Censored 2012 (62 page)

Thirdly, there is an emerging subfield of research on the structure-versus-agency question in nonviolent action, but the brief answer to this misconception is that, given the universe of successful stories of nonviolent action, there are no structural conditions that are clearly prohibitive of nonviolent success, and conversely, there are no structural conditions that guarantee it. Rather, the success or failure of a nonviolent movement seems to be much more dependent on the strategic skills and discipline of the movement itself. The recent cases of Egypt, Tunisia, and others that make up the “Arab Spring” are excellent examples of this.
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The fourth misconception is related to the previous one. At the beginning of every successful struggle of the last century, there was someone ready to say “it cannot happen here—our oppressors are simply too brutal.” In fact, pragmatic activists understand that desperate opponents will rely on brute force to try and quash a growing movement and that this is inherent in the risks a movement
accepts when it launches a struggle against an oppressor. But repressive regimes have one important thing in common, which can be used by movements against their opponents: Violence, as an instrument of control, has a very simple and predictable dynamic. And clever movements will find strategies and tactics that maximize their potential to use this repression to the advantage of the movement—something Gene Sharp has named “political jujitsu.”

Indeed, when asked about the effects of violence and repression on the Iranian movement, Nobel Laureate and human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi said, “I never agree with the idea that repression can lead to the death of a movement. If the foundations of a movement are laid correctly from the start, repression is not able to kill it. In fact, it makes it stronger. Just imagine the water flow through a pipe. When you open the faucet, the water flows out. What if you tried very hard with an external force to prevent the water flowing out? You might hold it back for ten minutes, but then the pipe explodes. That’s precisely the effect of repression on movement. If the repression is extreme, the movement will break and shatter everything.”
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Lastly, there is a common belief that in order to succeed, a movement needs a charismatic leader; its own Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not only wrong, but possibly backwards. Many (in fact, most) nonviolent movements of the past century have succeeded without one central personality at the helm. In fact, having one charismatic leader can work against the movement in a couple of ways: The vesting of so much authority in one person can be devastating to the organization and the morale of its constituents if that individual is jailed or, worse, killed by the regime. And correspondingly, there is a danger of the movement coming to identify with the persona rather than the larger unifying principles. While it is critical that a successful, strategic movement have good leadership, it does not need to take the form of one central persona.

The reader may recall an image from the fall of 2007 from Burma that became symbolic of the conflict in that country. It shows about a dozen Burmese monks squatting together on the streets of Rangoon, facing half a dozen members of the Burmese army who are holding riot gear
and weapons. Frames and metaframes shape the assumptions you make about who is confronting whom, whether you interpret the monks as victims or empowered action-takers, and if you see hope or demoralization, and violence or nonviolence, in the image.

In looking at the photo, most observers make their conclusions in the blink of an eye. Media audiences have, over time, been exposed to many subconscious messages—frames and metaframes—about how to understand nonviolent struggle. Frames tend to reinforce or harden our beliefs in such a way that it is actually easier to force reality to conform to predetermined conclusions than to shift our understanding. This explains why media audiences cannot make sense of the ongoing resistance in Iran and elsewhere, other than to assign credit to external forces (such as the United States) or to explain it away as accidental or insignificant.

Because media are often obsessed with violence, the context and significance underlying the series of events like the ones that took place in Burma in 2007 and Iran in 2009 tend to be misinterpreted through that lens. An erroneous frame can lead us to believe things that are inaccurate, even when our hearts are “in the right place.” And sometimes these conclusions have the consequence of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, when Iranian prodemocracy activists caught a glimpse of a CNN headline that read “Ahmadinejad Victorious!” they may have concluded that the regime’s narrative had prevailed. This may in turn have demoralized the movement, and in the worst-case scenario, could even have caused some activists to turn to violence to fight back.

Although media frames are sometimes consciously manufactured, conventional wisdom suggests that the major culprit is the inability or unwillingness of reporters to engage in serious on-the-ground investigative reporting. For example, when in doubt, media tend to default to the perspective of the officials, no matter what their track records. This can be extraordinarily frustrating for members of a nonviolent struggle, who find themselves in the midst of an uprising having to try to unspin erroneous media coverage coming from all directions.

The following are several specific media techniques that help reporters and editors frame their stories in ways that reinforce existing assumptions mentioned above.

