- I'm an associate professor in the SJMC at UW-Madison. My first book is called Becoming the Story: War Reporters since... moreI'm an associate professor in the SJMC at UW-Madison. My first book is called Becoming the Story: War Reporters since 9/11 (University of Illinois Press, 2018). My second book is The Fixers: Local News Workers and the Underground Labor of International Reporting (Oxford UP 2019).edit
This article conducts a discursive interface analysis of World Fixer, the most visible online platform currently connecting foreign correspondents with local news workers who can help them translate interviews, navigate unfamiliar places,... more
This article conducts a discursive interface analysis of World Fixer, the most visible online platform currently connecting foreign correspondents with local news workers who can help them translate interviews, navigate unfamiliar places, and stay safe in the field. Placing Johanna Drucker's theory of the digital interface into conversation with the critical frameworks found in global communication studies, anti-colonial theory, and anti-racist communication scholarship, the goal is to illuminate both the opportunities that the World Fixer site provides its users, as well as the inequalities that the website still perpetuates.
Research Interests:
--Reveals the hidden lives and work of news "fixers:" locally based media employees who assist journalists as translators and guides in some of the most dangerous territories in the world --The first book to give voice to news fixers'... more
--Reveals the hidden lives and work of news "fixers:" locally based media employees who assist journalists as translators and guides in some of the most dangerous territories in the world
--The first book to give voice to news fixers' own perspectives, rather than the viewpoints of foreign reporters, and the first to think ethically about the treatment of fixers in the field
--Contains narratives from 75 interviews with news fixers from 39 countries
--The first book to give voice to news fixers' own perspectives, rather than the viewpoints of foreign reporters, and the first to think ethically about the treatment of fixers in the field
--Contains narratives from 75 interviews with news fixers from 39 countries
Research Interests: Journalism, Translation Studies, Globalization, International Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and 15 moreWar Studies, Global media, Digital Journalism, International Political Economy, Global Studies, Qualitative Research, Postcolonial Theory, In-depth Interviews, Foreign Correspondence, Journalism Studies, Newspapers and online journalism, International Journalism, Foreign Correspondents, News ethics, and Postcolonialism
The September 11 attacks produced changes in journalism and the lives of the people who practiced it. Foreign reporters felt surrounded by the hate of American colleagues for "the enemy." Americans in combat areas became literal targets... more
The September 11 attacks produced changes in journalism and the lives of the people who practiced it. Foreign reporters felt surrounded by the hate of American colleagues for "the enemy." Americans in combat areas became literal targets of anti-U.S. sentiment. Behind the lines, editors and bureau chiefs scrambled to reorient priorities while feeling the pressure of sending others into danger. Becoming the Story examines the transformation of war reporting in the decade after 9/11. Lindsay Palmer delves into times when print or television correspondents themselves received intense public scrutiny because of an incident associated with the work of war reporting. Such instances include Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and murder; Bob Woodruff's near-fatal injury in Iraq; the expulsions of Maziar Bahari and Nazila Fathi from Iran in 2009; the sexual assault of Lara Logan; and Marie Colvin's 2012 death in Syria. Merging analysis with in-depth interviews of Woodruff and others, Palmer shows what these events say about how post-9/11 conflicts transformed the day-to-day labor of reporting. But they also illuminate how journalists' work became entangled with issues ranging from digitization processes to unprecedented hostility from all sides to the political logic of the War on Terror.
