John Nathaniel Clarke, British Media and the Rwandan Genocide (Routledge Press, 2018)
It seems safe to assume that media coverage changes the behavior of politicians and voters.\xa0 And it seems safe to assume this happens in cases of humanitarian crisis.\n\nBut it\u2019s really hard to go beyond these platitudes to determine exactly how this feedback loop works.\xa0 John Nathaniel Clarke\u2019s new book,\xa0British Media and the Rwandan Genocide (Routledge, 2018), uses Rwanda as a test case to tease out the relationship between media coverage and policy.\xa0 To do so, he uses carefully structured, labor intensive and analytically rich process to determine exactly what the media was reporting and writing about the genocide.\xa0 By examining the media coverage so systematically, he is also able to detect changes over time in the nature of the reporting.\xa0 He then examines the way in which members of parliament respond to the reports, analysis and op-eds in a variety of British newspapers.\n\nClarke knows his way around an excel spreadsheet, and his analysis is statistically sophisticated and his conclusions carefully considered.\xa0 His book raise questions about the received wisdom about coverage of Rwanda.\xa0 But it also offers a model going forward of how we might understand the relationship between media coverage of mass atrocities and the decisions made by political leaders about how to respond to these crises.\n\n\n\nKelly McFall\xa0is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He\u2019s the author of four modules in the\xa0Reacting to the Past\xa0series, including\xa0The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda,\xa01994.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies