Comparing international coverage of 9/11: Towards an interdisciplinary explanation of the construction of news

Abstract

This article presents an interdisciplinary model attempting to explain how news is constructed, by relying on the contributions of different fields of study: News Sociology, Political Communication, International Communications, and International Relations. It is a first step towards developing a holistic theoretical approach to what shapes the news that bridges current micro to macro approaches. More precisely, the model explains news variation across different media organizations and countries by focusing on the different ways the sense of newsworthiness of journalists is affected by three main variables: national interest, national journalistic culture, and the editorial policy of each media organization. The model is developed on the basis of an investigation into what shaped the media coverage of 9/11 in eight elite newspapers across the USA, France, Italy and Pakistan.