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This chapter looks at the labor of interpreting unfamiliar languages. Fixers place great emphasis on their role as translators, but they echo much of the recent scholarship on translation by indicating that the task of translating and... more
This chapter looks at the labor of interpreting unfamiliar languages. Fixers place great emphasis on their role as translators, but they echo much of the recent scholarship on translation by indicating that the task of translating and interpreting is not a passive process. The very act of standing at the crossroads between two (or more) languages places news fixers in the role of cultural mediator, demanding that they live simultaneously within more than one linguistic expression of culture. Though some news fixers certainly conceptualize translation and interpreting as the process of building a bridge, they also suggest that the act of translation is fraught with moments of disconnection and miscommunication. Sometimes, the fixer might choose to translate a journalist’s question rather differently than the journalist intended, for instance, in order to assuage the anxiety of a source or an authority figure. Sometimes the fixer might leave some of the source’s response out of the tr...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
--Reveals the hidden lives and work of news "fixers:" locally based media employees who assist journalists as translators and guides in some of the most dangerous territories in the world --The first book to give voice... more
--Reveals the hidden lives and work of news "fixers:" locally based media employees who assist journalists as translators and guides in some of the most dangerous territories in the world --The first book to give voice to news fixers' own perspectives, rather than the viewpoints of foreign reporters, and the first to think ethically about the treatment of fixers in the field --Contains narratives from 75 interviews with news fixers from 39 countries
Research Interests: Journalism, Translation Studies, Globalization, International Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and 15 moreWar Studies, Global media, Digital Journalism, International Political Economy, Global Studies, Qualitative Research, Postcolonial Theory, Foreign Correspondence, Journalism Studies, Newspapers and online journalism, International Journalism, Foreign Correspondents, News ethics, Postcolonialism, and In Depth Interviews
This chapter focuses on international journalism research, offering the following suggestions: First, scholarship on international journalism should be prepared to more directly and publicly critique the ethnocentrism that has long... more
This chapter focuses on international journalism research, offering the following suggestions: First, scholarship on international journalism should be prepared to more directly and publicly critique the ethnocentrism that has long plagued international correspondence based in the English-speaking West, and that continues to be a problem in the digital age. Second, scholars of international news work need to be prepared to interrogate the structural inequalities that inform journalistic labor on an international scale, inequalities that have not disappeared with the rise of digital technologies. Third, scholars of international journalism need to more directly engage not only with big-brand correspondents, editors, and news executives, but also with the freelancers, stringers, and local fixers who hold these international news professions on their backs. The chapter ultimately argues that journalism scholars should be building more bridges between journalism research and journalism ...
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Research Interests:
This study explores the ways in which global press freedom watchdogs have discursively constructed the issue of press freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a multimodal discourse analysi...
Research Interests: Journalism, Political Science, Digital Journalism, Social Media, Twitter, and 11 moreFreedom Of Expression, Press Freedom, Media Freedom, Journalism And Mass communication, Freedom of the Press, Social Networking & Social Media, Networked Journalism, Coronavirus COVID-19, CoVid, COVID-19 PANDEMIC, and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
This article examines the unique ways in which the figure of the freelance war correspondent is entangled within both the material and discursive logic of the digital in the age of the “war on terror.” Because freelancers increasingly... more
This article examines the unique ways in which the figure of the freelance war correspondent is entangled within both the material and discursive logic of the digital in the age of the “war on terror.” Because freelancers increasingly work across media platforms and without large crews, these media producers are lucrative replacements for staff correspondents, especially since news organizations can opt out of paying for their insurance or safety training. Yet, freelancers can also be abused and discarded as soon as they begin to trouble accepted notions of journalistic authority—authority that is both a discursive and a political-economic construction. Following this, I offer two case studies in which a mainstream news network aligns a freelance journalist with the purportedly more interpretive and subjective space of the digital in order to regain control over the political narratives engendered by the freelancer’s experience in the war zone. Ultimately, I argue that these instances reveal the larger ethical poverty of mainstream news reporting in the digital age.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This essay examines the increasing interdependence of television news organizations and citizen journalism, specifically focusing on CNN’s citizen journalist website called iReport. Using Tiziana Terranova’s notion of “network culture,” I... more
This essay examines the increasing interdependence of television news organizations and citizen journalism, specifically focusing on CNN’s citizen journalist website called iReport. Using Tiziana Terranova’s notion of “network culture,” I show how CNN simultaneously denigrates and depends on the unpaid labor of its iReporters, especially when covering a political uprising. I draw on a series of interviews conducted with iReporters who covered the Iranian elections and protests of 2009, in an effort to address the complex political imperatives that inspired their unpaid labor for CNN. In this sense, my case study ultimately reveals that citizen journalism is less a story of exploitation and more a story of negotiation, as hegemonic journalistic representations of world events ultimately unfold within the increasingly disruptive informational milieu that is the product of network culture.
