News Coverage of 9/11 and the Demise of the Media Flows, Globalization and Localization Hypotheses

Abstract

An international comparative study of the elite press framing of 9/11 in the US, Italy, France and Pakistan reveals that there is little empirical backing for the claims of three core strands of research about news exchanges within the field of international communications. The findings of the empirical investigation neither support the existence of international news flows, nor the idea that news is becoming homogenized on a global scale. The analysis does not suggest a localization of news at a national level either. News coverage, instead, appears to be markedly different at the level of the single newspaper and this can be explained through different variables than the international macro-processes addressed by news studies within the field. The analysis fundamentally suggests that, if research within international communications wants to explain news in the information age, it needs to broaden its horizons and to adopt a multidisciplinary perspective that includes both the analysis of national political processes and a deeper understanding of the dynamics of news production in each single media organization.