@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Education, Faculty of"@en, "Educational Studies (EDST), Department of"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:degreeCampus "UBCV"@en ; dcterms:creator "Plaut, Shayna Gilana"@en ; dcterms:issued "2014-10-02T20:42:54Z"@en, "2014"@en ; vivo:relatedDegree "Doctor of Philosophy - PhD"@en ; ns0:degreeGrantor "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:description """My dissertation explores how journalists who self-identify as “transnational” shape their journalism to make human rights claims that trouble, open up and go beyond the nation-state. The project is a multi-sited, ethnographic, comparative case study of journalism education among two different transnational peoples: Romani/Gypsy and Saami (the Indigenous peoples in the current states of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia). Drawing upon 45 interviews with journalists and journalism educators, my research suggests there are two distinct strategies in how transnational peoples’ journalism is conceived, taught and assessed. These strategies influence and are influenced by larger socio-political contexts: the Saami media work within an Indigenous rights framework; their goal is to engage with journalism as a form of self-determination. This differs from Romani media programs, which are funded by non-state donors who aim to use Romani media as a form of claiming citizenship. These citizenship claims are both within a specific state as well as within Europe. In short, the political, economic and cultural contexts shape the journalism, and the journalism in turn shapes the politics. Although the differences are significant, both transnational groups recognized the power of journalism in agenda setting within, between and across borders. Through the framing of information in particular ways, journalists, editors and the media outlets, as well as the funding sources for this journalism, were all engaged in a form of agenda setting (Carpenter, 2007; 2009) and productive power (Barnett & Duvall, 2005). My findings indicate that a unique feature of transnational peoples’ journalism is recognizing and operationalizing power beyond that of the state; another contribution is a more robust understanding of objectivity in journalism – one that demonstrates how journalists can be credible, without pretending to be neutral. These are all important contributions to reimagining human rights advocacy beyond current discussions of transnational advocacy which still often privilege the state and tends to pay scant attention to journalists themselves. Learning from transnational peoples who are creating, teaching, and participating in journalism education in its many places, forms, and media allows us to make more sound connections between human rights and journalism."""@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/50567?expand=metadata"@en ; skos:note " Writing/Righting Truths Across Borders: Learning from Transnational Peoples’ Journalism and Politics by Shayna Gilana Plaut A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Doctor of Philosophy in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Educational Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2014 © Shayna Gilana Plaut, 2014 ii Abstract My dissertation explores how journalists who self-identify as “transnational” shape their journalism to make human rights claims that trouble, open up and go beyond the nation-state. The project is a multi-sited, ethnographic, comparative case study of journalism education among two different transnational peoples: Romani/Gypsy and Saami (the Indigenous peoples in the current states of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia). Drawing upon 45 interviews with journalists and journalism educators, my research suggests there are two distinct strategies in how transnational peoples’ journalism is conceived, taught and assessed. These strategies influence and are influenced by larger socio-political contexts: the Saami media work within an Indigenous rights framework; their goal is to engage with journalism as a form of self-determination. This differs from Romani media programs, which are funded by non-state donors who aim to use Romani media as a form of claiming citizenship. These citizenship claims are both within a specific state as well as within Europe. In short, the political, economic and cultural contexts shape the journalism, and the journalism in turn shapes the politics. Although the differences are significant, both transnational groups recognized the power of journalism in agenda setting within, between and across borders. Through the framing of information in particular ways, journalists, editors and the media outlets, as well as the funding sources for this journalism, were all engaged in a form of agenda setting (Carpenter, 2007; 2009) and productive power (Barnett & Duvall, 2005). My findings indicate that a unique feature of transnational peoples’ journalism is recognizing and operationalizing power beyond that of the state; another contribution is a more robust understanding of objectivity in journalism – one that demonstrates how journalists can be credible, without pretending to be neutral. These are all important contributions to reimagining human rights advocacy beyond current discussions of transnational advocacy which still often privilege the state and tends to pay scant attention to iii journalists themselves. Learning from transnational peoples who are creating, teaching, and participating in journalism education in its many places, forms, and media allows us to make more sound connections between human rights and journalism. iv Preface This dissertation is an original intellectual product of the author, Shayna Plaut. The fieldwork reported in Chapters 4 and 5 was covered by UBC Ethics Certificate H11-03023 (originally approved December 15, 2011) and H11 – 00971 (originally approved on May, 19, 2011), respectively. Significant portions of Chapter 2 and a bit of Chapter 6 were published as a part of the chapter, “Fact Based Storytelling or Fact Based Activism: Tensions, strategies and next steps of human rights and journalism,” in Anja Mijhr and Mark Gibney (Eds) Sage Handbook of Human Rights. Sage Publications (Plaut, 2014). I am the sole author. A version of Chapter 5 was published in the journal Nordicom Review, “Nation building not ‘resistance radio’: Self determination, the state & Saami media.” Volume 35, No. 1, pp. 81-97. I was the sole researcher and sole author. All images in Chapters 4 and 5 are reproduced with permission of the editor and/or curator and noted as such in the text. v Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Preface............................................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ v List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ viii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix Glossary .......................................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ xi Chapter 1 — Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Goals and Structure of the Project .............................................................................................. 4 Why Transnational Peoples? ....................................................................................................... 8 The Specific Cases: Romani and Saami Journalism, Journalists, and Journalism Education .. 12 My Places and Perspectives in this Research ........................................................................... 15 Structure of the Dissertation ..................................................................................................... 18 Chapter 2 — Theorizing the Borders of Journalism and Journalism Beyond Borders ................ 23 What is Journalism? .................................................................................................................. 25 Three Different Approaches to Objectivity ............................................................................... 31 Framing, Counter-Framing, and Framing Contests .................................................................. 36 The Contribution of International Relations Theory ................................................................ 38 The (Neglected) Role of Journalism in Constructivist International Relations Theory ........... 42 Where is the Power in the Story? .............................................................................................. 43 A Transnational Journalistic Standpoint ................................................................................... 46 Chapter 3 — The ABCs—From the Arctic to the Balkans to Central Europe: How I Researched Transnational Peoples’ Journalism Education .............................................................................. 48 Why Comparative Case Studies? .............................................................................................. 48 Brief Overview of Case Selection......................................................................................... 50 Significantly Different Cases ................................................................................................ 52 Case Selection ........................................................................................................................... 52 Why Romani Journalists? ..................................................................................................... 58 My Background with Romani Media ................................................................................... 59 Why Saami Journalists? ........................................................................................................ 60 My Background with Saami Journalism ............................................................................... 61 A Potential Third Case? Migrant Voice: The Road Not Taken ................................................. 62 What I Bring to this Research ................................................................................................... 64 The Who, What, Where, Why, and How of Interviewing and Multi-Sited Fieldwork ............. 65 Negotiating Gatekeepers and Respectful Yet Critical Research ........................................... 66 Going “Into the Field” with Saami Journalism ................................................................. 69 Narrowing My Approach to Romani Journalism: Focus on Open Society Foundations .. 71 Reflections on My Different Dynamics within Interviews ................................................... 74 vi Locating and Analyzing Transcripts and Primary Source Documents ..................................... 75 Chapter 4 — “A (Romani) Journalist is (Just) a Journalist!”: Roma, the State, and Europe—Crafting Inclusion and Citizenship ............................................................................................... 78 Structure of the Chapter ............................................................................................................ 79 The Who, What, Where, When, and How of Roma in Europe ................................................. 81 The State, Roma, and the Emerging Project of Democracy: A Brief Overview ....................... 84 Combating Romani “Culture Talk” ........................................................................................... 86 The Context: History and Geography of Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe ............... 88 Minority Media as a Right .................................................................................................... 90 Why the “National Minority Rights” Model Does Not Work Well for Roma ...................... 91 The Role of International Funders in Framing Transnational Mobilization ............................. 92 The Role of the Decade of Roma Inclusion and Its Impact on Romani Media ........................ 94 “The Stigma of Donor Dependence” .................................................................................... 96 “Why Do You Eat Today if You are Going to be Hungry Tomorrow?”— The Elusive Goal of “Sustainability” ................................................................................................................. 98 The (Assumed) Role of “Healthy Media” in Ensuring and Maintaining Democracy ............ 100 Roma as the Canary in the Coalmine ...................................................................................... 103 “Roma Should be Seen as Full Citizens; And Media is The Medium [To Do This]” ............ 106 Towards a Progression of Criticality? ..................................................................................... 108 Three Training Models for Romani Journalism and Romani Journalists ................................117 The Roma Mainstream Media Internship Program and Subsequent Spinoff Programs ......119 Co-production Fund ............................................................................................................ 122 “Working with the Stars”: Shoulder-to-Shoulder Reporting as Pioneered by Transitions . 125 The Party Line: A Journalist is a Journalist! ........................................................................... 127 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 133 Chapter 5 — “You are thinking from Sápmi, not Oslo!”: Building and Serving the Nation through Saami Journalism........................................................................................................... 137 Media Context Within the Nordic Public Service Model ....................................................... 140 Who and What are Saami, Saami Media Outlets, and Saami Journalism? ............................. 143 History of Saami Journalism ............................................................................................... 