The view from above (and below): A comparison of American, British, and Arab news coverage of US drones

Abstract

In recent years, the United States has significantly expanded its use of drone warfare. Experts are divided: some defend drones as a legal, effective way to target terrorists while others suggest drones are inaccurate and contribute to anti-Americanism. In addition, international public opinion differs starkly with Americans largely supportive of the program while publics across the globe condemn it. Suspecting news coverage might play a pivotal role in these differences, the authors explored the framing of the US drone program in American, British, and Arab news coverage. Consistent with research on social identity theory and ethnocentrism in news, they find that US coverage was more likely to frame the policy favorably -emphasizing its legality, strategic value and technological sophistication while downplaying civilian deaths -while British and, to a greater extent, Arab coverage was more critical. The authors discuss how these findings build on existing theory and explore the implications for US drone policy.

The Dan Rather Maxim: Collective identity and news coverage of human rights and international law

“…To be fair, social identity is not the sole factor driving coverage (Sheets et al, 2015: 16). Research suggests that the news may adopt a nationalist tone in order not to harm commercial and audience interests as well as avoiding scrutiny from political and economic elites (Herman and Chomsky, 2002; Hutcheson et al, 2004).…”

“…More news outlets and case studies must be considered. In addition to the suggestions offered by Sheets et al (2015: 16), an analysis of the dynamics between journalists and editors may shed light on this issue. It is plausible that journalists are initially producing objective drafts but an editor’s heavy-handed mark-ups and revisions reflect a more nationalist tone.…”

Sheltering the president from blame: Drone strikes, media assessments and heterogeneous responsibility 2002–2014

“…We coded 475 articles from The New York Times and Washington Post, which covered 841 drone incidents that took place between 11 September 2001 and 31 December 2014. The only previous content analysis work on drones has selected much shorter time spans (2009-2012 in Sheets et al, 2015), and this longer period allows us to gauge how reporting has changed over the duration of the US drone programme. These newspapers were selected because previous research draws on them as papers of record, especially in reporting on US foreign policy (Jordan, 1993;Murray, 2014).…”

“…Does the secretive nature of the drone program involving a diffuse array of actors, potentially including the pilot, the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), among others, reduce the likelihood of the media holding the President accountable for civilian deaths? Responsibility attributions are important for determining the political significance of drone reporting, linking events to specific actors or occluding these links, yet responsibility attributions have not been studied in previous research on the media's coverage of drone strikes (Sheets et al, 2015).…”

‘When he’s in Afghanistan it’s like our world/his world’: mediating military experience

“…Others have explored the motivations for soldiers to capture their own experiences in visual form (sketches, photographs, video), both in terms of the antecedents for such practices and the more recent public sharing and networked nature of often disturbing imagery (Kennedy, 2009;Struk, 2011). New imaging technologies bring new ways of seeing war that promise an embodied and affective proximity to combat and personal revelatory experiences through helmet cams, video diaries and YouTube films (McSorley, 2012;Silvestri, 2013), but also through the 6 techno-precision of apache helicopter or drone cameras that anticipate a de-personalised annihilation from above (Sheets et al, 2015).…”