Inhaltsangabe:Der Studiengang International Media Studies wurde in Kooperation von der Deutschen Welle-Akademie, der Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg und der Universität Bonn eingeführt. Introduction: Motivation: As the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 started, I had just arrived in Germany. At the time, nobody ever really believed that military actions would ever take place between the two countries, though there was a lot of talk about the possibility. During the first days of the war, while in Germany, it was challenging to get information from the Georgian media. Later I learned of the hacker attacks on Georgian websites, and also that people in Georgia could not visit any Russian websites. I was having trouble even contacting my family through land telephone lines. It seemed that the information war between Russia and Georgia had gained strength. Russia Today was describing Georgians as the worst villains, and CNN was expressing its empathy towards Georgia. It was a confusing atmosphere of an enormous amount of discrepancies. After the war, there were a lot of manipulations and speculations about the causes and the flow of the military conflict. This triggered my reflection on whether media of directly involved parties under the combat circumstances can stay balanced and unbiased. Both Russian and Georgian media seem to face significant challenges related to media independence because of the relatively short and fragile democratic development taking place in both countries. It may be naive to expect an absence of bias from media organizations from either country; instead it would be more plausible to look to media of third countries to play a neutral observer role. Certainly, every media and every country represents its own interests but nobody speaks about ideal configurations. During my master study at the Deutsche Welle, I attended a seminar on the peace journalism which motivated me to come back to my previous questions and try to find out whether the reporting on the Russia-Georgia war was conflict-sensitive or balanced in any way. The conflict between Russia and Georgia is an ongoing conflict with varying phases of escalation and de-escalation. Visible and invisible consequences of the war are still unresolved such as insufficient care of the refugees, inexact data of casualties and other issues. Statement of problem and research question: People are always curious about what happens outside their own countries, about, so called, foreign [...]

This book explores contemporary propaganda and mainstream Western news media, with reference to the Ukraine crisis. It examines Western media narratives of the immediate causes of the crisis, the respective roles of those who participated in or otherwise supported the demonstrations of 2013–2014 – including US-backed NGOs and rightist militia – and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of the destabilization of the democratically elected Yanukovych government. It considers how the crisis was contextualized with reference to broader themes of competition for power over Eurasia and the Washington Consensus. It assesses accounts of the role of Russia and of ethnic Russian Ukrainians in Crimea, Odessa and the Donbass and traces how Western mainstream media went out of their way to demonize Vladimir Putin. The book deconstructs prevailing Western narratives as to the reasons for the shooting down of Malaysian Airways flight MH17 in July 2014, and counters Western media concentration on the issue of culpability for the attack with an alternative narrative of egregious failure to close down civilian air space over war zones. From analysis of these discourses, the book identifies principles of post-2001 Western conflict propaganda as these appeared to play out in Ukraine. This book will be of much interest to students of propaganda, media and communication studies, Russian and Eastern European politics, security studies and IR.

The portrayal of Greece by the international press during the financial crisis has been seen by many independent observers as very harsh. The Greeks have often been blamed for a myriad of international political problems and external economic factors beyond their control. In this original and insightful work George Tzogopoulos examines international newspaper coverage of the unfolding economic crisis in Greece. American, British, French, German and Italian broadsheet and tabloid coverage is carefully analysed. The Greek Crisis in the Media debates and dissects the extent to which the Greek response to the financial crisis has been given fair and balanced coverage by the press and questions how far politics and national stereotypes have played their part in the reporting of events. By placing the Greek experiences and treatment alongside those of other EU members such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, Tzogopoulos examines and highlights similarities and differences in the ways in which different countries tackled the challenges they faced during this crucial period and explores how and why the world's media reported these events.

A leading Ukraine specialist and firsthand witness to the 2014 Kiev Uprising analyzes the world’s newest flashpoint The aftereffects of the February 2014 Uprising in Ukraine are still reverberating around the world. The consequences of the popular rebellion and Russian President Putin’s attempt to strangle it remain uncertain. In this book, Andrew Wilson combines a spellbinding, on-the-scene account of the Kiev Uprising with a deeply informed analysis of what precipitated the events, what has developed in subsequent months, and why the story is far from over. Wilson situates Ukraine’s February insurgence within Russia’s expansionist ambitions throughout the previous decade. He reveals how President Putin’s extravagant spending to develop soft power in all parts of Europe was aided by wishful thinking in the EU and American diplomatic inattention, and how Putin’s agenda continues to be widely misunderstood in the West. The author then examines events in the wake of the Uprising—the military coup in Crimea, the election of President Petro Poroshenko, the Malaysia Airlines tragedy, rising tensions among all of Russia's neighbors, both friend and foe, and more. Ukraine Crisis provides an important, accurate record of events that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014. It also rings a clear warning that the unresolved problems of the region have implications well beyond Ukrainian borders.

Written in the aftermath of World War I, this essay by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist remains relevant in its denunciation of media bias, particularly in terms of wartime propaganda.

This book offers unique insights into how news media today make disasters culturally meaningful and politically important, drawing on cutting-edge theoretical work and recent examples. It looks at how globalization is affecting the meanings of disaster but also considers the continued relevance of nations and their citizens as interpretive frameworks.

This book explains the place of oil in the economic and political predicaments that now confront the West. Thompson explains the problems that the rising cost of oil posed in the years leading up to the 2008 crash, and the difficulties that a volatile oil market now poses to economic recovery under the conditions of high debt, low growth and quantitative easing. The author argues that the 'Gordian knot' created by the economic and political dynamics of supply and demand oil in the present international economy poses a fundamental challenge to the assumption of economic progress embedded in Western democratic expectations.