ABSTRACT
Past research suggests that news coverage of human rights is shaped primarily by interactions between journalists, political elites, and leading NGOs. To what degree do contemporary transformations in media, politics, and civil society alter this established wisdom? In this article, I sketch out the possibility that we are witnessing a new era of human rights news, characterized by the expansion of information producers and social contexts to which human rights frames are ascribed. In this era, leading NGOs and news organizations must increasingly interact with individual activists and others on the selection, framing, and dissemination of human rights news. These developments may remedy some of the weaknesses identified in previous research on human rights news, even as they create new concerns about the veracity and pluralistic nature of human rights news content. I suggest ways to study this new era so as to integrate findings with past research.
