Academica Press, LLC

Framing genocide; media, diplomacy & conflict transformation.

This volume applies communications framing theory as a means of exploring how the mass media and outside diplomats have perceived and represented violence in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan. Devoting most of its focus to the middle two, the study finds that the media and diplomats tended to apply stereotypical frames that obscured the true causes of violence and humanitarian frames that posited humanitarian aid as the best response to the crises. It also argues that diplomats used frames that rationalized inaction on the part of the international community, partly by employing such terms as "ethnic cleansing" and "tribal massacre" in preference to the stronger term of "genocide." Musa is professor of political science at Redlands University. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Lady Morgan's Italy; Anglo-Irish sensibilities and Italian realities.

Sydney Owenson, later Lady Morgan, was not what she seemed. Married to a doctor who was knighted shortly before their marriage, she was also the daughter of an impecunious Irish actor and an English Protestant mother. She was English, Irish and a radical feminist, a combination of characteristics she used to full effect in her descriptions of an Italy that had been described by many a lesser mortal before. She is capable of some of the snappiest commentary of her time, and nearly every paragraph has at least two intentions. Badin carefully works through Morgan's perceptions of Italian history, the grand tour and travel writing, the Italian as other, Morgan's heroes and villains, and the natural beauties and cultural riches of Italy. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Witnessing the pandemic; Irish print media and HIV/AIDS in Ireland and sub-Saharan Africa.

Singling out the broadsheet newspapers The Irish Times and the Irish Independent for detailed study, Gaffey traces the coverage of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa by Irish print media from the first recognition of the disease in 1981 to 2001. She contends that while AIDS in general received plenty of attention, its situation and impact in southern Africa was under-represented. She analyzes patterns of coverage to understand why, and includes a few tables and graphs as well as numerous excerpts from her interviews with journalists, editors and others. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)