The role of media and public
opinion in foreign policy
February 13, 2014
Overview
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Public opinion and foreign policy
Media and foreign policy
Procedural versus substantive criticism and
influence
Media, public opinion, and theoretical
perspectives
New technology and the ‘war on terror’
Public opinion, media and foreign
policy
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Not traditionally a lot of focus on media and
public opinion in IR
More focus on foreign policy, but even here not
traditionally a lot of focus
FP has tended to look at role of media through
impact of societal groups on decision-making
Understanding foreign policy processes at the
international level requires analysis of statelevel influences on foreign policy decisions
Two models for understanding the
role of the media
Pluralist model:
 No one group or set of interests can
dominate
 Media and public are independent from
political influence and can act as a
constraint on government
 Assumes that power is dispersed
throughout society
Elite model:
 Power concentrated within elite groups able
to dominate politics
 Media & public opinion subservient to
political elites; media only a mouthpiece for
government
 In this view media isn’t really independent
and instead works more to mobilize public
support for government policies
Public opinion and foreign policy
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In a democracy, we expect that the pluralist
model should be true
A government is supposed to be responsive to
public opinion
Challenge is that we see differing views of the
public: attentive, mass, non-attitudes, irrational
Clashing ideas about ability of public opinion to
influence foreign policy
Public opinion & media
Pluralist: public opinion is independent of
government and the media (media as objective
and public capable of forming an independent
opinion)
Elite: public opinion (and media) either irrelevant
to policy makers or a pre-established audience
for policy makers
Media are central to the public opinion/foreign
policy nexus.
Media and foreign policy
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Within democratic states, the media is
supposed to facilitate a full and open debate on
important issues within the public sphere. The
news media includes:
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Television news & current affairs programming
Newspapers
On-line media (a little bit outside traditional model)
Acts as watchdog, agenda-setter, news index,
etc.
Conversely tend to think of the elite model
applying more to authoritarian
governments
 Media is controlled by the state
 Media acts as mouth-piece for the state
 Almost more propaganda rather than
news
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The impact of media?
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In his memoirs, US President Nixon wrote:
“More than ever before, television showed the
terrible human suffering and sacrifice of war…
the result was a serious demoralization of the
home front, raising the question of whether
America would ever again be able to fight an
enemy abroad with unity and strength of
purpose at home.”
The Vietnam effect
The Vietnam War seen by many as key
turning point in US in understanding the
impact of media on foreign policy
 Start to see new arguments and research
on the impact of the media on policy
development
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Children
fleeing
napalm
Source:
Photograph
taken by
Bettman (8
June 1972).
Distributed by
Corbis
Execution
of an
alleged
Vietcong
prisoner
Source:
Photograph
taken by Eddie
Adams.
Distributed by
PA
Spheres of consensus, controversy and
defiance
Indexing,priming & framing
Indexing - media follow elites both in
terms of framing issues and setting the
news agenda, don’t set out on their own
 Priming - ability of media to prepare and
direct public to the issues on which they
should judge their leaders
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Framing- the way information is presented
influences how public perceive specific
issues
 Korean airliner vs Iranian airliner being
shot down
Procedural versus substantive
criticism and influence
‘Procedural’ criticism and influence:
describes media criticism and influence
that relates to debates over the
implementation of policy decisions.
 ‘Substantive’ criticism and influence:
describes criticism and influence that
relates to the underlying justifications and
rationale for particular foreign policies.
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Find that mainstream media criticism
tends to be more at procedural level
rather than challenging the underlying
justifications for policy choices
Media, public opinion, and
theoretical frames
The relationship among public opinion, media
and foreign policy can be integrated with major
IR schools of thought:
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Realism
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Liberalism
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Critical approaches
New technology and the ‘war on
terror’
Have seen rise in new forms of
communication technology: Internet and
global media (CNN & Al-Jazeera)
 We would expect that this would make
states unable to suppress ‘bad news’.
 Critical question: whether peoples of the
world have become any more, or any
less, informed about global affairs.
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The ‘War on Terror’
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For liberals, the appearance of new issues,
such as the ‘war on terror’, challenge their
claims for the existence of a more adversarial
and independent post-Cold War media
For realist and critical approaches, the ‘war on
terror’ and its impact upon media autonomy and
public perception of global affairs, confirms
subservience of both to broader political and
economic forces
Conclusion
Media has important influence on public
opinion and FP
 Media can be seen as democratic force
holding state accountable (pluralist) or
mouth piece for the state, mobilizing the
public to its cause (elite)
 New technology has potential to make it
harder to states to control message, but
verdict still out
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