Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-02T04:00:57.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How International Organizations Change National Media Coverage of Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2022

Stephen Chaudoin Open the ORCID record for Stephen Chaudoin [Opens in a new window]
Stephen Chaudoin*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

How do international organizations change the discussion of human rights violations, and how does their message reach the broader public? I show that national media is a key conduit. I analyze media coverage from the Philippines to show that the content of media coverage of the “war on drugs” changed after a major decision by the International Criminal Court. The ICC increased the proportion of media coverage focusing on human rights by triggering contestation between pro- and anti-human-rights actors. Original survey experimental evidence shows that this coverage shift blunts the effect of ICC actions on support for the war on drugs. This highlights an indirect role for international organizations in shaping media coverage and helps explain why they have struggled to win public opinion battles. Though their actions amplify the voices of human rights supporters, media coverage concurrently amplifies the voices of their opponents, which can crowd out coverage that might otherwise have decreased support for problematic polices.

Keywords

International Criminal CourtPhilippineshuman rightsmedia
Type
Research Note
Information
International Organization , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Winter 2023 , pp. 238 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The IO Foundation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amnesty International. 2017. “If You Are Poor, You Are Killed”: Extrajudicial Executions in the Philippines’ “War on Drugs.” <https://www.amnestyusa.org/files/philippines_ejk_report_v19_final_0.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Ayoub, Phillip M. 2014. With Arms Wide Shut: Threat Perception, Norm Reception, and Mobilized Resistance to LGBT Rights. Journal of Human Rights 13 (3):337–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bail, Christopher A. 2012. The Fringe Effect: Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse About Islam Since the September 11th Attacks. American Sociological Review 77 (6):855–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Matthew A., and Potter, Philip B.K.. 2008. The Relationships Between Mass Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis. Annual Review of Political Science 11:39–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Alan. 2016. Norm Antipreneurs and Theorising Resistance to Normative Change. Review of International Studies 42 (2):310–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bob, Clifford. 2012. The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brutger, Ryan, and Strezhnev, Anton. 2017. International Disputes, Media Coverage, and Backlash Against International Law. Working paper, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Brutger, Ryan, and Strezhnev, Anton. 2022. International Investment Disputes, Media Coverage, and Backlash Against International Law. Journal of Conflict Resolution 66 (6):983–1009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaudoin, Stephen. 2014. Audience Features and the Strategic Timing of Trade Disputes. International Organization 68 (4):877–911.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaudoin, Stephen. 2016. How Contestation Moderates the Effect of International Institutions: The International Criminal Court and Kenya. Journal of Politics 78 (2):557–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Adam, and Linos, Katerina. 2021. Preferences and Compliance with International Law. Theoretical Inquiries in Law 22 (2):247–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Phil. 2018. Distant Justice: The Impact of the International Criminal Court on African Politics. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creamer, Cosette D., and Simmons, Beth A.. 2019. Do Self-Reporting Regimes Matter? Evidence from the Convention Against Torture. International Studies Quarterly 63 (4):1051–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dai, Xinyuan. 2005. Why Comply? The Domestic Constituency Mechanism. International Organization 59 (2):363–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dancy, Geoffrey Thomas. 2021. The Hidden Impacts of the ICC: An Innovative Assessment Using Google Data. Leiden Journal of International Law 34 (3):729–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dancy, Geoff, and Montal, Florencia. 2017. Unintended Positive Complementarity: Why International Criminal Court Investigations May Increase Domestic Human Rights Prosecutions. American Journal of International Law 111 (3):689–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Vries, Catherine E., Hobolt, Sara B., and Walter, Stefanie. 2021. Politicizing International Cooperation: The Mass Public, Political Entrepreneurs, and Political Opportunity Structures. International Organization 75 (2):306–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deitelhoff, Nicole, and Zimmermann, Lisbeth. 2019. Norms Under Challenge: Unpacking the Dynamics of Norm Robustness. Journal of Global Security Studies 4 (1):2–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutton, Yvonne M. 2017. Bridging the Legitimacy Divide: The International Criminal Court's Domestic Perception Challenge. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 56:71.Google Scholar
