ABSTRACT
Debates during the 1990s over the CNN effect have been closely associated with its role in instigating humanitarian responses. While many claimed that interventions during humanitarian crises were being influenced by media reporting of suffering people, early research indicated that influence was more conditional and dependent upon factors such as policy uncertainty and the political risks and costs associated with the intervention. Scholars have also pointed out that media influenced humanitarianism has frequently been superficial and not always positive. Since 9/11, the emergence of the “war on terror” has seen humanitarianism exploited in order to justify invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the co-optation of humanitarian organizations as part of winning “hearts and minds.” Even though new communication technologies appear to offer the potential for more effective humanitarian responses, the overall space for genuine humanitarian action would appear to have shrunk by the use of it for manipulative organized persuasive communication (propaganda) purposes in the context of the “war on terror” and the aggressive pursuit of perceived Western interests.
