Red Frames on the Green Revolution: Iran Through a Lethal Media Scope
Tuesday 16 June 2009
by: Cynthia Boaz, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
If the international consensus about last week's election results in Iran is that they were a) indeed fraudulent, or b) a coup attempt, and the pro-democracy elements in that country emerge victorious, it will mostly be in spite - not because - of mainstream media coverage of the events. Since 2002, there have emerged a series of democracy movements in Iran, spearheaded primarily - though not exclusively - by university students and women. These people are for the most part technologically and strategically savvy, especially when compared to the hardliners and mullahs that make up the ancient regime in Iran. They have studied the nonviolent struggles in Chile, South Africa and Serbia. They understand the dynamics of civil resistance and the power of simply withdrawing individual complicity in oppression. These are the people whose "tweets" and Facebook "status updates" the world is getting live via digital media from inside the country (despite the regime's attempts to shut down all electronic communications). They are citizen journalists in the most genuine sense of the term. And yet, for most reporters and producers in American mainstream media, they might as well not exist.
The gap between the mainstream media's frames on the story emerging from Iran and the news being instantaneously communicated in bits and pieces from inside the country is surreal. And here's why we should care. A media "frame" helps form the cognitive structure around our perceptions of reality. It determines what parts of a news story we find most significant, and it helps us draw subconscious - but often deeply embedded - conclusions about the meaning behind the events in a story. Because media tend to be so obsessed with violence, the context and significance underlying the series of events like the ones unfolding in Iran often are misinterpreted. Because the wrong (or less interesting) but often more sensational elements of the story are emphasized while others are downplayed, erroneous or incomplete conclusions emerge. And often these conclusions have the consequence of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. When Iranian pro-democracy activists, say, catch a glimpse of a CNN streaming headline that says something to the effect of "Ahmadinejad Victorious in Iranian Elections" or that refer to Mousavi as "the defeated challenger," they may conclude that the regime's attempt at (what is appearing more and more obviously to be) a coup has succeeded. This will in turn dampen their enthusiasm and morale, which may cause some in the movement to give up their resistance, and worse, may cause others to turn to violent means - a last, desperate resort - to fight back.
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/061609R
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