Research Interests:
This article analyzes the Newseum’s attention to questions of the international in an attempt to answer two related research questions: (1) how does the Newseum represent the ‘world news’ story, and (2) how does it represent the world’s... more
This article analyzes the Newseum’s attention to questions of the international in an attempt to answer two related research questions: (1) how does the Newseum represent the ‘world news’ story, and (2) how does it represent the world’s various journalism industries? In order to answer these questions, the article first reviews the existing scholarly literature on museums and tourism with the goal of clarifying the Newseum’s positioning within a larger tradition of engaging (and governing) the museum visitor. The article then provides some background information on the Newseum’s creation, shedding light on the very specific sociocultural context that engendered the Newseum – and its view of the ‘world’. Finally, the article discusses the author’s findings from a site study of the Newseum’s 9/11 Memorial Gallery and its Time Warner World News Gallery.
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Abstract This article conducts a qualitative textual analysis of the New York Times’ 360-degree news reports that focus on international human rights issues, posing the following research questions: (1) How do the form and content of the... more
Abstract This article conducts a qualitative textual analysis of the New York Times’ 360-degree news reports that focus on international human rights issues, posing the following research questions: (1) How do the form and content of the New York Times’ 360-degree videos potentially help to construct the vividness and interactivity that virtual reality scholars say will contribute to a greater sense of telepresence? (2) In what ways do the form and content of the New York Times’ 360-degree video news reports reflect the tension between traditional notions of journalistic authority on the one hand, and the need to engage—on both ethical and economic levels—with news audiences on the other hand? The article will show that the news industry’s deep ambivalence toward giving up control of the journalistic narrative in the digital age is coded into the visual and aural structures of the videos, raising questions about the celebratory discourse on agency and interpersonal engagement with distant suffering.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This essay examines the increasing interdependence of television news organizations and citizen journalism, specifically focusing on CNN’s citizen journalist website called iReport. Using Tiziana Terranova’s notion of “network culture, ”... more
This essay examines the increasing interdependence of television news organizations and citizen journalism, specifically focusing on CNN’s citizen journalist website called iReport. Using Tiziana Terranova’s notion of “network culture, ” I show how CNN simultaneously denigrates and depends on the unpaid labor of its iReporters, especially when covering a political uprising. I draw on a series of interviews conducted with iReporters who covered the Iranian elections and protests of 2009, in an effort to address the complex political imperatives that inspired their unpaid labor for CNN. In this sense, my case study ultimately reveals that citizen journalism is less a story of exploitation and more a story of negotiation, as hegemonic journalistic representations of world events ultimately unfold within the increasingly disruptive informational milieu that is the product of network culture. Keywords CNN, iReport, citizen journalism, political uprisings, television news In December 2010...
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<p>The conclusion to this book examines the labor of relinquishing the story. Despite their active role in conceptualizing the story at its beginning and assisting with the construction of the story at every turn, fixers say that... more
<p>The conclusion to this book examines the labor of relinquishing the story. Despite their active role in conceptualizing the story at its beginning and assisting with the construction of the story at every turn, fixers say that they are denied ownership of the final product in any significant sense. Sometimes, the journalist or news organization will invoke the very fact that the fixer is getting paid in order to justify the separation of the fixer from the final product of his or her labor. Some of my interviewees suggest that this especially seems to happen when a fixer takes issue with the journalist's interpretation of what is "true" or what is most newsworthy. Once the story is finished, news fixers rarely receive substantial credit for their role in reporting the story. Some of my interviewees say that this does not bother them, while others assert that the inability to get a byline hurts their chances for upward mobility in the international reporting industries. Still, very few news fixers appear to feel comfortable with actively contesting this problem. Thus, the conclusion of this book argues that the labor of relinquishing the story is also the moment in which the fixer—sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly—acquiesces to his or her own erasure from the practice of international news reporting.</p>
Research Interests:
This chapter focuses specifically on the labor of conceptualizing the story. When news fixers describe this element of their work, they tend to emphasize three things: (1) their role in anticipating and successfully getting the story that... more
This chapter focuses specifically on the labor of conceptualizing the story. When news fixers describe this element of their work, they tend to emphasize three things: (1) their role in anticipating and successfully getting the story that the journalist originally wants, (2) their role in suggesting new story ideas to journalists who either do not know which events to cover or whose story ideas have not panned out, and (3) their role in educating visiting journalists on the political, social, and historical background knowledge that they sometimes very sorely lack. While some might argue that this element of news fixers’ labor points to their dubious efforts at slanting the story in a “biased” direction, the chapter argues that news fixers’ narratives about conceptualizing the story instead illuminate the fact that there is rarely one, immutable story to be found. From fixers’ perspectives, the journalistic story is an effort at lending coherence to a much more complex reality, one ...
