals in the discipline of Journalism, Media, and Communications confirms this lack of attention. Only 0.1 percent of the discipline’s articles are centrally on the field of the press, intelligence agencies, and agenda-building processes, even when these are broadly defined. Patterns within this tiny field are delineated, comprising intelligence agencies’ techniques of, and success in, manipulating different agenda-building nodes involving the press, journalists’ practices and challenges in dealing with intelligence, the public’s role in press-related agenda building on intelligence issues, and methodological patterns and issues in examining this field. The systematic review contextualizes and situates the six research articles comprising this Special Issue.

Tele-Technologies, Control, and Sousveillance: Saddam Hussein — De-Deification and the Beast

This paper examines two disturbing, post-2003 Iraq War representations of Saddam Hussein – the televised inspection of his disheveled body on his capture (December 2003) and television and internet footage of his execution (December 2006). These representations epitomize two very different examples of government control of information within the emergent tele-technological environment of Web 2.0. The portrayal of Saddam Hussein as a captured beast was controlled by the U.S. military, while sanitized footage of his execution was staged by the Iraqi government and intended to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein died “like all tyrants, frightened and terrified” (in the words of the Iraqi Prime Minister). While both official images intended to draw a line under the continued insurgencies in Iraq by depriving insurgents of their leader-in-hiding and leader-under-trial, the official version of his death was subverted through the distribution of illegally captured mobile phone video footage, which was subsequently retransmitted in mainstream news media. This raises questions about the nature and limits of strategic political communication in the context of Web 2.0 technologies where shocking but popular “sousveillant” content can reframe the ethical boundaries of mainstream news.

Exploring Relationships between Trust Studies and Media Studies

As Chapter 1 demonstrated, trust is conspicuously absent in a wide range of political, economic and media institutions. As such, trust is an increasingly studied phenomenon. We have adopted the moniker of ‘trust studies’, and this chapter will outline the growth of this field, the relative absence of reference to media therein and areas where there has been a recent emergence of interest in trust and the media.

Introduction to Special Theme Veillance and transparency: A critical examination of mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era

Introducing the Special Theme on Veillance and Transparency: A Critical Examination of Mutual Watching in the Post-Snowden, Big Data Era, this article presents a series of provocations and practices on veillance and transparency in the context of Big Data in a post-Snowden period. In introducing the theoretical and empirical research papers, artistic, activist and educational provocations and commentaries in this Special Theme, it highlights three central debates. Firstly, concerning theory/practice, it queries how useful theories of veillance and transparency are in explaining mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era. Secondly, it presents a range of questions concerning norms, ethics, regulation, resistance and social change around veillance and transparency. Thirdly, it interrogates the upsurge in veillance and transparency discourses and practices post-Snowden, and asks whether they are adequate to the task of educating and engaging people on abstract and secretive surveillance practices, as well as on the possibilities and pitfalls of sousveillance.

The Age of Suspicion

The generalised mood of modern times is that trust is on the wane and that this is problematic (Misztal, 1996; Duffy, Williams and Hall, 2004). A widespread consciousness has emerged that existing bases for social cooperation, solidarity and consensus have been eroded. When this erosion began is hard to pinpoint. Some suggest the 1980s, with its deregulation, privatisation and reliance on individualistic culture (Galbraith, 1992). Others (for instance, Michael Redley, this volume) suggest much earlier. What is certain is that from the 1950s onwards, polls and surveys proliferate showing the absence of trust in key institutions, while the news regularly proclaims a crisis of trust (in politicians’ character and policies; experts’ pronouncements; the competence and integrity of private and state institutions, and so on). This decline in trust matters because there are strong links between levels of trust and all sorts of positive social, political and economic outcomes. These matters are discussed further in Chapter 2.

Torture and intelligence in the War on Terror: The struggle over strategic political communication

This paper presents part of a wider project analysing agenda-building (Rogers and Dearing, 1988) regarding the use of torture to extract intelligence from security detainees across the War on Terror (2001–2011) (Bakir, forthcoming). Using a case study methodology, the project analyses strategic political communication (Manheim, 1991) concerning the torture issue, emanating from the Bush and Obama administrations in the US, and the Blair, Brown and Cameron–Clegg administrations in the UK; alongside an evaluation of three main mechanisms of resistance – political, media and lay-public. Political mechanisms comprise unauthorized leaks and official investigations. Media mechanisms comprise investigative journalism, and tele-diplomacy effects resulting from real-time technologies like satellite TV (the CNN effect (Winseck, 1992; Livingston, 1997)) and the internet (the YouTube effect (Naím, 2007)). Lay-public mechanisms comprise NonGovernmental Organization (NGO) activity, and activities that constitute sousveillance (watching from below). As the most recent of the mechanisms of resistance to strategic political communication, the wider project pays particular attention to evaluating sousveillance’s resistive actuality (Bakir, forthcoming). Mann (2004, 2005) identifies two types of sousveillance: personal sousveillance (the sharing of everyday human-centred information, capture as manifested online in websites like YouTube) and hierarchical sousveillance (a more legally or politically-motivated watching of the institutional watchers, as manifested in websites like WikiLeaks). Given that the War on Terror unfolds across a media ecology of Web 2.0, this architecture of mass participation potentially facilitates sousveillance – as demonstrated by the use of Facebook in the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions. While sousveillance can be highly impactful in subverting strategic political communication, as indicated by the Abu Ghraib torture photos, and the mobile