Dutton, Yvonne, Dancy, Geoff, Aloyo, Eamon, and Alleblas, Tessa. 2017. Collective Identity, Memories of Violence, and Belief in a Biased International Criminal Court: Evidence from Kenya. Working paper, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Entman, Robert M. 2007. Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power. Journal of Communication 57 (1):163–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinstein, Jessica. 2009. The Hybrid's Handmaiden: Media Coverage of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Loyola University Chicago International Law Review 7:131.Google Scholar
Hillebrecht, Courtney. 2021. Saving the International Justice Regime. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Independent Expert Review of the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute System Final Report. 2020. <https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/ASP19/IER-Final-Report-ENG.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Jo, Hyeran, and Simmons, Beth. 2016. Can the International Criminal Court Deter Atrocity? International Organization 70 (3):443–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keck, Margaret E., and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Linos, Katerina, and Twist, Kimberly. 2016. The Supreme Court, the Media, and Public Opinion: Comparing Experimental and Observational Methods. Journal of Legal Studies 45 (2):223–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lugano, Geoffrey. 2017. Counter-Shaming the International Criminal Court's Intervention as Neocolonial: Lessons from Kenya. International Journal of Transitional Justice 11 (1):9–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKeown, Ryder. 2009. Norm Regress: US Revisionism and the Slow Death of the Torture Norm. International Relations 23 (1):5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morse, Julia, and Pratt, Tyler. 2022. Strategies of Contestation: International Law, Domestic Audiences, and Image Management. Journal of Politics. <https://doi.org/10.1086/719418>.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murdie, Amanda M., and Davis, David R.. 2012. Shaming and Blaming: Using Events Data to Assess the Impact of Human Rights INGOs. International Studies Quarterly 56 (1):1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nouwen, Sarah M. 2013. Complementarity in the Line of Fire. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravanilla, Nico, Sexton, Renard, and Haim, Dotan. 2022. Deadly Populism: How Local Political Outsiders Drive Duterte's War on Drugs in the Philippines. Journal of Politics 84 (2):1035–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Margaret E., Brandon, M. Stewart, Dustin, Tingley, and Edoardo, M. Airold. 2013. The Structural Topic Model and Applied Social Science. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems Workshop on Topic Models: Computation, Application, and Evaluation, vol. 4, 1–20.Google Scholar
Robinson, Darryl. 2015. Inescapable Dyads: Why the International Criminal Court Cannot Win. Leiden Journal of International Law 28:323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, Beth A. 2009. Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, Jack. 2020. Backlash Against Human Rights Shaming: Emotions in Groups. International Theory 12 (1):109–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soroka, Stuart N. 2003. Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 8 (1):27–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terman, Rochelle. 2019. Rewarding Resistance: Theorizing Defiance to International Shaming. Working paper, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Vilan, Andrea. 2018. The Domestic Incorporation of Human Rights Treaties. PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer, and Van Belle, Douglas A.. 2017. The Correlates of Media Freedom: An Introduction of the Global Media Freedom Dataset. Political Science Research and Methods 5 (1):179–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, Antje. 2004. Contested Compliance: Interventions on the Normative Structure of World Politics. European Journal of International Relations 10 (2):189–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zvobgo, Kelebogile. 2019. Human Rights Versus National Interests: Shifting US Public Attitudes on the International Criminal Court. International Studies Quarterly 63 (4):1065–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zvobgo, Kelebogile, and Chaudoin, Stephen. 2021. Complementarity and Public Views on Overlapping Domestic and International Courts. Working paper, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Chaudoin Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HC97ST
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Chaudoin supplementary material

Appendix

Download Chaudoin supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 793.9 KB