Research Interests:
The chapter explores the labor of safeguarding the journalist. Fixers represent themselves as playing a vital role in keeping foreign reporters out of harm’s way, most especially when these reporters’ status as racial, national, and even... more
The chapter explores the labor of safeguarding the journalist. Fixers represent themselves as playing a vital role in keeping foreign reporters out of harm’s way, most especially when these reporters’ status as racial, national, and even gendered Others might put them at risk. Sometimes the fixer must speak on behalf of the journalist, smoothing things over with a suspicious police officer or an angry crowd. Other times, the fixer might give the journalist advice on how to safely navigate the complex sociocultural landscape, imploring female journalists to dress conservatively in certain areas, and recommending certain neighborhoods that no foreign reporter should visit alone. For these reasons, news outlets tend to conceptualize fixers as a key element of the security measures they must take to keep their journalists safe in the field. Yet, the chapter closes by showing the flip side of this labor—the possibility that the news fixers themselves will be injured or killed. Notwithsta...
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This chapter explores what it means to conduct media fieldwork by critically reflecting upon a collaborative research project in rural Zambia in 2012 and 2013. It discusses what a media studies approach to fieldwork entails and what the... more
This chapter explores what it means to conduct media fieldwork by critically reflecting upon a collaborative research project in rural Zambia in 2012 and 2013. It discusses what a media studies approach to fieldwork entails and what the affordances and limits of such an approach might be. By fieldwork, we are referring to the practice of traveling to a location, visiting various sites in and around that locale, interviewing and conversing with people in structured and semi-structured ways, and observing any number of activities, objects, or relations that help to characterize or define media-related phenomena at the site. Fieldwork also encompasses the complex issues and relations that emerge in the context of such investigations.
Research Interests:
This book conducts a cultural analysis of the labor of the news fixer—the locally based media employee who helps international correspondents research stories, set up interviews, translate foreign languages, and navigate unfamiliar... more
This book conducts a cultural analysis of the labor of the news fixer—the locally based media employee who helps international correspondents research stories, set up interviews, translate foreign languages, and navigate unfamiliar regions. Foreign reporters often say that their work would be impossible without these local news assistants. Yet, fixers are among some of the most exploited and persecuted people contributing to the production of international news. Targeted by militant groups, by their own governments, or even by their own neighbors, fixers must often engage in a precarious balancing act between appeasing their community members and pleasing the correspondents who visit from faraway. Though foreign news outlets routinely depend upon news fixers’ insider awareness of politically tense situations in order to keep their own reporters safe in the field, fixers themselves continually face detainment, injury, and death. Even so, international news organizations almost never ...
This study explores the ways in which global press freedom watchdogs have discursively constructed the issue of press freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a multimodal discourse analysis, the study examines web stories and... more
This study explores the ways in which global press freedom watchdogs have discursively constructed the issue of press freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a multimodal discourse analysis, the study examines web stories and Tweets posted by the International Press Institute (IPI), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), with the purpose of answering three primary questions: (1) Who or what do the CPJ, the IPI, and RSF represent as the greatest threat to press freedom in relation to Covid-19? (2) What are the differences between these groups’ representations of press freedom in their own regions of the world and their representations of press freedom in “Other” places? (3) What digital strategies do the IPI, CPJ, and RSF use in coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic? The article ultimately seeks to understand the ways in which each of these influential press freedom groups help to popularize particular understandings of press freedom in the 21st century.