The work of W. Lance Bennett is instructive here. Bennett has named the fragmentation bias as the phenomenon that involves covering a story in isolated, seemingly unrelated pieces. At its worst, a story is completely removed from its larger historical or political context. The stories focus on the trees rather than the forest, and as a result, key information is missed. Consider some of the terminology used to describe events from Iran in June 2009: On June 14, 2009, a BBC headline announced, “Crowds join Ahmadinejad’s victory rally.” Another from CNN on June 21, 2009, tells us that “Chaos Prevails as Protestors, Police Clash in Iranian Capital” and similarly, on June 13, 2009, ABC proclaimed that “Election Battles Turn into Street Fights in Iran.” Terms like “crowds,” “chaos,” and “street fights” paint a picture of a country in anarchy and awash in violence. There is a much larger story being missed when news is fragmented. In the case of Iran, it is that people continue (to this day, in fact) to resist with discipline and strategy, despite the personal risk and violence by the regime.

Stories about nonviolent struggle also tend to be framed by what Bennett has named the dramatization bias. According to Bennett, dramatization of a story occurs when the news is encapsulated in short, sensationalistic bits intended to provoke an emotional response on the part of the news consumer. There is little to no discussion of the deeper policy issues, institutional interplay, or larger social setting related to the story. Dramatized stories might appropriately be thought of as a type of marketing, in which media is selling a product to its audience. Not surprisingly, dramatization thrives on confusion and skepticism, and thus tends to produce cynical conclusions. It is also no surprise that fragmented stories tend to be dramatized stories and vice versa. In the context of the Iranian Green Revolution, a
dramatization bias would refer to the events as a “spontaneous mass revolt” suggesting that it is disorganized, undisciplined, and ad hoc. This in turn could create the perception in the global media audience that there is no movement with whom to demonstrate solidarity.

Other examples of dramatization, from Burma’s Saffron Revolution, include a BBC story from September 24, 2007 which proclaimed that “Burmese military threatens monks” and a London
Telegraph
story on September 27, 2007, which reported that “Burma troops issue ‘extreme action’ ultimatum.” The emphasis on the sensational in these stories is not an absolute break with the truth, and thus it gives editors and reporters plausible deniability. But the heavy emphasis on drama that is perceived as more exciting leaves less room for other, possibly more important parts of the story, namely the ways in which monks and citizens responded with nonviolent, but still powerful, forms of resistance to the threats by the junta.

With the euphemism bias, careful (or reckless) selection of language produces a shift in emphasis and a distortion in meaning. Occasionally, meaning is actually turned upside down. For example, in a nonviolent struggle an oppressor’s use of violence is referred to as a “show of strength.” The work of Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (formerly of PR Watch) examines this phenomenon extensively.

The use of euphemism has historically played a deciding role in the way civil resistance is covered by media, especially when the events take place in a non-Western country. The terminology used to describe the images of thousands of people on the streets often wrongly connotes improvised and anarchic action, hidden agendas, and backroom deals. A common caption for photos from the massive demonstrations in Tehran during the height of the uprising in 2009 would often say simply, “Huge Crowds in Iran,” a statement that, while technically not inaccurate, was woefully incomplete. A “crowd” can refer to any large group of people congregated together for no specific reason, so use of the term unconsciously implies that what brought the people together is not the result of strategy, organization, or discipline. Another example comes from Burma in mid-October of
2007, when the
Guardian
announced that “One month on, Burmese regime stages show of strength.” The text that followed the headline went on to describe how the regime, fearing a resurgence of mass nonviolent prodemocracy protests, rolled tanks into the streets. A more accurate frame on that story would remind us that such shows of force are used only when a regime feels threatened—that is, when it perceives itself in a position of relative weakness. It would say something like “One month on, Burmese regime shows fear.” Yet the actual frame turned this revelation of weakness into a “show of strength,” ultimately defaulting to the perspective of the junta through the use of one strongly loaded word.

Lastly, where information is hard to obtain or has a sense of immediacy, media tend to default to the perspective of the official authority, no matter how ridiculous. An example from Iran is when the BBC announced on June 15, 2009, that “Iran’s supreme leader [has] order[ed] investigations into claims of vote fraud.” Or the example from Reuters on September 25, 2007, when they reported that “Myanmar junta sets curfew.”
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In both cases, there is an undeniable defaulting to the government authority as being responsible for contextualizing the crisis at hand. But how seriously should media audiences take the IRI’s promise to investigate itself? Is it the Burmese people or the junta whose actions more appropriately call for a curfew? The use of the authority bias lends credibility to the oppressors’ narratives, whether that result was intentional or not.

Beyond the story-specific frames and biases, we can observe a number of deeper metaframes that emerge from the patterns in media coverage of stories about nonviolent struggle. These metaframes can be thought of as widely shared assumptions that shape the lenses through which we draw conclusions and attribute meaning and significance. For our purposes, the most relevant metaframes are: