The United States maintains a worldwide network of military bases and spends more on military expenses than the rest of the world combined. This project seeks to analyze how the U.S. mainstream media cover and discuss the American Empire both broadly and specifically. I conducted a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative textual analysis of the Media coverage of the 2009 U.S. Colombian military base agreement, which was protested by Latin American leaders. I analyzed the coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN.com, and The Miami Herald regarding the US militarys use of bases in Colombia in 2009. I used the alternative news sources Democracy Now! and Venezuela Analysis to compare to the mainstream outlets coverage and search for alternative arguments and omitted information. The White House frame emerged as the dominant frame due to its repetition across multiple sources from the U.S. and Colombian governments, as well as the U.S. media. With the near absolute exclusion of opposing domestic voices from the United States and Colombia, the base opposition frame was seriously disadvantaged. The coverage focused extensively on Hugo Chavez as the primary objector to the base agreement and the framing of the coverage largely undermined his arguments. Critical and dissident voices and perspectives did not appear in the U.S. mainstream media coverage sampled here. The story told by the U.S. media reflected the explanations for the base agreement through the lens of policy makers. This project demonstrated that while traditionally analyzing the content that appears in the U.S. media proved useful, the greater discoveries came from the less researched area of information omitted from the coverage.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04272011-111335 |
| Date | 27 April 2011 |
| Creators | Christensen, Britt Don |
| Contributors | Lawrence, Regina, Dunaway, Johanna, Goidel, Kirby |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04272011-111335/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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