146 Understanding the Saami within the Larger Indigenous Movement .................................. 151 The Role of Saami Language .................................................................................................. 152 Media as a Form of Self-Determination: Nation Building, “Watchdogging” and Facilitating “Debate within Society” ......................................................................................................... 154 Speaking Inside; Speaking Outside—The Example of Galdu’s Story on Fishing Rights .. 157 The Role of the Media in Nation Building and the Reality of Multiple Audiences ........... 160 A Saami Starting Point ........................................................................................................ 161 Reindeer Herders on Facebook: How to Negotiate a Saami Starting Point when Working With, and For, a “Double Audience” .................................................................................. 164 Saami Journalism: Cultivating, Strengthening, and Promoting Self-determination ........... 167 vii Sámi Allaskuvla ...................................................................................................................... 170 The Core Elements of Saami Journalism Education ............................................................... 172 “Everyone Knows Everyone”: The Ethics of Journalism in Sápmi ................................... 174 Covering the Reindeer-Herding Crisis from Within the Community ................................. 176 What Does Transnational Formal Saami Journalism Education Look Like? ......................... 180 A Desire to Professionalize in Saami Way(s) ..................................................................... 182 Must there be Tension between Professionalization and Objectivity? ............................... 184 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 186 Chapter 6 —“Then People Know and [Then] Maybe Things Can Change”: How Transnational Peoples’ Journalism Shapes and is Shaped by Transnational Politics ........................................ 189 Distinctions between Saami and Romani Journalism and Journalism Education .................. 192 Saami................................................................................................................................... 195 Roma ................................................................................................................................... 197 Transnational People’s Journalism as a Quintain ................................................................... 199 Information as Power: People Can Change Their Minds…If Only They Know Better ......... 202 The Ideals of Journalism and Democracy ............................................................................... 207 Operationalizing Transnational Media Cooperation ............................................................... 210 Transnational Politics Shaping, and Shaped by, Transnational Journalism: Examples .......... 213 Media as a Corrective for All of Society ................................................................................ 217 Specific Contributions to the Various Literatures ................................................................... 219 Next Steps to Thinking and Doing Human Rights Journalism ............................................... 225 Conclusion: How a Transnational Standpoint Helps Write New Possibilities of Doing Human Rights, and Human Right Journalism ......................................................................................... 228 References ................................................................................................................................... 233 Appendix A: Romani Media Interviews ..................................................................................... 254 Appendix B: Saami Media Interviews ........................................................................................ 262 Appendix C: Questions for Romani media outlets and journalism educators: ........................... 266 Appendix D: Questions for Saami Journalists/Journalism Educators ........................................ 267 viii List of Tables Table 3.1: Romani and Saami Media Outlets ............................................................................... 56 Table 3.2 Romani and Saami Journalism Education Programs .................................................... 57 Table 5.1 Saami Media Outlets and Initiatives ........................................................................... 148 Table 6.1Key Differences for Teaching and Producing Romani and Saami Journalism ............ 194 Table 6.2 What is Human Rights Journalism………………………………………………...…227 ix List of Figures Figure 4.1 Estimated Romani population in Europe (Council of Europe). .................................. 82 Figure 5.1 Map of Sápmi. ........................................................................................................... 144 Figure 5.2 Four Typologies and Tensions of Saami Media; designed by Ande Somby. ............. 157 Figure 5.3 The world from up north, seen upon entering Siida, the Saami Museum in Ánar /Inari, Finland. ....................................................................................................................................... 162 x Glossary Roma – plural term to refer to the Roma/Gypsy people. Rom is for a singular male, Romni for a singular female. The term “Gypsy” is considered pejorative by most Roma with the exception of some Roma in Hungary, England and Spain where the Romani language is used very infrequently. Romani – is both the name of the language spoken by Roma (the base of the language is Indic with a lot of Greek and Turkish and it is then heavily influenced by the contact languages) and an adjective. Thus it is more appropriate to speak of ‘Romani media” rather than “Roma media.” Saami/Sámi – Indigenous peoples of the countries that are now known as Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Roma. The term “Saami” can be used as both a noun and an adjective: “s/he is Saami,” “the Saami language,” as well as “the journalism should be done Saami ways.” Sápmi – The traditional land of the Saami people located in the northern areas of the countries that are now known as Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia xi Acknowledgements As this work is about people who cross borders and political space I will begin by acknowledging where I am. I have spent the past five years as a guest on the unceded, ancestral territory of the Musqueam people. I would like to thank the Musqueam nation for being a generous host sharing with me the land, the air, the water, the space and the relationships to engage and learn – all of which have nourished me to meet good people and make good relations. I would also like to thank the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, Gitxsan, Nisga’a and Haida people. There are many times in this journey where I have found refuge, peace and hospitality on your territory. In Jewish culture, one of the highest honors and responsibilities is to be a teacher and I am deeply grateful to Claudia Ruitenberg, Deirdre Kelly, Sheryl Lightfoot and Michael Byers. Claudia and Deirdre, you two took a risk on me when I arrived at UBC – kicking and screaming about the banality and uselessness of academia. Your patience in being able to hear through what I was saying and push me to rethink my own boxes and categories allowed me to believe I was in the right place. Both of you introduced me to the theorists that could sustain, challenge and support me in my own understanding of making the world better; specifically, thank you for broadening my understanding of feminist theory and methods. Claudia, I am especially grateful for pushing my clarity of language and argument – for helping me think through what was often a complicated and very fast paced web in my mind. And Deirdre, that summer coding at your dining room where I learned Atlas.ti and developed our “code Torah,” was invaluable. I was taught the practice of qualitative analysis from the best and I use that method to teach others. Both of you were always and continue to be incredibly supportive of my goals and passions and helping me achieve those goals in my own way…while being deeply pragmatic and always xii dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. I could not have had a better team of supervisors. Michael, when I first arrived at UBC and took your class on International Relations and International Organizations and you mentioned “The Arctic” I was ready to get up and leave. Straight out of Chicago, I had no idea why I should care about that melting world of ice for 15 weeks. But I am glad I stayed. Thank you for introducing me to the North, and for all the opportunities to work with you and learn by doing and never accepting “no.” Thank you also for always having the mischievous glean in your eye whenever I wanted to bring things back to the real world. And lastly, but certainly not least, Sheryl. Little did I know when I approached you in the spring of 2010 to supervise a directed reading about transnational human rights and media that you would be such an instrumental part of my intellectual, professional and emotional growth. Thank you for opening, bridging and translating so many worlds and showing me the respect to always push me harder. Thank you for your mentorship and friendship. I have benefited from the generous support of the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Council, the UBC Four Year Fellowship and the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement. My first trip to Sápmi during the midnight sun of 2011 was financed in part by the Liu Institute for Global Issues Bottom Billion Fund. In addition to my department of Educational Studies, I would like to thank the Liu Institute for Global Issues in providing me a home base to engage in the activist-scholarship that drives me. Through the writing groups I was able to work and rework my academic pieces and, perhaps more importantly, be exposed to the challenging work of others. The Liu provided a consistent home when I was feeling restless and rootless. Access to simple things like a printer, xiii photocopier, paper and free coffee, which seem so small, made this big task doable. But most importantly I am grateful for the connections I was able to make as a Liu Scholar; connections with staff, faculty and students – other people who think, do and laugh across disciplines and other such borders. Thank you also to Peter Klein and the staff and faculty of the UBC Graduate school of Journalism for hosting my course, “Ethics, Tactics and Tensions of Human Rights Reporting” thus providing journalism students with a basic literacy in human rights while challenging the traditional methods of doing journalism. Thank you also to my students in the class who wrestled with these theories in the real world and created some fantastic pieces of work. I learned more from you then you will know. Of course nothing gets done in universities without the shrewd wisdom and skill of departmental staff and the department of Educational Studies is no different; Shermila Salgadoe and Roweena Bacchus, you two were always amazingly supportive of me and my work and I am very grateful. It is my strong belief that research should be useful and relevant and for that reason I hope I have kept my promise to the journalists, journalism instructors, and academics at Saami University College as well as Rune Fjellheim at the Saami Parliament in Norway; thank you for inviting and hosting me on your land. I am especially grateful to Kent Valio and Silja Somby for locating people and documents and for their encouragement over the years and to my adopted aunties Kristine Nystad and Sunniva Skolas and adopted uncle Jon Todal. Thank you also to Marie Struthers of the Open Society Foundation for literally opening her office and (electronic) rolodex of contacts and to Tihomir Loza, Jeremy Druker and Ilona Moricz for their hours and hours of patience with my unending questions. xiv I would not have gone through this entire process if it was not for the amazing staff at the Tipper (best salmon burger ever!). For over four years I would sit for hours at a time, at my table on the North East corner facing Kingsway. Colin and Conner and Mel – where is my banana? And to others whom I have met here in Vancouver and have nourished and challenged me as colleagues and friends, even as I bemoaned the grey: Amy Parent, Jeannie Kerr, Oralia Gomez-Ramirez, Sharalyn Jordan, Lilach Marom, Asad Kiyani, Naureen Madhani, David Kirk, Sebastian Salamanca, Elizabeth Brin and Nicole Latham. A special thank you to those who have edited and reedited the same (insert expletive) chapters and still want to be friends: Yana Gorokhovskaia, Katherine (Kat) Fobear, other members of the Transitional Justice/Social Change writing group as well as Eben Friedman, Safia Swimelar and Hans Peter Schmitz. I am a person with many homes and I am deeply grateful for people that are far from Vancouver but always very close. My friends, mentors and family who have walked with me down many roads…who remind me of who I am and where I come from and all the possibilities that lay ahead: Nabeel Hamid, Mahruq Khan, Amanda Loos Logan, Jilana Ordman, Neil Gilbert, Curtis and Gail Chandler, Victor Friedman, Diana Mikhail, Michelle Patterson, Nancy Chiswick-Patterson, Stephanie Plaut, Melanie Miller Weiss, Adam Weiss, Denis Durmis and Krisztina Bekássy-Boczonádi. And for once I may be at a loss of words in expressing my gratitude for the unwavering support I have received from Craig Stewart—support and friendship that manifests in so many different (cranky) ways. I am deeply thankful to Shawn Samuel and Tara Chandler—two friendships that go way beyond friendship. You see me true. And coming full circle to where one comes from: thank you very much to Shelley Plaut Middleton. I know that being my mom has not always easy—but your unconditional love and xv support is so solid and so strong. You have always believed in me. Thank you, momma. 