The symbolic power of transnational media

Abstract

This article explores systematic patterns in the visibility of suffering in satellite news, from the footage of 11 September 2001 to citizen-generated content from the 2007 anti-government demonstrations in Myanmar (Burma), so as to illustrate the role of transnational media as agents of symbolic power. It argues that the symbolic power of transnational broadcasting consists primarily in its capacity to manage the visibility of suffering so as to reproduce the moral deficiencies of global inequality. However, under certain conditions, technological as well as symbolic, satellite news stories might be able to produce a sense of moral agency that transcends geographical and cultural boundaries, thereby constituting cosmopolitan communities of emotion and action.