Global Media Project
The Global Media Project
• The Global Media
Project launched at
the Watson Institute
in 2006 to explore the
increasing role of
media for major
international issues.
The project is built upon
three core assertions.
• multiple media have become
increasingly interconnected
and all the more powerful as
global actors.
• since 9/11 the media are a
critical component of global
terrorism and the war
against it.
• there is an increased need
not only to understand but to
create media in international
affairs
• In an age defined by
networks of
information and
terror, getting the
message right is no
longer sufficient;
understanding,
producing and rapidly
distributing globalinterest media is also
required.
• Out of the GMP came the undergraduate
seminar: History, Theory, and Production of
Global Media, co-taught by James Der Derian
and John Phillip Santos.
• The seminar explores the historical and
contemporary roles of media in international
affairs, both as a source of information and,
increasingly, as an important medium of war
and diplomacy.
• Combining history,
theory, critical viewing,
film screenings, and
media production, and
based on a retrospective
study of news media,
documentaries, and
critical media theory, the
course maps the complex
contemporary global
media environment…
Eugene Jarecki speaks while director Morgan
Spurlock checks out the Watson Institute’s
namesake's powers of prediction.
… where the Internet
and satellite
broadcasting, among
other recent
technologies, have
created a new
panorama of messages,
meanings and
strategems directly
affecting international
politics.
Deborah Scranton being filmed by Al Jazeera.
Blogger and NYU Professor Jay Rosen
with Radio Open Source host and Watson
Fellow Christopher Lydon.
• Guest speakers and
filmmakers conduct
GlobalMediaLabs on
the production of
multiple media,
including print,
photography, radio,
film, television and
websites.
• Students create
treatments and trailers
for documentary
projects on global
security issues, which
are featured in the
GlobalMediaForum.
John Phillip Santos, Eugene Jarecki, and
Alex Gibney discuss the use of
reenactments in documentary films
• Students also engage
through the
GlobalMediaBlog, an
integral part of the course,
which provides students an
opportunity to continue
discussions, share papers,
and showcase their growing
technical abilities by
uploading regular videoblogs of GlobalMediaLabs.
URL: watsonblogs.org/globalmedia
Documentaries
• The Global Media Project
has also been directly
involved in the
production of its public
interest documentaries,
including Culture of War,
Telling Terror’s Tales, A
Nation Without Women,
and Virtual JFK:
Vietnam, if Kennedy Had
Lived.
Still from Culture of War
Global Security Matrix 1.0 & 2.0
• A prototype of an interactive
website was created: the
Global Security Matrix 1.0.
This prototype became the
basis for an application to
the Carnegie Corporation of
New York and the Scholarly
Technology Group at Brown
University
• A new team of students,
programmers, and graphic
designers was formed to
create the Global Security
Matrix 2.0
A screenshot of the GSM version 1.0
The Matrix as a Visual Tool
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•
•
The Matrix is designed to be a tool for
multi-disciplinary, multi-perspectival,
and multi-lateral approaches to global
security.
In addition to its purpose to interrogate
traditional models and definitions of
global security, the Matrix also visually
represents and maps these threats across
multiple levels of analysis.
One of the most valuable features of the
Matrix is its emphasis on a relative
ranking of modern threats according to
plural definitions of global security.