1 Chapter 1 — Introduction In 2004, I was recruited to design and teach a course on human rights to future “producers of culture”—journalists, filmmakers, and artists—at Columbia College Chicago, a journalism, art, and media school in the heart of downtown Chicago. No human rights course had been offered there before, and the administration was not sure if there would be student interest. I had to ensure that 10 people registered for the class or it would be cancelled. My colleagues were a bit nervous. I was a bit nervous. We did not know if we could get 10 people. Within one year, however, all three sections of the class were filled with 20–25 students each, and I developed a “part II” of the course. To meet the demand, we needed more instructors who were comfortable with human rights language, laws, and mechanisms, and who wanted to work with interested students. Although many were sympathetic, I could not convince a single colleague at Columbia College to agree to teach this course. All feared that teaching human rights to future journalists was somehow “too political,” thus violating the professional norms of journalism, which they presumed to be apolitical. They were not making the distinction between human rights journalism and human rights campaigns. The only people I could recruit to teach these classes came from human rights organizations themselves, which appeared to further compromise the journalistic ideal. Interest only grew and we could not keep up with demand. We had to turn students away. After four years of teaching human rights courses every semester to overflowing classes and overeager students, I vowed to figure out a way to convince my colleagues that it is indeed possible to provide basic literacy in human rights while instilling journalistic skills and ethics. Recognizing that there are “peculiarities connected to cultural authority that pertain exclusively 2 or primarily to journalism, particularly its reverence for facts, truth, and reality” (Zelizer, 2004, p. 110), I needed to show that human rights and journalism are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to be a robust and critical journalist while also approaching stories from a particular perspective—in this case, a human rights framework. The important thing is to show journalists how do it. I decided the best way to do this was to learn from people who were already making and teaching a different kind of journalism—a journalism that pushes the ideas of objectivity while remaining credible and that aims to create legitimate alternatives to how “reality” is presented, including the reality of power and the state. Both conventional journalists and human rights advocates pride themselves on scrutinizing the actions of government, but there is a conflation of the government, the state, and “the people” and state is still often seen as the unmarked, given—and indeed ideal—source of power. This is not the lens that people with a transnational standpoint bring to media or politics. Transnational people engaged in journalism seemed to provide an alternative vision of journalism, politics and the state. Transnational peoples—peoples who identify as one nation (“a people,” or what Andrew Smith, 1983, termed ethnie) across two or more states—bring a unique perspective because they understand the need to be fluent in the complexities of state, law, culture, and identity, and the responsibility and skills required when translating these complexities to multiple audiences. In short, many transnational peoples already presume and understand that the media is not neutral and rather is constantly engaged in a political process. Many who are politically and socially engaged choose to use journalism in this process. Therefore, my goal in this dissertation project is to learn from self-identified transnational journalists in order to present and construct an alternative approach to human rights advocacy that foregrounds the importance of identity and 3 self-representation through the power of journalism. By human rights I mean all of the rights enshrined in the United Nations (UN) conventions, as well as rights specific to Indigenous peoples and to other peoples who identify as one nation spanning two or more states. I focus on these transnational peoples to illustrate that for too long human rights has operated in a state-centric and state-dominant paradigm that assumes that people need to be protected from the state and/or that the state needs to provide for people (Osiatynski, 2009). In either case, power is perceived to come from the state, and thus too often visions of change become circumscribed within the borders of the state. But this is too limiting. The state, as a political and institutional entity, is important, and can be both an adversary and a partner, but is not the sole center; rather, it is one actor that can be harnessed, worked with, and at times worked around. Journalism has an underexplored role to play here. Through the framing of information in particular ways, journalism—in the form of the journalists, the editors and the media outlets that they work for and with—participates in agenda setting. I am making a distinction here between agenda setting, which is the power needed to sift through a “myriad of bad things” (Carpenter, 2007, p. 102) and propaganda. Unlike propaganda, the information journalists provide in agenda setting is true, but it is positioned in a way that frames and foregrounds particular problems and solutions. This is one manifestation of what Barnett and Duvall (2005) refer to as “productive power”: how discourses shape and are shaped by resources and social structures and how this dynamism limits and opens up political possibilities. What is unique in transnational peoples’ journalism is how it highlights the ways in which power beyond that of the state can be harnessed and operationalized. Recognizing that there is power within, between, and across states—and beyond the limits of the state—is an 4 important contribution when understanding and engaging in human rights advocacy. Learning from transnational peoples who are creating, teaching, and participating in journalism education in its many places, forms, and media allows us to strengthen the connections between human rights and journalism. In this project I am bringing together what are presumed to be the disparate worlds and literatures of constructivist International Relations, critical journalism, and human rights within the specific context of transnational peoples’ journalism, so that we may better see the possibilities and importance of what solid journalism focused on human rights and with a transnational peoples standpoint, can do. My goal is simple: I begin my process of learning, and I hope to present these alternatives to my colleagues, both past and future, so that we may never have to turn students away again because of our own limited understandings of what is possible. Goals and Structure of the Project I aim to demonstrate that journalism can be, and is, used as a form of politics while maintaining its professional role rather than becoming public relations or propaganda. I believe this happens in all journalism but is often obfuscated through what Hackett and Zhao (1998) refer to as the “regime of objectivity” (passim). Traditionally, Anglo-American journalists were taught with a positivist notion of objectivity—believing that the world is out there to be covered and that the coverage should represent this external world without affecting it—they often cannot recognize the “taken-for-granted” assumptions that permeate their work. Assumptions about the permanence and prominence of the state, the conflation of national identity with that of the state, and the state-bounded realm of politics, often go unquestioned by academics, policy makers and journalists (Risse, Ropp, & Sikkink, 2013). Transnational journalists, on the other hand, tend to 5 have a complex understanding of the ways in which a country’s government maintains and perpetuates power within, between, and across states. Much can be learned from this perspective, or, to draw on Sandra Harding’s (1993) use of the term, this standpoint can show us a more robust way of thinking about the kind of power that allows things like state systems to remain unquestioned. Journalists are often considered to have a responsibility to inform and educate a public on things deemed important. This responsibility is assumed to be a cornerstone of the democratic process; an informed citizenry can hold the state accountable (see, for example, Habermas, 1964/1974). It is crucial that all audiences see this information as credible and great pains are taken to guard journalists’ reputation for credibility. Journalists are thus distinguished from propagandists or public relations agents. This distinction is maintained through professional norms and practices and is fairly standard throughout the profession (Waisbord, 2013). The questions then are: Who are the audiences? What is journalism doing in the larger socio-political spheres? A journalist is not a journalist without credibility. But from whom do journalists seek validation and credibility? Human rights work also markets itself on credibility, and that credibility is often assumed to be based on a detached approach to investigating, accumulating, and reporting “the facts,” which are then presented to the state as well as international organizations and advocacy groups to influence action (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004; Brysk, 2013a; Risse & Ropp, 2013). These “facts” are presumed to stand on their own and are then distributed to the publics and decision-making elites through journalism. It is for this reason that the questions I pose have implications beyond journalism, and I frame my research on journalism education as an exploration of a political project. Following in the footsteps of Michel Foucault (1980), political scientists 6 Michael Barnett and Robert Duvall (2005) view the crafting and distribution of information and thus the shaping of structured realities as an exercise of “productive power” (pp. 8–12, 20–22). Later scholars have picked up on the notion of productive power and further discuss the relationship between discourse and structural power and change (Risse & Ropp, 2013, pp. 14–15). The conversation, though, is still often limited to a less powerful agent trying to persuade a more powerful agent (either state or non-state actor) to make political changes within the limits of a state-bounded system. Although such thinking on productive power is useful, few have spoken of how it plays out in journalism—the public forum of truths. Rather than trying to persuade a single actor, media always speak to multiple publics, and transnational peoples’ media are particularly aware of this and skilled at maneuvering within these audiences. When there is a media landscape of “multiple publics,” then media are “always charged with dynamics of power which can at times provide a forum for information sharing and at other times can enable decision making” (Splichal, 2011, p. 33). Media are presumed to have an important active role in providing citizens with tools for deliberative democracy (Strömbäck, 2005). Following that logic, when media highlight particular problems—for example, targeting particular perpetrators and offering particular suggestions for remedy—media (in both form and content) can be recognized as a form of politics (Brysk, 2013b). Keck and Sikkink offer some thoughts on the importance of information as a form of political currency in their 1998 work, but, like most of the scholars addressing International Relations from a constructivist perspective, they present “the media” in an un-nuanced, anthropomorphized, passive role. And the journalists themselves—assumed to be a monolithic group—are absent (see, for example, Price, 1998, pp. 18–23 or Joachim, 2003). In particular, accumulating, compiling, editing, and distributing information in order to frame a 7 story in a particular way, thus highlighting possibilities for change, can help shape the realities for those who read, watch, or listen to such media products. This echoes the effects media can have on “decision making” as noted by Splichal (2011, p. 33) above. Multiple scholars have also referred to this process as “agenda setting” (Carpenter, 2007; Gitlin, 1980; Hallin, 1994; Price, 1998; Wade, 2011). In her most recent work, Speaking Rights to Power, Alison Brysk (2013b) has expanded on Keck & Sikkink’s 1998 work in what she termed “communication power” as she explores how information is used as currency in transnational advocacy. Yet even with this more nuanced approach, although “citizen journalists” are present, journalists working for conventional news outlets are largely absent from the analysis. In addition, the ultimate media targets are still states. The state is assumed to be the center point of governance, culture, and resources and thus the most important audience. And journalists are often assumed to be megaphones of what is already garnering the most attention. Although it is recognized that media and communication are intricately linked to liberal democracy and are often an inherent part of governance, including struggles for self-determination, much of the academic research is limited to media’s role in state formation (Anderson, 1983/1991) or media reform in post-conflict areas such as Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia (Price & Thompson, 2002), or is specifically geared toward ethnic and linguistic minority policy (Graham, 2010; Karlsreiter, 2003; Wilson & Stewart, 2008).1 In addition, although quite a bit of academic work has been done on the socialization and professionalization process of Western journalists (Glasser & Craft, 1998; Johnson-Cartee, 2005; Skinner, Gasher, & 1 I have chosen to use the term “minority media” rather than “ethnic media” in my work because all people are of a particular ethnicity; it is actually the recognized minority status of a group of people that grants (or denies) certain peoples’ rights to state or donor support for their media. It should be noted that the terms are often used interchangeably in academic, legal, and policy circles. 