One war, different coverage: Exploring cultural influences on international media framing of the Iraq War

Abstract

The aim of the study was to demonstrate in empirical terms how cultural forces shape media coverage of global events. To buttress this fact, the spotlight was on international media coverage of the war in Iraq. The Iraq War was a defining media event. To underpin cultural influences on the war coverage, the paper reviewed five studies (Ravi, 2005; Dimitrova & Connolly-Ahern, 2007; Kolmer & Semetko, 2009; Barker, 2012, Gou et al., 2015) on the coverage of the war in different countries. Results revealed that the cultural context within which each news source was situated shaped the news representation of the war. The cultural factors that influenced the coverage were beyond the control of journalists and their media organizations, suggesting that culture is an important variable that should be considered when studying news production and coverage. The findings reinforce the widely held view that news production is shaped by competing influences, including cultural values.

Cognitive warfare

“…Examples of this shift may be evident in the wars that immediately followed, in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021 and in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. In both cases, war action was coupled with worldwide coherent informational campaigns during the preparation and the execution of operations [38,105,108,141]. The key emotive elements this time were respectively, retaliation for the September 11th of 2001 catastrophe in the US, and the alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction.…”