Research Interests: Journalism, Digital Journalism, Social Media, Twitter, Freedom Of Expression, and 10 morePress Freedom, Media Freedom, Journalism And Mass communication, Twitter as a News Source, Twitter as Medium and Message, Freedom of the Press, Social Networking & Social Media, Networked Journalism, Covid-19, Coronavirus COVID-19, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
This article conducts a discursive interface analysis of World Fixer, the most visible online platform currently connecting foreign correspondents with local news workers who can help them translate interviews, navigate unfamiliar places,... more
This article conducts a discursive interface analysis of World Fixer, the most visible online platform currently connecting foreign correspondents with local news workers who can help them translate interviews, navigate unfamiliar places, and stay safe in the field. Placing Johanna Drucker's theory of the digital interface into conversation with the critical frameworks found in global communication studies, anti-colonial theory, and anti-racist communication scholarship, the goal is to illuminate both the opportunities that the World Fixer site provides its users, as well as the inequalities that the website still perpetuates.
Research Interests:
This chapter examines the labor of navigating the logistics. A central tenet of this chapter is the news fixers’ suggestion that logistical labor is skilled labor; this type of work requires creativity and cultural savvy. The work of... more
This chapter examines the labor of navigating the logistics. A central tenet of this chapter is the news fixers’ suggestion that logistical labor is skilled labor; this type of work requires creativity and cultural savvy. The work of navigating the logistics requires the fixer to guide journalists through challenging sociopolitical environments, helping clients to meet their deadlines while also keeping the local authorities satisfied that they are following regional laws. Sometimes visiting journalists and documentarians try to enter a country without the proper permits for their equipment or without the proper work visa. In these cases, news fixers try to find creative ways to smooth things over and gain access for their clients, despite the fact that their clients have not respected the laws of the spaces they are trying to enter. Time and space are revealed to be relative, depending on who has the most power in a given situation. In the process of helping their clients to naviga...
Research Interests:
... This underscores David Garland's assertion that the Western media tend to reduce the mobilizing effects of moral panic. ... of regional and legal boundaries by US authorities—hence, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq and the... more
... This underscores David Garland's assertion that the Western media tend to reduce the mobilizing effects of moral panic. ... of regional and legal boundaries by US authorities—hence, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq and the imprisonments in Guantánamo Bay (Miller 92). ...
Research Interests:
This article examines some of the cultural differences between news ‘fixers’ and foreign reporters, focusing specifically on the expectations and experiences of the fixers, rather than the correspondents whose own perspectives have... more
This article examines some of the cultural differences between news ‘fixers’ and foreign reporters, focusing specifically on the expectations and experiences of the fixers, rather than the correspondents whose own perspectives have already been fruitfully explored. Drawing upon qualitative, semi-structured interviews I conducted with 21 news fixers, I will answer three research questions: (1) How do fixers understand and value the work they do? (2) How do fixers view the cultural, ethnic, or racial differences that inevitably play into the professional relationships between local news staff and foreign news outlets? (3) How do these cultural differences impact the safety of foreign correspondents and fixers, most especially at sites of conflict? The study ultimately shows that fixers take issue with foreign journalists’ lack of background on the countries they visit and with journalists’ lack of attention to disparate cultural mores in the newsgathering process. Furthermore, the ina...
Research Interests:
The recent explosion of mobile media has coincided with a growing interest in crisis mapping, a practice that blends the technical capabilities of sites like Google Earth with politically inflected attempts at geospatial visualization.... more
The recent explosion of mobile media has coincided with a growing interest in crisis mapping, a practice that blends the technical capabilities of sites like Google Earth with politically inflected attempts at geospatial visualization. Non-profit organizations such as Kenyan-based Ushahidi have mobilized these technologies in order to visualize various natural catastrophes and political atrocities in spatial terms, drawing upon the testimonies of diverse witnesses – witnesses often equipped with nothing more than their mobile phones. Yet, these organizations&#39; increasingly global agendas should be scrutinized. While Ushahidi brands itself as an activist group dedicated to the &#39;geospatial visualization of testimony&#39;, this non-profit corporation&#39;s repeated reliance on Google&#39;s corporate humanitarianism raises questions about the efficacy of an initiative that operates from the &#39;top-down&#39;. While Ushahidi did and still does allow for the geospatial visualization of testimony, this non-profit corporation also illuminates the problems with deploying GIS to political ends, especially across disparate cultural and national contexts.