8 Compton, 2001; Tuchman, 1978), and some on alternative media (Coyer, 2005; Downing 2001; Ostertag, 2006; Retzlaff, 2006), little has been written about journalism education done by and for specific populations, particularly those who identify as transnational. In fact, as I discuss throughout the dissertation, although there is increased discussion of the role of globalization and its effects on media production and content, the basis of mainstream journalism continues to be training journalists to work for media outlets in their own countries. Even with the proliferation of global media outlets like CNN, Al Jazeera, and Telemundo, traditional journalism education continues to assume that the vast majority of journalists will identify with, report for, and speak to people of a singular country, and should be trained accordingly. My research, however, evaluates the connections between transnational peoples’ journalism and their politics. I do so by examining how two different transnational peoples—the Saami and the Roma—train (and socialize) the next generation of journalists. I explore how these transnational journalists negotiate their relationships with, between, and across states and address the tensions of what Barbie Zelizer (2004) refers to as “journalistic professional ideology” within their varied socio-political contexts (p. 103). Why Transnational Peoples? Transnational peoples may identify as Indigenous2 (e.g., the Saami people, who have traditionally inhabited land currently located in the countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and 2 According to the United Nations Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ official website, due to the diversity of Indigenous peoples and the potential misuse of classification/identification systems by states, Indigenous peoples have purposefully chosen not to define Indigenous but rather provide guidelines for identification strongly based on self identification. These include: “Self-identification as indigenous [sic] peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member; historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies; Strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources; distinct social, economic or political systems; distinct language, culture and beliefs; Form non-dominant groups of society; resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities”. 9 Russia) or may not (e.g., the Roma/Gypsy people). In either case although there is much diversity within these groups of people; they are people who identify as one nation (a single people) who reside over two or more states. Other transnational peoples include the Kurds, Inuit and Mohawk, however I have chosen to work with the various people involved in creating journalism within the Romani and Saami peoples. There are many differences between the Saami and the Roma, which I discuss in great depth in subsequent chapters. In spite of these differences, or perhaps because of them, the Saami and the Roma provide illustrative examples of a larger phenomenon: the challenge of identifying as a professional journalist who chooses to bring a transnational perspective to journalistic work. Self-identified, politically conscious, transnational people often seek not only to make change across state borders but also to do so by exposing problems and solutions that necessitate framing said problems, solutions and actors across state lines. Transnational governance and advocacy do not stop at the borders of the state. Many of those I interviewed referred to this intentional transnational perspective as their “starting point.” Perhaps even more importantly, these transnational journalists also assume that the audience has a starting point. In other words, both the audience and the journalist are keenly aware of their contexts and of the unique positions and vantage points they inhabit (El Nawawy & Iskandar, 2002b). This strategic use of transnationalism—the identification with, and addressing of, multiple audiences—not only highlights and problematizes a state-bounded identity, but also broadens the possibilities for both traditional understandings of objectivity and socio-political change. Transnational peoples and identities cross over, are intertwined with, and yet are often at odds with the state; as a result, their understandings of the possibility of political change appear to be more creative in part because they are not limited to state-centered approaches. 10 Many transnational individuals, like other individuals marginalized by current state structures, distinguish “objectivity” (and thus credibility and professionalism) from “neutrality” (Harding, 1993; Said, 1978/1994; L. T. Smith, 1999). Based on more than a decade of academic and advocacy work with Romani media-makers, I embarked on my research with the assumption that transnational peoples often question both the reality and the ideal of traditional ideas of “objectivity” within journalism (Haetta, 2013; Wade, 2011; Zelizer, 2004). Rather, I have found there is another, more nuanced standard of credibility at play—one that values set (“professional”) journalistic techniques but has a clear and transparent perspective (Gladstone, 2011, pp. 96–110; Keller, 2013; Tait, 2011; Tuchman, 1978; Waisbord, 2013). In this chapter, I directly engage with the five research questions that guide my project, and show how these questions inform one another. The first three compare and contrast Romani and Saami journalism and journalism education with a focus on their socio-political contexts. The latter two focus more on what lessons can be learned from Romani and Saami journalism and journalism education. These are not lessons limited to journalism; rather, they presume a relationship between journalism and human rights that can speak to larger questions of socio-political change. How does this manifest when the state is not the center of power? Specifically: 1) What, if any, relationship exists between transnational identities, the framing of socio-political realities across borders, and transnational politics? How do socio-economic, cultural, and structural contexts shape these dynamics? 2) How do self-identified transnational journalists understand these processes, and how does that understanding shape their approaches to journalism and politics? 3) How are these approaches to journalism taught to the next generation of self-identified transnational journalists? 11 4) What can be learned from transnational peoples’ journalism when developing strategies for social and political change beyond a state-centered approach? 5) What can be learned from different forms of transnational peoples’ journalism when developing journalism which focuses on human rights issues? I approach this work with the belief that when a person chooses to cultivate and foreground his or her identity as a transnational person, he or she can approach politics with a unique and clearer understanding of how power and political possibilities for change can and do operate within, across, and between states.3 My research shows that journalists who identify as transnational have a distinct approach to creating, framing, and transmitting information. I argue this is partially because of transnational journalists’ recognition that they are speaking to multiple audiences with a more robust understanding of objectivity. Put simply: the political implication of journalism is both acknowledged and cultivated by the journalists. That said, what journalism does varies greatly based on the socio-political context. Some transnational peoples, like the Saami, whose politics are shaped by claims to self-determination, use their journalism primarily to speak within the nation as distinct from the state. Others, like the Roma, whose politics are shaped by an ongoing claim for citizenship and inclusion within the state and Europe, use their journalism primarily to intervene in the dominant discourse of the state and state-based organizations. The strategies are different and the resulting media products are different, but both hold a similarly strong belief in the ideal of journalism: being vigilant to abuses of power and informing the public of what is going on (and what is not 3 I specifically refer to transnational peoples as peoples who are “within, across, and between” states because they are influenced by, and influence, the states they reside in, the borders of the states, and a larger transnational reality. As evidenced in The Association for Borderland Studies here is much interesting critical academic and activist discussion regarding borderlands and border culture (Anzaldua, 1987; Fusco, 1995; Wilson & Donnan, 1989; Newman & Paasi, 1998); however, although “the border” influences my thinking, my work is not limited to this discussion. Transnational peoples do not reside only on the borders and the nexus between two states but also within, across, and beyond borders (Silverman, 2012). 12 going on) in their name. Neither group engages in its journalism from the “god’s-eye view” (Kelly, 2011). Rather, journalism is done within the context of their transnationality. Therefore, I argue that another similarity found within transnational peoples’ journalism, and their approach to teaching journalism, is the re-thinking of objectivity beyond that of positivist objectivity, “the god that won’t die!” (Hackett & Zhao, 1998). I will demonstrate throughout my work that objectivity within transnational peoples’ journalism is a mixture of contextual objectivity (El-Nawawy & Iskandar, 2002a) and strong objectivity (Harding, 1993). Contextual objectivity speaks to questions of how journalistic objectivity is different depending on how different audiences will receive the story and the positionality of the journalist within the story. Strong objectivity posits the notion that in order to better understand power, one should examine a particular situation from the perspective of those who do not benefit from the status quo. In that way, the flows and blockages (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, pp. 11-12) of power will become more transparent. Recognizing that journalism requires specific skills and also plays an important role in informing and educating, I hope to demonstrate that we can learn much from transnational peoples’ journalism and journalism education as we try to build a more systemic, professional, responsive and codified approach to human rights journalism. The Specific Cases: Romani and Saami Journalism, Journalists, and Journalism Education Using some of the theories and techniques described by Burawoy (2001) and Hannerz (2003) as multi-sited ethnography, I conducted a comparative case study with two distinct populations (the Saami and the Roma) operating within many different locations including across states and institutions. My findings are primarily based on interviews with 45 journalists and journalism educators, funders, and evaluators. The purpose of engaging in this multi-sited 13 ethnography was to identify and describe the similarities and differences in the structures and approaches to journalism, and the training of the next generation of Saami and Romani journalists—a goal and strategy both groups employed. In noting some of their underlying beliefs of both the role and the techniques of journalism—including differing understandings of how to be professional and have what I identify as a “transnational journalistic standpoint”—I hope this research will shed light on larger movements, tensions, and possibilities within mainstream Western journalism education, as well as larger issues of state and power.4 My qualitative, field-based interviews, observations, and document analysis addressed those involved in the following programs:  The formal Saami journalism education program run by Sámi University College/Sámi allaskuvla, a tertiary institution in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway (serving Saami-speaking students regardless of country of origin).5 Sámi allaskuvla currently offers a bachelor’s degree in journalism and plans to offer a master’s degree in Indigenous journalism starting in autumn of 2014. It hosted the World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference in March 2012.  The Open Society Foundations’ (OSF’s) Network Media Program (based in London, England) and Roma Initiatives Office (based in Budapest, Hungary), both of which oversee funding for journalism training programs that specifically target journalists of Romani origin.6 I interviewed the program officers, evaluators, and trainers. I also interviewed some of the long-term grantees of these programs throughout Central and 4 I describe the “transnational journalistic standpoint” in greater detail in Chapter 2. 5 The people I spoke with used the names Sámi University College and Sámi allaskuvla interchangeably, especially when speaking and writing in English. I follow their convention in my writing. 