Media Pressure on Foreign Policy

Media pressure is often implicated in changes to foreign policy. It is at once hailed as a check on the abuse of power and then reviled for undermining the roles and responsibilities of democratic institutions. But we are still left to wonder what media pressure is. This question is explicitly answered here, and in doing so it shows how the never-ending conversation between the media and executive creates social imperatives to which the executives “must” respond or else threaten their needed moral positions required to lead or act in international affairs.

Derek B. Miller is a fellow at the Center for Communication and Social Change at the University of Massachusetts. His work focuses on building a systematic and rigorous process for the timely provision of culturally-specific security-building knowledge for agencies who are designing interventions to help communities in crises. He has a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Geneva, a D.E.S. from the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva, an MA in national security studies from Georgetown University, and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. He has studied at St. Catherine’s College and Linacre College, both at Oxford, as well as Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has a particular interest in cultural research into security and is dedicated to bridging what he sees as a gap between international relations theory and its actual practice.

“Derek Miller offers an original and compelling argument for greater intellectual cross-fertilization among political communication theorists, on the one hand, and international affairs scholars, particularly those working in the constructionist approach, on the other.  Not afraid to offer impressively original and unorthodox ideas, Miller takes the reader on an erudite review of great European political philosophers and how they can contribute to a modern understanding of media and political pressure.  He has written a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating book.”
–Steven Livingston, Professor, School of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University
 
“This fascinating book opens up quite new directions in the study of key political processes. Focusing on the alleged influence that the media are supposed to exercise on the political process, Derek Miller brings two novel sets of considerations to bear. Turning to the history of discussions of media influence he brings to light the profundity of discussions of this very issue in the period during which the Western democratic tradition was being forged. Perhaps more importantly he asks the fundamental question: how could the media influence the political process? To answer this question he makes use of one of the most recent developments in social psychology, positioning theory. This is an original and powerful study, and deserves to be very widely read.”
–Rom Harré, Psychology Department, Georgetown University, Washington DC and Linacre College, Oxford

Introduction * The Contemporary Debate * Beyond the Contemporary Debate * Towards a Theory of Media Influence * The Iraqi Civil War and Aftermath, 1991 * From Coverage, to Pressure, to Influence * Media Pressure * Summary Conclusions about Media Pressure on Foreign Policy