Research Interests:
This article examines representations of motherhood in three transnational feminist films: Anayansi Prado's Maid in America (2004), Sabiha Sumar's Silent Waters (2002) and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2007). While these films... more
This article examines representations of motherhood in three transnational feminist films: Anayansi Prado's Maid in America (2004), Sabiha Sumar's Silent Waters (2002) and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2007). While these films differ at the levels of genre and style as well as in terms of their production contexts, they each feature several scenes that engage the tension between distance and proximity, separation and unity – an always unresolved tension integral to the reproductive sphere. Each film also provides at least one close-up shot of a mother's hands preparing food for her charge. Tracing Mary Ann Doane's explication of the close-up shot's engagement with the capitalist logic of the microcosm and macrocosm, I will show how the aforementioned films resignify what Doane identifies as the close-up's compensation for the loss of unity in modernity. The recurring image of a mother's labouring hands interrogates the false unity of the capitalist macrocosm, while also complicating the purportedly separate microcosm in which modern subject can touch and hold a given commodity. These films show that transnational mothers are simultaneously held within the immobile space of reproduction – owned and exploited by the larger structures that depend on their labour – while also actively recreating the cultures that render them invisible.
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This article conducts a qualitative textual analysis of the New York Times’ 360-degree news reports that focus on international human rights issues, posing the following research questions: (1) How do the form and content of the New York... more
This article conducts a qualitative textual analysis of the New York Times’ 360-degree news reports that focus on international human rights issues, posing the following research questions: (1) How do the form and content of the New York Times’ 360-degree videos potentially help to construct the vividness and interactivity that virtual reality scholars say will contribute to a greater sense of telepresence? (2) In what ways do the form and content of the New York Times’ 360-degree video news reports reflect the tension between traditional notions of journalistic authority on the one hand, and the need to engage—on both ethical and economic levels—with news audiences on the other hand? The article will show that the news industry’s deep ambivalence toward giving up control of the journalistic narrative in the digital age is coded into the visual and aural structures of the videos, raising questions about the celebratory discourse on agency and interpersonal engagement with distant suffering.
Research Interests:
This article examines the work of news fixers based in Moscow, in hopes of better understanding the risks and challenges that they face as they “translate” Russia for foreign journalists. Drawing upon the theoretical concept of “cultural... more
This article examines the work of news fixers based in Moscow, in hopes of better understanding the risks and challenges that they face as they “translate” Russia for foreign journalists. Drawing upon the theoretical concept of “cultural translation,” which understands interpretive work as vastly exceeding the merely linguistic register, this study will analyze the complex—and sometimes, risky—processes through which Moscow-based news fixers render Russia intelligible to their foreign clients. Using qualitative, in-depth interviews with 16 news fixers, the study explores news fixers’ perceptions of their clients’ representations of Russia, as well as investigating the fixers’ feelings about the risks they face in the field. The article finds that news fixers in Moscow sometimes find their clients’ representations of Russia to be reductive and, in some cases, biased. In order to combat this problem, fixers say that they try to “translate” Russia for their clients, filling in the gaps in foreign journalists’ knowledge about the culture. They ultimately say that while their work can subject them to political and financial risk, they do not believe themselves to be in the same level of physical danger as that faced by journalists working in conflict zones.