6 In 2014 OSF’s Network Media Program was renamed the Independent Journalism Program; however, at the time of the research it was known as the Network Media Program, and to reduce confusion, I will continue to refer to it as such throughout the dissertation. 14 Eastern Europe as well as people directly engaged in designing and implementing the trainings. The primary research took place over two years, and I followed up with phone-based interviews, as well as return visits to the educational programs in both Sápmi (the traditional area of the Saami people) and training sites in Central and Eastern Europe. Both the Saami and the Roma identify—and are identified—as distinct peoples who live within, between, and across multiple states, and both populations make political, social, and legal claims based on their transnational identities. Both also use media, and specifically journalism, as a strategic process in their claims making. Because of the importance placed on this journalistic strategy, both groups seek to advance the quality of their journalism and journalists from a particular standpoint true to their socio-political contexts. It is this commonality in the space of such difference that guides my research. Although there are vast differences in both the context (demographics, geography, relationship to the state, funding) and the goals of these journalism programs, they share a strong common belief in the power of media to change not only perspectives but behaviors, both within the transnational community and in the larger society (Barnett & Duvall, 2005, pp. 1–32; Brysk, 2013b; de Jong, Shaw, & Stammers, 2005). There is a clear understanding that all of these journalists and journalism education programs identify and address a variety of audiences that often have unequal access to power and decision-making. The existence of the media itself, as well as its content, is assumed to affect, reflect, and possibly change something “in the real world.” Lorie Graham (2010) explains this relationship well: Often we think about media as a tool for transmitting information. However, media also has the power to identify, name and shape issues. This is particularly true when mainstream media is reporting (or choosing not to report) on events that involve marginalized groups (p. 429). 15 This understanding of the connection between media, framing, power, and the socio-political realities “on the ground” is at the heart of my research (Barnett & Duvall, 2005; Fairclough, 1992; Hallin, 1994). Graham (2010) focused in particular on Indigenous peoples, who have specific media outlets because of language and cultural rights. However, given that many transnational peoples speak the state language as their first language, I choose to look at the strategies of transnational peoples in training journalists who operate with a specific worldview regardless of language. To be clear, I do not dispute the importance of language in shaping or reflecting worldviews; rather, I argue that the two are often not interchangeable. Many of the people who identify as Saami or Roma, and consume Saami or Romani media, speak or read a state language as their first language. Further, many people who consume Saami or Romani media may not identify as Saami or Roma. Therefore, I draw a distinction between media created to preserve and develop the language and media that may be in a state language but still operates with a distinctly transnational starting point. My Places and Perspectives in this Research My own name means “beautiful refugee.” I was born in Los Angeles, my parents in New York City. I grew up speaking English. My grandparents were from “the old country,” and none had English as a first language. I started my first newspaper at the age of nine and my first international ‘zine at the age of 14. I went to a high school where 43 languages were spoken in the hall. My classmates were often refugees or children of refugees. Having been born in another country was the norm. Some of my friends were documented and “legal” according to the state, some were not, and some did not know their legal status. Growing up, none of this seemed unusual. Needless to say, I have always had a particular interest in people who do not fit 16 comfortably into the structure and identity of the nation-state. I believe information and research should make practical, tangible change. Both Indigenous scholars (Lightfoot, 2009; Sámi Instituhtta, 2008; L. T. Smith, 1999; Turner, 2006) and others coming from a tradition of critical scholarship (Doty, 1996; Dufour, Masson, & Caouette, 2010; Mamdani, 2004; Mohanty, 2003; Narayan & Harding, 2000) have written much about this. I am not a member of either of the communities with whom I worked on this project, and I recognize that this position as “outsider” both provides and limits particular access. I attempt to be transparent: my goal is not to become an “expert” on either the Roma or the Saami people, nor to speak “for” them. Rather, my aim is to learn from the current, diverse practices of journalism education by and for transnational people. I approach my work with three objectives:  to better reflect on their practices, particularly how they negotiate the politics, economics and norms of speaking to and for audiences that are within, between, and across states;  to illustrate the inherent biases in mainstream, traditional forms of journalism education; and  to highlight alternative ways of understanding how one can be professional and credible without aspiring to be neutral or “objective” in the traditional sense. The first and last points are worth further discussion, as they speak to the wider application of this project. The professionalization of human rights work and advocacy has the potential to lead to an entrenchment of uneven power relations that identify the state, and the current distribution of power between states, as the only source of legitimacy (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004; Bob, 2009; Borzel & Risse, 2013; Doty, 1996; Risse & Ropp, 2013). Good journalism and solid human rights work require a more critical approach. Journalists and human 17 rights advocates can work together without compromising their professional roles and identities. I hope to highlight the important role that journalism can play in affecting economic, legal and political power, all of which are too often assumed to reside predominantly within the purview of the state. Much of the literature has focused on the importance of community media in creating solidarity, and thus pushing for local change (Howely, 2010), or alternative media as a form of dissent (Coyer, 2005; de Jong et al., 2005; Downing, 2001), but, as El-Nawawy and Iskandar (2002b) point out in reference to Al Jazeera, the media’s influence on policy occurs on a global scale (p. 44). I do not believe this is unique to Al Jazeera; rather, it is a truth understood by many who choose to use media as tools of strategic self-representation and framing (Baer & Brysk, 2009; Carpenter, 2007; Carragee & Roefs, 2004; Fraser, 2007; Gaber & Willson, 2005, Husain, 2006; Retzlaff, 2006). How such change—be it called activism, advocacy, or cooperation—takes place differs based on the politics and particularities of the various transnational groups (Plaut, 2012a), but each group recognizes a role for media in this process. By learning how transnational people are being socialized as journalists, I strive to learn about tools and strategies applicable to a wide variety of journalists, activists, and policy-shapers.7 I bring a strong political and personal conviction to this work. I believe in the power of self-representation and media as a form of social change. I also know I will be confronted with the many challenges of how this manifests in practice—challenges from my colleagues, from the rarely intersecting fields of journalism studies and International Relations, and from the media 7 Although I have benefited from some of the literature on the creation of pan-Arab media and negotiations of content and distribution, I have not used these media as specific case studies (El-Nawawy & Iskandar, 2002b; Sakr, 2007). This is a conscious decision. Many people have asked if I look at Jewish or Palestinian media in my work, given that both are transnational and have a strong media presence. I have chosen not to do so at this time. I am aware that my own identity as a Jewish person, and a person who is involved in a variety of left-wing political struggles, could potentially overshadow the broader focus of the dissertation project: the teaching of journalism by and for transnational peoples’ media and its relationship to human rights work. 18 world itself. As Carragee and Roefs (2004) clearly state, framing has “ideological implications” (p. 218). At the same time, there are real constraints that can threaten the political possibilities for; these must be acknowledged and negotiated. I am driven to do this work because I was told it was not possible for a professor of journalism to teach human rights to future journalists. To do so was deemed impossible because a human rights perspective “crosses the line” into advocacy, thus rendering the journalist non-objective and, therefore, unprofessional. I pride myself on confronting the impossible. Therefore, I aim to show that indeed it is possible to be a credible, and simultaneously professional, journalist working within a human rights framework and that we can learn from the examples and challenges faced by transnational peoples who engage in journalism. Structure of the Dissertation The dissertation consists of six chapters. Following this introduction, I look at the literature regarding journalism and journalism education programs—both formal programs in educational institutions and “on-the-job” training and “professionalization” (Husband, 2012; Johnson-Cartee, 2005; Tuchman, 1978; Waisbord, 2013). I note that although there is a healthy body of work on Indigenous peoples’ media (Graham, 2010; Haetta, 2011; Raheja, 2007; Rasmussen, 1999; Retzlaff, 2006) “alternative media” (de Jong et al., 2005; Downing, 2001; Howely, 2010; Jensen 2001; Ostertag, 2006), and a growing body of literature on “Arab” media specifically (El-Nawawy & Iskandar, 2002b; Sakr, 2007), there is a dearth of literature regarding transnational peoples’ journalism as a whole. Although scholars and practitioners of critical journalism problematize the ideas of objectivity and, at times, critique traditional journalism education, few alternatives focusing on the pedagogical process itself have been suggested 19 (Keller, 2013; Ward, 2003, 2010). This absence is even more glaring when addressing diverse audiences with different levels of power across and between state lines (Downing & Husband, 2005, pp. 194–217; Graham, 2010; Johnson-Cartee, 2005; Karlsreiter, 2003; Pietikäinen, 2008a, 2008b). With my research, I aim to contribute to the conversation in this area. I also examine the literature available on transnational peoples and movements, and note the lack of discussion on the role of journalists as intentional political actors. By connecting conversations between the constructivist International Relations literature—particularly that of framing, agenda setting, and diffusion of ideas and institutions—with that of feminist and post-colonial scholars’ discussions of objectivity and credibility, I call into question the traditional understanding of credible, professional Western mainstream journalism as a factor, or non-factor, in political change. I argue that traditional understanding of journalistic objectivity is, in fact, a limited understanding of objectivity. Specifically, I focus on how the framing of stories, including the absence of questioning alternatives to state dominance, perpetuates uneven power structures and dynamics. As Chapter 2 continues, I address these issues directly through my theoretical framework. Most notably, I engage with Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s (1998) notions of “information politics” and “accountability politics,” Alison Brysk’s (2013b) discussion of communication politics, and Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall’s (2005) understanding of productive power. In recognizing the relationship between unveiling, contesting, and creating norms, we can recognize alternative forms of objectivity that challenge the “god’s-eye view,” such as strong objectivity (Harding, 1993) and contextual objectivity (El-Nawawy & Iskandar, 2002a). How can we form a more robust idea of objectivity to better understand the importance of creating and disseminating credible information that can unearth and address systems and structures of power? And, more importantly, how can we use such 20 information and framing to present and create viable alternatives? In Chapter 3, I explain my reasons for, and process of, engaging in a comparative case study. I then detail my process of data collection and analysis. In this chapter, I also address the question of whether the two case studies—Saami and Romani journalism education programs—are too different to compare. This was an issue I struggled with until more fully immersed in the data. This methodology chapter also discusses the multi-sited fieldwork (Hannerz, 2003) process including how and why I selected the locations of the programs/projects. I address in detail whom I interviewed and the documents (syllabi, grant applications, annual reports, evaluations, etc.) I reviewed. I strive to be transparent about the limitations of these choices (Lightfoot, 2009; Plaut, 2014; Yin, 2009). Specifically, I discuss the different relationships and access I have with both the Saami and Romani journalistic communities and how this affected the data-generating process and analysis. Then I explain how I analyzed the data, and thus identified various themes specific to the particular