ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the process of communication by looking at how global politics is shaped, constructed, represented and disseminated by mass media institutions and interpreted by mass audiences. It looks at what happens to information as it moves through the media. Some form of media is necessary in any form of communication. More importantly, categorising the media as a neutral vehicle for information delivery assumes that journalists and media producers have direct access to some clear, unmediated truth that they can faithfully record and transmit to audiences. In the UK, the media are understood as the ‘Fourth Estate’; that is, the news media pride themselves on their independence from power, and their ability to advocate public interest by acting as a watchdog on the government. Traditional media organisations were resistant to these ‘amateurs’ encroaching on their territory, accusing them of being poorly trained, unethical and explicitly biased.