Research Interests:
This essay examines the increasing interdependence of television news organizations and citizen journalism, specifically focusing on CNN’s citizen journalist website called iReport. Using Tiziana Terranova’s notion of “network culture,” I... more
This essay examines the increasing interdependence of television news organizations
and citizen journalism, specifically focusing on CNN’s citizen journalist website called
iReport. Using Tiziana Terranova’s notion of “network culture,” I show how CNN
simultaneously denigrates and depends on the unpaid labor of its iReporters, especially
when covering a political uprising. I draw on a series of interviews conducted with
iReporters who covered the Iranian elections and protests of 2009, in an effort
to address the complex political imperatives that inspired their unpaid labor for
CNN. In this sense, my case study ultimately reveals that citizen journalism is less
a story of exploitation and more a story of negotiation, as hegemonic journalistic
representations of world events ultimately unfold within the increasingly disruptive
informational milieu that is the product of network culture.
and citizen journalism, specifically focusing on CNN’s citizen journalist website called
iReport. Using Tiziana Terranova’s notion of “network culture,” I show how CNN
simultaneously denigrates and depends on the unpaid labor of its iReporters, especially
when covering a political uprising. I draw on a series of interviews conducted with
iReporters who covered the Iranian elections and protests of 2009, in an effort
to address the complex political imperatives that inspired their unpaid labor for
CNN. In this sense, my case study ultimately reveals that citizen journalism is less
a story of exploitation and more a story of negotiation, as hegemonic journalistic
representations of world events ultimately unfold within the increasingly disruptive
informational milieu that is the product of network culture.
Research Interests:
This study examines the war-reporting industry’s attitude toward news “fixers”—the locally based contacts who become news employees, by helping foreign reporters translate interviews, build contacts, and navigate the cultural contexts... more
This study examines the war-reporting industry’s attitude toward news “fixers”—the locally based
contacts who become news employees, by helping foreign reporters translate interviews, build contacts, and navigate the cultural contexts with which correspondents are increasingly unfamiliar in the era of “parachute journalism.” Conducting a critical discourse analysis of 189 articles published in English-language journalism trade publications, the study seeks to answer these research questions:
(1) How do Anglophone editors and reporters understand and value the labor of news fixers working in conflict zones?
(2) How do Anglophone editors and reporters discuss the safety of their news fixers?
Drawing upon the critical frameworks found in the field of global media ethics, the study will suggest that news fixers have the potential to facilitate more complex and productive “global–local exchanges,” which could in turn lead to a global media ethics that is, in the words of Wasserman, “truly dialogic and critical.” Yet, despite the valuable cultural perspective that fixers can bring, a critical discourse analysis shows that these media employees are currently undervaluedand underprotected by the editors and correspondents who hire them.
contacts who become news employees, by helping foreign reporters translate interviews, build contacts, and navigate the cultural contexts with which correspondents are increasingly unfamiliar in the era of “parachute journalism.” Conducting a critical discourse analysis of 189 articles published in English-language journalism trade publications, the study seeks to answer these research questions:
(1) How do Anglophone editors and reporters understand and value the labor of news fixers working in conflict zones?
(2) How do Anglophone editors and reporters discuss the safety of their news fixers?
Drawing upon the critical frameworks found in the field of global media ethics, the study will suggest that news fixers have the potential to facilitate more complex and productive “global–local exchanges,” which could in turn lead to a global media ethics that is, in the words of Wasserman, “truly dialogic and critical.” Yet, despite the valuable cultural perspective that fixers can bring, a critical discourse analysis shows that these media employees are currently undervaluedand underprotected by the editors and correspondents who hire them.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article examines the unique ways in which the figure of the freelance war correspondent is entangled within both the material and discursive logic of the digital in the age of the “war on terror.” Because freelancers increasingly... more
This article examines the unique ways in which the figure of the freelance war
correspondent is entangled within both the material and discursive logic of the digital in
the age of the “war on terror.” Because freelancers increasingly work across media
platforms and without large crews, these media producers are lucrative replacements for
staff correspondents, especially since news organizations can opt out of paying for their
insurance or safety training. Yet, freelancers can also be abused and discarded as soon as
they begin to trouble accepted notions of journalistic authority—authority that is both a
discursive and a political-economic construction. Following this, I offer two case studies
in which a mainstream news network aligns a freelance journalist with the purportedly
more interpretive and subjective space of the digital in order to regain control over the
political narratives engendered by the freelancer’s experience in the war zone.