cases and the quintain, which Stake (2006) defines as a greater whole and process comprised of distinct case studies. Chapter 4 is focused on my findings within the various training programs specifically geared towards and targeting Romani journalists and others wishing to create stories about and with Roma. Unlike Saami journalism education, which primarily takes place at formalized institutions, Romani journalists are primarily trained through a variety of NGO-initiated projects spanning more than 10 countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe. These projects were all dependent on international donors. The most consistent financial support comes from the Open Society Foundation (OSF), whose mission links journalism and media with the larger liberal democratic project and seeks to ensure that Roma are recognized as full citizens within their states as well as within the European Union. Through interviews, grant proposals and 21 evaluations, as well as my observations of trainings, I demonstrate how this framing of Roma, and journalism, affects the structure, delivery, and evaluation of Romani journalism education. In short: as the politics in the region change and racism increases, there are fewer funded media outlets specifically geared to Romani audiences.8 Instead, the donors who fund such projects and the coordinators who design and administer them seek to use journalism to intervene in and contest the way Roma are (mis)represented in the dominant discourse. Roma are with non-Roma to develop journalism that directly addresses the primarily non-Romani society. In Chapter 5, I discuss Saami journalism education as taught at Sámi University College. The university college has offered tertiary education in journalism since 1999, and aims to start a Master of Arts in Indigenous Journalism in the Fall of 2014. This chapter focuses on the theories and practices guiding this educational endeavour with a special focus on notions of “self-determination” and the role Saami media play in this process. Unlike Romani media, Saami media frame their journalism as a way of addressing and serving Saami society. Through interviews and analysis of curricula and my participation at the World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference held in Sápmi in 2012, I demonstrate how the relationships between nation building, self-determination, and critical journalism are negotiated —within both Sápmi and the larger Indigenous communities and with various state entities. Particular attention is given to the tensions within the community of Saami journalists, managers, and educators as to how Saami media can serve goals of self-determination, especially as it relates to choices of journalistic curriculum and media outlets. In Chapter 6, I compare Romani and Saami journalism within their larger socio-economic 8 Since the mid-2000s has been an increase in online Romani media outlets (online radio and YouTube TV news), particularly from Roma who fled former Yugoslavia during the war and now reside in (and are often citizens of) Western and Northern Europe. However, these initiatives are almost always self-funded and often involve a laptop, microphone, and a webcam in someone’s house rather than a formal journalistic operation. 22 contexts and compare how their approaches to transnational politics reflect and manifest in their different approaches to journalism. I then examine some of the commonalities and differences in the emerging quintain of journalism education done by and for people who identify as transnational. In this chapter, I examine some of the larger ideas about social change, affinity, identities, and claims making across borders and the often-overlooked role that journalism and journalists can, and do, play. I pay special attention to how the cultural and political contexts shape both politics and journalism and the interplay between the two. By carefully examining the differences and similarities between Saami and Romani journalism education programs, one can see how understandings of power and the state shape these emerging self-identified transnational journalists’ understandings of their roles and responsibilities. I conclude by demonstrating that a transnational standpoint exists, and that it makes an important contribution to both journalism and human rights advocacy because it questions the assumed, reified existence and supremacy of the state and the state system. For transnational peoples, it is clear that states are constructed and not a given. Journalism is a powerful tool used to educate and explain realities and possibilities to audiences within, between and across borders who exercise politics that are not bounded by a single state. The human rights framework and strategies, so often limited to trying to persuade a state in how it treats “its own” people, can be expanded. I aim to show how a transnational standpoint in journalism does exist and can provide a critically important lens for approaching the broader goals of human rights scholarship and advocacy. 23 Chapter 2 — Theorizing the Borders of Journalism and Journalism Beyond Borders From George Orwell to Anna Politkovskaya to Albert Camus to Glenn Greenwald, journalists have provided plenty of testimonies about how the events of the world affect them, and how they, in turn, have struggled to affect the events of the world. Yet, even though these journalists, and many others like them, put pen to paper for a living, within academic literature there is surprisingly little written about journalists as intentional political actors. Considering the “real world” interplay between journalism and socio-political change, the lack of academic conversation regarding the journalist’s political power is surprising. John Downing (1996), a political communications scholar, describes this silence “as though politics consisted of mute pieces on a chessboard” (p. x). In this chapter, I employ an old mantra from journalism, and attempt to give voice to the “voiceless” chess pieces. Borrowing from the constructivist school of International Relations (IR), critical communications theories, journalism education, and the vast literature on transnational movements, this chapter offers a more robust way of understanding the political role that journalists and journalism plays in both sustaining and critiquing power relations. I am particularly interested in how people are able to frame issues in such a way that problems, concerns, and possible solutions become worthy enough to address in newsrooms and media boardrooms (Hermann & Chomsky, 1988; Joachim, 2003). I begin this chapter by very briefly reviewing the history of what we now recognize as mainstream journalism and journalistic objectivity. I argue that although many of the professional practices of journalism as a craft are valuable, the traditional, colloquial use of the term “objectivity” in journalism is too limiting (Miller, 2011; Waisbord, 2013; Ward 2003, 2010). In order to provide a more robust understanding of objectivity, I bring in the concepts of 24 contextual objectivity (El Nawawy & Iskandar, 2002a) and strong objectivity (Harding, 1993). Although this argument is not new in the fields of alternative journalism, Indigenous peoples’ journalism, and minority journalism, there is a lack of scholarly work available regarding transnational peoples’ journalism specifically. This is an important gap, as the very existence of transnational peoples—by definition—contests the normalization of the nation-state. I aim to offer a corrective, arguing that transnational peoples’ engagement and framing of the world and events around them—their “standpoint”—can offer a very clear and distinct understanding of the strength and limits of the state and its assumed power in international affairs. Journalism, which serves to inform an audience about the “facts” of the world, as well as to explain how the world operates, plays a very important role in this process. Journalism can serve a nation whose reality and politics are not prescribed by state borders and it can also intervene in unquestioned state structures such as a legislature, budget, and even telecommunications outlets. This project involves looking at journalism and journalists within the larger context of international and transnational politics—not just the formal political process, but, as described by Iris Marion Young (1990), “all aspects of institutional organization, public action, social practices and habits, and cultural meanings insofar as they are potentially subject to collective evaluation and decision-making” (p. 9, my emphasis). I am particularly interested in the processes through which people recognize and collectively evaluate the subjugations that appear inevitable and create opportunities for alternative enactments of power. This process of deliberation and discord is a form of politics—and, as de Jong et al (2005) state, “politics is communication” (p. 1). I continue the chapter by discussing how constructivist IR can help us better understand competing frames and the process that helps nurture the “conceptual link between the myriad bad 25 things out there and the persuasive machinery of advocacy politics in world affairs” (Carpenter, 2007, p. 102). Working with Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) understanding of the four kinds of politics that are the core ingredients of transnational advocacy—information politics, symbolic politics, leverage politics, and accountability politics—I argue that journalism can indeed be a form of productive power (Barnett & Duvall, 2005). This recognition also opens the door for understanding journalists as potential political agents and illustrates the tensions with traditional understandings of journalistic objectivity. I find much useful within the constructivist school of IR, although I question and critique its assumed inevitability and supremacy of the state and state power (Doty, 1996; DuFour et al., 2010; Mamdani, 2004). I am particularly critical of how this translates into human rights advocacy when engaging and harnessing “political will” beyond the state. I use this chapter to show how the journalistic process is indeed a political process with very real effects on the ground (Fairclough, 1992; Husain, 2006). By exploring how journalism can be politics, as well as the potential politics of journalism, I examine two core questions: What, if any, relationships exist between a transnational identity, the framing of socio-political realities across borders, and transnational mobilization? And what roles do journalists, journalism, and journalistic outlets play in these dynamics? What is Journalism? “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe” “I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it” — Thomas Jefferson, as quoted in Leveson Inquiry (Leveson, 2012, p. 4) Journalists have traditionally embraced their role as informational gatekeepers for the public and enjoyed a monopoly on the news that enters public debate. Modern technology and 26 social media have changed the practice of journalism by making it more interactive, but the gatekeeping role is still often considered the gold standard (Gitlin, 1980; Gladstone, 2011, pp. 144–155; Waisbord, 2013, pp. 5–6). A vast body of literature addresses alternative media, activist media, and the evolving sphere of “citizen journalism,” but in this section, unless otherwise noted, I use the term “journalists” and “journalism” to refer specifically to self-identified journalists who are paid for their work by mainstream media outlets. Within this world of mainstream media, there is an ongoing debate about whether journalism is a profession or a craft (Waisbord, 2013). Journalists pride themselves on being a necessary service: providing information about what is important in the world to a (presumably singular) public that can use the information to make informed decisions. Thus this audience has the information needed to hold those in power accountable (Strömbäck, 2005). In the English-speaking world, journalism may be practiced as a market model, a public service model, or one of numerous hybrid models, as seen in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, respectively (Waisbord, 2013). Although media institutions and models vary, journalism is universally understood to have “quality standards” and practices that separate it from “pure” entertainment (Johnson-Cartee, 2005; Waisbord, 2013, p. 26; Ward, 2003, 2010). In addition, although there are diverse understandings of journalism and journalism education, the definition of “good journalism” is also fairly consistent: it requires credibility, transparency, fact checking, and seeking out a diversity of sources (Plaut, 2014; Ward, 2003, 2010). However, the recognition of these core elements is relatively recent. In fact, a central question that has followed the field of journalism education since its inception in the beginning of the 20th century is what exactly a good journalism education looks like. Should journalists be trained in journalism as a field, or do they benefit more from a broad liberal arts education coupled with the time, space, and 27 opportunity to hone their craft under tutelage of other, more experienced journalists (Folkerts, Hamilton, & Lemann, 2013; Husband, 2012; Waisbord, 2013)? In 1920, Walter Lippmann published Liberty and the News, in which he argued passionately for the need for a dispassionate press. In the shadow of the robber barons and media moguls who helped fuel manifest-destiny (the most famous being William Hearst9), Lippmann advocated for a detached, scientific approach to journalism. This approach was labeled “objective.” This was a “positivist” notion of objectivity: the idea that there is knowledge (or news) “out there” waiting to be discovered. Although even Lippmann himself was unsure of the viability of this approach, it became the presumed standard, or ideal, of American professional journalism (Gladstone, 2011, pp. 96–102; Handley & Rutigliano, 2012, p. 10; Miller, 2011). In Lippmann’s day, it was not the professional norm for a journalist to be removed, dispassionate, and detached (Alzner, 2012; Bell, 1997; Tait, 2011). In 1920, partisan press was rampant. In fact, many people ignored Lippmann, arguing that journalists were obligated not only to chronicle what was happening, but to explain it to the audience in a way that fit within their worldview (Gladstone, 2011, pp. 102–106). However, things changed in the 1950s, when television became the dominant news medium in North America. Instead of addressing a particular, targeted audience, there was social and financial gain in cultivating and catering to the largest, broadest audience possible. All of a sudden, millions of people were watching the same thing at the same time, which meant media, had the potential to both shape the national conversation and access a captive consumer market. In other words, there was an incentive not to 9 Journalist-artist Federic Remington was in Cuba to learn about the Cuban uprising against Spanish colonialism for the New York Journal. He found little to write about and sent a telegram to that effect to the publisher, William Hearst, who responded with the now infamous quote, “Please Remain. You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” Although oft told as an urban legend within journalistic circles, there is now speculation as to whether Hearst actually wrote that telegram at all (see, for example, Campbell, 2001). 