4 ms·

Your Attention Please? Human-Rights NGOs and Global Communication [pdf]

1 points by jcr 12y ago

jcr 12y ago
Though the title of the paper was shortened by yours truly to fit on HN, the paper is actually about tech rather than politics. Hypothesis 1: Global news media attention will be heavily concentrated on a few NGOs. Hypothesis 2: The distribution of global news media attention among NGOs will correlate closely with the distribution of organizational resources among NGOs. Hypotheses Three and Four make the same predictions but with respect to getting the attention of individual citizens via the Web and social media: Hypothesis 3: Global public attention on the Web and in social media will be heavily concentrated on a few NGOs. Hypothesis 4: The distribution of global public attention will correlate closely with the distribution of organizational resources among NGOs. Hypotheses Three and Four lie at the crux of the current debate. Though many observers would acknowledge that Hypotheses One and Two are likely to be true, the premise recent enthusiasm about the Web and social media is the supposed democratization of communications. If the Internet is indeed democratizing NGO communications, then Hypotheses Three and Four must be false. If they are true, on the other hand, then the promise of the Web and social media to provide improved access to the global public for all groups especially the less wealthy and powerful in society may turn out to have been an appealing illusion. Abstract "Historically, NGOs have relied on mainstream news media to expose human rights violations and encourage governments to pressure the per- petrators. Thanks to the Internet, NGOs are crafting new strategies for conducting information politics. Despite the obvious democratization of access to the means of communication, however, the new media may in fact represent a more challenging environment in which to be heard for some groups seeking global attention. We draw on agenda setting research to develop a theory of global attention competition and use it to explain the success of 257 transnational human rights groups at generating at- tention in both international mainstream news media and social media outlets. We conclude that most NGOs lack the organizational resources to compete effectively for either traditional news coverage or for public attention and that the Internet is unlikely to resolve the problem of global communication."

1 points by jcr 12y ago

jcr 12y ago

Though the title of the paper was shortened by yours truly to fit on HN, the paper is actually about tech rather than politics. Hypothesis 1: Global news media attention will be heavily concentrated on a few NGOs. Hypothesis 2: The distribution of global news media attention among NGOs will correlate closely with the distribution of organizational resources among NGOs. Hypotheses Three and Four make the same predictions but with respect to getting the attention of individual citizens via the Web and social media: Hypothesis 3: Global public attention on the Web and in social media will be heavily concentrated on a few NGOs. Hypothesis 4: The distribution of global public attention will correlate closely with the distribution of organizational resources among NGOs. Hypotheses Three and Four lie at the crux of the current debate. Though many observers would acknowledge that Hypotheses One and Two are likely to be true, the premise recent enthusiasm about the Web and social media is the supposed democratization of communications. If the Internet is indeed democratizing NGO communications, then Hypotheses Three and Four must be false. If they are true, on the other hand, then the promise of the Web and social media to provide improved access to the global public for all groups especially the less wealthy and powerful in society may turn out to have been an appealing illusion. Abstract "Historically, NGOs have relied on mainstream news media to expose human rights violations and encourage governments to pressure the per- petrators. Thanks to the Internet, NGOs are crafting new strategies for conducting information politics. Despite the obvious democratization of access to the means of communication, however, the new media may in fact represent a more challenging environment in which to be heard for some groups seeking global attention. We draw on agenda setting research to develop a theory of global attention competition and use it to explain the success of 257 transnational human rights groups at generating at- tention in both international mainstream news media and social media outlets. We conclude that most NGOs lack the organizational resources to compete effectively for either traditional news coverage or for public attention and that the Internet is unlikely to resolve the problem of global communication."