Ultimately, I argue that these instances reveal the larger ethical poverty of mainstream
news reporting in the digital age.
correspondent is entangled within both the material and discursive logic of the digital in
the age of the “war on terror.” Because freelancers increasingly work across media
platforms and without large crews, these media producers are lucrative replacements for
staff correspondents, especially since news organizations can opt out of paying for their
insurance or safety training. Yet, freelancers can also be abused and discarded as soon as
they begin to trouble accepted notions of journalistic authority—authority that is both a
discursive and a political-economic construction. Following this, I offer two case studies
in which a mainstream news network aligns a freelance journalist with the purportedly
more interpretive and subjective space of the digital in order to regain control over the
political narratives engendered by the freelancer’s experience in the war zone.
Ultimately, I argue that these instances reveal the larger ethical poverty of mainstream
news reporting in the digital age.
Research Interests:
This article examines some of the cultural differences between news 'fixers' and foreign reporters, focusing specifically on the expectations and experiences of the fixers, rather than the correspondents whose own perspectives have... more
This article examines some of the cultural differences between news 'fixers' and foreign reporters, focusing specifically on the expectations and experiences of the fixers, rather than the correspondents whose own perspectives have already been fruitfully explored. Drawing upon qualitative, semi-structured interviews I conducted with 21 news fixers, I will answer three research questions: (1) How do fixers understand and value the work they do? (2) How do fixers view the cultural, ethnic, or racial differences that inevitably play into the professional relationships between local news staff and foreign news outlets? (3) How do these cultural differences impact the safety of foreign correspondents and fixers, most especially at sites of conflict? The study ultimately shows that fixers take issue with foreign journalists' lack of background on the countries they visit and with journalists' lack of attention to disparate cultural mores in the newsgathering process. Furthermore, the inattention to cultural difference in the field can endanger the lives of the foreign reporters as well as the lives of the fixers. Local media workers called 'fixers' have long assisted foreign news correspondents in setting up interviews, translating copy, navigating unfamiliar locations, and staying safe in conflict zones. 1 However, this important labor has historically been invisible to the
Research Interests:
The recent explosion of mobile media has coincided with a growing interest in crisis mapping, a practice that blends the technical capabilities of sites like Google Earth with politically inflected attempts at geospatial visualization.... more
The recent explosion of mobile media has coincided with a growing interest in crisis mapping, a practice that blends the technical capabilities of sites like Google Earth with politically inflected attempts at geospatial visualization. Non-profit organizations such as Kenyan-based Ushahidi have mobilized these technologies in order to visualize various natural catastrophes and political atrocities in spatial terms, drawing upon the testimonies of diverse witnesses – witnesses often equipped with nothing more than their mobile phones. Yet, these organizations' increasingly global agendas should be scrutinized. While Ushahidi brands itself as an activist group dedicated to the 'geospatial visualization of testimony', this non-profit corporation's repeated reliance on Google's corporate humanitarianism raises questions about the efficacy of an initiative that operates from the 'top-down'. While Ushahidi did and still does allow for the geospatial visualization of testimony, this non-profit corporation also illuminates the problems with deploying GIS to political ends, especially across disparate cultural and national contexts.
Research Interests:
This article analyzes the Newseum's attention to questions of the international in an attempt to answer two related research questions: (1) how does the Newseum represent the 'world news' story, and (2) how does it represent the world's... more
This article analyzes the Newseum's attention to questions of the international in an attempt to answer two related research questions: (1) how does the Newseum represent the 'world news' story, and (2) how does it represent the world's various journalism industries? In order to answer these questions, the article first reviews the existing scholarly literature on museums and tourism with the goal of clarifying the Newseum's positioning within a larger tradition of engaging (and governing) the museum visitor. The article then provides some background information on the Newseum's creation, shedding light on the very specific sociocultural context that engendered the Newseum – and its view of the 'world'. Finally, the article discusses the author's findings from a site study of the Newseum's 9/11 Memorial Gallery and its Time Warner World News Gallery.