28 alienate the audience (potential market/voters) by focusing on a specific segment of viewers, but to produce a single, indisputable version of the events of the day (Bell, 1997; Gladstone, 2011 p. 103). Thus, the professional, removed, mainstream journalist with a professional responsibility to tell the audience the (singular) daily narrative became the norm (Gladstone, 2011, pp. 102–103; Hackett & Zhao, 1998; Hallin, 1994; Waisbord, 2013; Zelizer, 2004). After World War II, North American journalists were taught to see themselves as removed from the world, and this distance is still often seen as the basis, and proof, of their credibility.10 According to El-Nawawy and Iskandar (2002a), “objectivity has come to imply both a media practice of information collection, processing and dissemination and an overarching attitude… suggestive of the absence of subjective and personalized involvement and judgment” (par 4.). Objectivity has become so engrained in the traditional journalistic practices of mainstream Anglo-American journalism that it is often not even recognized until its principles or practices are challenged (Bell, 1997; Carr, 2013; Tuchman, 1978). According to communications scholars Robert Hackett and Yuezhi Zhao (1998), journalism operates within and creates a “regime of objectivity” (passim). Objectivity requires dissent, but there are limits (Gladstone, 2011, pp. 104–107; Hallin, 1994; Handley & Rutigliano, 2012). Hermann and Chomsky (1988, passim) refer to the notion of “acceptable dissent,” the parameters of what is considered news and what is considered too “far out” to be reasonable. Although, it is important to note that these limits change depending on the cultural and political norms of the time. Borrowing from Hallin’s (1994) idea of the “sphere of consensus” (passim)—what is assumed to be agreed upon by all (in a society) and what is open for contestation—Gladstone (2011) 10 According to Barnett and Finnemore (2004), this idea of detachment as a means of claiming and maintaining authority is also institutionalized in other fields, such as refugee policy (e.g., the UNHCR) and economic development (e.g., the World Bank). 29 explains this journalistic boundary policing process through the analogy of a donut: The donut hole is the sphere of consensus, ‘the region of motherhood and apple pie.’ Unquestionable values and unchallengeable truths. The donut is journalism’s sweet spot: the sphere of legitimate controversy. Here issues are undecided, debated, probed. The sphere of deviance is the air around the donut… the place for people and opinions that the ‘mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.’ Objective reporters don’t go there. (p. 105) Gladstone continues by explaining how, through story selection and presentation, journalists serve as guardians and gatekeepers of legitimate political discussion. This border managing takes place through what Tuchman (1978) explained throughout her work as “strategic rituals” of journalism—the daily routines of how one goes about performing the job of being a journalist. Separating “the” news from “the” journalist thus becomes one of the strongest means of performing one’s objectivity. However, this self-image rarely matches the reality. Although some journalists have publically advocated for a more engaged form of journalism, Martin Bell’s (1997) argument for a journalism of attachment (and the public fallout that arose) being the best known, I am more interested in those journalists who claim detachment and yet are engaged in the process of maintaining and challenging power.11 Lisa Wade’s (2011) work offers an illustrative example. Through both content analysis of print material and semi-structured interviews, she traced how American journalists working for venerable publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post in the 1990s built, campaigned for, and sustained a public consensus against female genital cutting (which was most often referred to as female genital mutilation—FGM). This was done through book reviews, editorials, and news pieces. In fact, some journalists 11 Martin Bell was a seasoned BBC journalist who covered the wars in Yugoslavia and provided eye witness accounts of the ethnic cleansing. He insisted that by covering the news from a stance of and not highlighting the experiences victims of the ethnic cleansing, journalists were in fact enabling human rights violations to continue. Instead he promoted a “journalism of attachment” that advocated empathy as a key journalistic trait and skill. 30 worked with refugee lawyers to publicize cases that shed light on particular laws and advocated for specific asylum outcomes. In short, Wade shows how journalists who would not refer to themselves as “activist journalists” can and do work to expose human rights violations and offer support to various human rights solutions.12 I argue this is an example of journalists’ use of productive power. Borrowing from Michel Foucault’s (1980) understanding of discourse as a form of power, both in terms of constraint and of possibility, Barnett and Duvall (2005) identify productive power as: foster[ing] resistance as attempts by actors to destabilize, even to remake, their subjectivities and thereby, to transform, or at least to disrupt the broader social processes and practices through which those subjectivities are produced, normalized and naturalized…Resistance also can include how knowledgeable actors become aware of discursive tensions and fissures and use that knowledge in strategic ways to increase their sovereignty, control their own fate, and remake their very identities. (p. 23, my emphasis) In other words, the process of framing issues, actors, problems, and the viability of various solutions—is a far cry from the positivist idea of objectivity. Brysk (2013a) refers to this process as “winning the hearts and minds” of those in positions of power, but I go one step further and present it as a way of disrupting assumptions about who holds power—especially as the journalist must also be recognized as a character in the story. Although scholars acknowledge that media play a role in this process, journalism itself is still often cast as passive. In most work, “the media” is anthropomorphized, but the journalists are absent (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004; Bob, 2005; Jochim, 2003; Tarrow, 2006) . If journalists are discussed, they are seen as simply presenting and reacting to the stories they are given. 12 Some journalists, including Nicholas Kristoff (Tait, 2011) and Glenn Greenwald (Carr, 2013; Keller, 2013), identify as both journalists and advocates, but this is much rarer in Anglo-American news than it is in Latin America or continental Europe (Waisbord, 2013). 31 Three Different Approaches to Objectivity “The notion of journalist as political and ideological eunuch seems silly, even to some who call themselves journalists.” – David Carr, journalist for the New York Times, June 30, 2013 Many piercing critiques of objectivity have been undertaken in a variety of fields, but the ideal of “the god’s eye view” of objectivity is still the cornerstone of mainstream journalism (Kelly, 2011; Waisbord, 2013, p. 76; Zelizer, 2004). In 1998, Hackett and Zhao proclaimed that within the professional field of journalism, “objectivity is the god that won’t die!” (passim). This intentionally humorous (and, I have found, quite true) statement presumes a specific, narrow, definition of objectivity. I suggest that journalistic objectivity can be recognized in three distinct forms: positivist objectivity, contextual objectivity, and strong objectivity. As discussed above, positivist objectivity is the one most associated with traditional journalism. It is premised on the idea that the world and facts exist out there waiting to be reported, and that “truth” and validity in reporting can be achieved using methods of detachment, observation, and triangulated verification (although in journalism this most often involves two corroborating sources rather than the three of traditional social science research). As discussed earlier in this chapter, this view is most often historically ascribed to Walter Lippmann, as he attempted to carve out a “scientific” approach to journalism in 1920s America in reaction to the often flagrant propaganda of “American yellow” journalism (Gladstone, 2011, pp. 96–103; Lippmann, 1920).13 Often this understanding of objectivity is assumed to be the only definition. However, I argue it is only one of the possible meanings of the word. 13 “Yellow journalism” was the norm de rigour of journalism in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. It was very partisan and sensationalist, and often served the political and economic interests of the publisher, unabashedly. 32 As Zelizer (2004) notes, the journalistic profession equates objectivity with a positivistic notion of facts and holds such factuality to a near-holy level. In fact, Hackett and Zhao’s (1998) “regime of objectivity” is entrenched in basic everyday practices of the newsroom. This is evident, for example, in the separate labeling of feature writing and analysis to mark them off from “hard news,” which goes unlabeled (Gladstone, 2011, pp. 112–113; Tait, 2011; Tuchman, 1978; Zelizer, 2004). It is important to note that other understandings of objectivity still hold fast to the skills, techniques, and values of journalism but allow for a more expansive idea of what objectivity is and can be. In their ground-breaking 2002 work on Arabic-language network Al Jazeera, El-Nawawy and Iskandar (2002a) coined the idea of “contextual objectivity,” describing their purposeful construction of such a seemingly oxymoronic term as “an attempt to articulate and capture the eclectic discursive and epistemological tensions between the relativism of message receivers and empirical positivism of message builders” (par. 4). Their work focuses not just on the media outlets, but the journalists themselves—as journalists and as members of the Arab world, and thus as Arab journalists.14 The kinds of “distance” assumed to be the ideal and the norm within other forms of journalism are not just impossible, but also undesirable. Just as journalists in Canada make their news in a way that makes sense to Canadian audiences, journalists from the Arab world speaking to the Arab world do their journalism in a way that makes sense to their audiences. This is manifested in story selection, source access, language choice, and other techniques (Sakr, 2007). For example, how does one reference people living on both sides of the Green Line—“settlers,” or “colonizers,” “Jews” or “Israelis,” “refugees,” or “displaced peoples,” “Palestinians” or “Arabs? ” How does one refer to people who use violence to advocate 14 A similar argument is made regarding the Israeli media, particularly at times of crisis (see Zandberg & Neiger, 2005). 33 particular causes in the name of Palestinian liberation: “martyrs,” “terrorists,” “suicide bombers” or “heroes?” All of these journalistic techniques have very political implications that are read differently by different audiences. Journalists employing a form of contextual objectivity strive to be objective within the context of both the story and the audience. An additional definition of objectivity put forth by some feminist and post-colonial scholars suggests that one can more clearly see systems and dynamics of power if one begins one’s observation from the perspective—“the standpoint”—of those who are marginalized by said systems. This perspective, which Sandra Harding (1993) terms “strong objectivity,” suggests that the standpoint of those marginalized offers a better (“stronger”) objectivity than traditional, positivist objectivity, because it starts from the point of questioning that which is often not questioned: the taken-for-granted ideas of “the way things are” or “ought to be.” This starting point is important because it not only opens up more questions (stories), it also opens up ideas about whom and what may be legitimate and credible sources of information (sources). In fact, Harding terms positivist objectivity “weak objectivity” because the starting point is too narrow to allow for full exploration of different problems and solutions. To be clear, Harding does not argue that one needs to embody the identity of those who are marginalized in order to research or write about them (one does not need to be a woman to write about women or Latino to write about Latino issues), nor does she suggest that a person of that marginalized identity will inherently write from that perspective (a gay writer does not automatically take up that standpoint in his or her writing or research). Rather, Harding is quite clear in stating that one’s standpoint is a conscious and purposeful choice; it is a position that one strives for, “an achievement.” Again, according to Harding, starting from the standpoint of those who are marginalized makes the entire system (or, in journalistic terms, “the story”) clearer, and thus it is 34 a more robust form of objectivity. Harding’s notion of strong objectivity helps us understand that regardless of our own relationship to power, listening to people who do not benefit from the status quo—those who are marginalized from power—allows us to more clearly recognize the systems and structures that shape the world around us, and in turn, shape and influence our own perceptions of the world. As Harding (1993) states, The activities of those at the bottom of such social hierarchies can provide points for thought for everyone’s research and scholarship—from which humans’ relations with each other and the natural world can become more visible….These experiences and lives have been devalued or ignored as a source of objectivity maximizing questions—the answers to which are not necessarily to be found in those experiences or lives but elsewhere in the beliefs and activities of people at the center who make policies and engage in social practices that shape marginal lives. (p. 54, emphasis in original) In other words, by not only listening to those who are excluded from the structural status quo but starting from their perspective, we can see the structures that include and exclude working more clearly. This is because “one’s social situation enables and sets limits on what one can know; some social situations—critically unexamined dominant ones—are more limiting than others” (Harding, 1993, pp. 54–55). According to Young (2000), “such a contextualizing of perspective is especially important for groups that have power, authority or privilege” (p. 116, my emphasis). Thus, concerned people, including journalists, can more effectively gain an understanding of what the story are—both the problems and possible solutions—by learning from people who are typically “devalued” or “ignored,” and thus excluded from framing the story. Journalists have a significant role in this process. Take, for example, a journalist assigned a story for a U.S. paper on the twentieth anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). How the journalist writes, researches, and presents this story will be based on the assumed audience and their presumed values and cultural narratives; this shapes the 35 “standpoint” of the journalist. Is it that of corporate shareholders? Unionized truckers? The U.S. Department of Labor? Agricultural migrants from Central Mexico? Autoworkers in Windsor, Ontario? Border patrol officers? Female workers in the maquiladoras? Veterans of the first Zapatista uprising? To repeat, it is not the ethnic or social identity of the journalist that determines the lens, but rather the perspective—the “starting point”—the journalist uses in crafting a story. As can be seen in the subsequent chapters, this framing affects the journalistic process itself: Where do journalists go to look for the story? Who is a legitimate source? Which languages are used in the interviews? Who is/are the audience(s) for the story? The story of the twentieth anniversary of NAFTA is more complicated than its effect on the American Gross Domestic Product, and the decisions and conditions that go into making an objective story are layered. To be clear, there are real, tangible, consequences to how the story is framed in terms of audience reaction and the socio-economic and political implications (Fairclough, 1992). With these more robust understandings of objectivity, one can better recognize how media and the journalists are always and necessarily engaged in political work regardless of a claim to “objectivity.” Journalists have agency in how they frame certain issues, problems, and solutions, and the role they play in articulating, defining, and diffusing new norms (Keller, 2013; Wade, 2011). Journalists do not have to be passive to be objective. In fact, journalists are constantly engaged in a process of framing, which means they are constantly engaged in navigating and negotiating power (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). In being passive and accepting positivist objectivity as the only form of legitimate objectivity, journalists actually perpetuate the dominant systems of power (Hallin, 1994; Hermann & Chomsky, 1988). 36 Framing, Counter-Framing, and Framing Contests When discussing frames and framing, much of the attention within communications literature has focused on the definition of frames and audience response to frames, but little attention has been given to the role of power in bringing particular frames to the forefront at particular times (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). Gitlin (1980), paraphrasing Erving Goffman defines framing as a way of negotiating all the various events taking place, managing them, comprehending them, and choosing “appropriate repertoires of cognition and action” (p. 6). As “the public,” we rely heavily on the media in navigating this process; although they are largely unspoken and unacknowledged, media frames “organize the world both for journalists who report [on] it and, in some important degree, for us who rely on their reports” (Gitlin, 1980, pp. 6–7). De Jong et al. (2005) offer a clear view from the perspective of actors involved in social and political change. According to them, framing is “deploying advanced media strategies in order to get their [social and political activists’] issues into the mainstream media…as a way of getting issues onto the political agenda but it is also about influencing public opinion and gaining support” (p. 7). The process of framing, then, “confronts significant questions focusing on journalism’s relationship to political authority and to demands for change” (Carragee & Roefs, 2004, p. 228). According to Carragee and Roefs, the academic and practical discussions of the power —including the corrupting power, of framing have lessened over the past few decades. This lack of discussion raises concerns about the pervasiveness of this framing practice. As Carragee and Roefs (2004) remind us, frames do not just happen but are sponsored by various actors with various degrees of power (pp. 216–217). Within the field of IR, and specifically within the constructivist school, the purpose of 37 framing an issue in a particular way is usually to bring about action—including the decision not to take action—which is usually built into the frame. A “back and forth” process often occurs, what Baer and Brysk (2009) refer to as “framing and framing back” (p. 102). This is an example of journalism affecting politics and politics affecting journalism. Strömbäck, Shehata, and Dimitrova (2008) provide an excellent example of the process of competing frames surrounding the human rights violations that took place at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq: The “torture” frame (placing accountability on the United States government as a whole) and the “abuse” frame (a few solders were abusing their authority and acting out of line) were in competition on the front pages of nearly every domestic and international media outlet. Various governmental officials and human rights organizations struggled to push the frames they felt would be most persuasive for their various audiences and most conducive to meeting their political objectives (Strömbäck et al., 2008, p. 119).15 Competition often occurs between different frames. It is important to understand that this competition determines how media outlets “pitch” an issue to the audience and react to the audience’s response. What helps certain ideas or norms “stick” (Price, 1998, p. 193)? Which issues get picked up and which ones garner little interest? What issues have what Carpenter (2007) defines as “issue emergence”? According to Keck and Sikkink (1998), issue emergence is easiest to mobilize within transnational activist networks (TANs) when the concerns relate to either bodily harm (especially to vulnerable individuals) or equal access to the law (pp. 27–28). TANs include state, inter-state and non-state actors engaged in trying to change behaviors in another state. The results of some 15 According to Bennett et al. (2006), the abuse frame won in U.S. media. 38 historically successful TANs include the end to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the end of foot-binding practices in China, and ensuring the right to vote for women in North America. In addition, TANs emphasize a short causal chain between the violation and the perpetrator. It is important to have “a causal story that establishes who bears responsibility or guilt” (p. 27). The longer the causal chain, the harder it is to hold the perpetrator accountable. For this reason many violations that take place in the private sphere—such as female genital cutting or domestic violence—prove difficult because the target (the perpetrator) is so distant from the state. It is important to note that the perpetrator is assumed to be connected to the state as is the remedy. Of course, many theorists and activists have complicated this understanding, noting that it is rare for a person to be pure victim or pure perpetrator; rather, power differentiation often renders some victims more “worthy” than others (Carpenter, 2007, 2009, 2012; Gilchrist, 2010; Hermann & Chomsky, 1988; Jiwani & Young, 2006; Mamdani, 2008). The Contribution of International Relations Theory As de Jong et al. (2005) point out, there is a particular gap in analyzing “the nature of media and the mediation of activism” (p. 3). According to Moravscik (2000) the “republican liberal” view of IR which is quite pervasive in western governmental policy, argues that citizens who have a problem with the state will express their concerns (often through lobbying, including lobbying through the media), and the state should, in turn, respond. Of course, the state tends to respond only if it is in its interest to do so. Human rights violations offer a particularly sticky point here, as the perpetrator is often the state itself. How does one hold the government accountable for the treatment of its own citizens? Too often this becomes a non-issue, swept under the rug, one of the “proverbial dogs that don’t bark” (Barnett & Duvall, 2005, p. 16). 39 According to Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) understanding of transnational politics, non-state actors such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), diasporic communities, and religious institutions are able to affect the behavior of states by deploying four different types of politics: information politics, symbolic politics, leverage politics, and accountability politics (pp. 18–24). Information is the primary currency in information politics. NGOs in State A provide information about what is occurring on the ground to NGOs and other activists in State B. This information can be presented in an “event” to garner social attention beyond those already involved, thus engaging symbolic politics. Quite often, this attention can be used to shame a state into action (or inaction) through leverage politics, and the traditional role of the journalist as “watchdog” is an example of accountability politics. The in-depth discussion below of Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) different forms of politics better illustrates the connections between journalism, activism, institutions, and social/political change. Information politics is employed when information becomes the currency through which a framework for advocacy can be created and mobilized. In order for this currency to be valued, it must be deemed credible. Thus, a desire to professionalize the information gathering process; and distribution often takes place. Those creating and consuming such information recognize that it is selected, framed, and portrayed to substantiate a particular view of a given situation that must resonate with many different audiences (Bob, 2005; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Legitimacy and credibility are not seen as synonymous with being neutral or unbiased. The understanding of credibility here privileges facts but recognizes that they are subject to interpretation (Bogert, 2011). The information that advocates and institutions present must be distributed in a way that is not only clearly understandable to the target audience but also constructs and cultivates an 40 assumed affinity, thus both creating and motivating an audience (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, pp. 18–22; Mihelj, 2011). This is often done using particular dates, pictures, people, maps, languages, or songs of cultural or historic significance that can help create emotion, affinity and thus, hopefully, action. This process is termed symbolic politics and is a tactic heavily employed in alternative media as well as transnational people’s journalism (Berg-Nordlie, 2011; Downing, 2001; Ostertag, 2006; Plaut, 2010, 2012b; Retzlaff, 2006; Skogerbø, 2003). One of the most easily recognizable being the white handkerchiefed Madres de Plaza de