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THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
develop the model that will be employed in a case study in the second
section of this book.
The CNN Effect and
Globalization
The media has always played an important role in modern interna-
tional politics, foreign policy, and war. One of the earliest cases of war
reporting involved William Howard of the London Times, who sent
stories from the Crimean War back to the United Kingdom. During
World Wars I and II, the media played a significant role in selling and
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maintaining support for the war effort in many countries. The CNN
effect, however, describes a more novel type of media role that is dif-
ferent in nature from the media’s traditional role because it is rapid in
its transmission, transcontinental in its reach, and qualitatively richer
than past media formats. These features distinguish the CNN effect
and make its political impact potentially more powerful. These char-
acteristics also seem to place the CNN effect within the larger
macrotrend of globalization—a term that came to prominence in the
1990s to describe a novel set of processes involving rapid connectivity
in human activity that eliminated or significantly reduced time and
space barriers and promoted a new global awareness.
The history of the CNN effect as an academic area of study, in
many ways, mimics that of globalization. Both concepts initially came
to prominence in the early 1990s, with roots dating back to the
1960s, through simplistic and overarching assertions. In the case of
globalization, the work of Kenichi Ohmae is often tied to what David
Held later termed the “hyperglobalization” camp. 46 With the CNN
effect, a number of thinkers in the early 1990s, including George
Kennan and James Hoge Jr., assumed a very powerful CNN effect. 47
As a result, both sets of assertions drew a skeptical backlash by the
mid-1990s and were labeled by critics as either myth or factors much
weaker than its enthusiasts suggested. During the early years of the
twenty-first century, however, both concepts reemerged in less ambi-
tious and more complex formats and claimed change only under
certain circumstances and contexts.
The CNN effect, in many ways, can be considered a manifestation
of globalization as it relies on recently formed transcontinental media
networks that facilitate a certain sense of global awareness. 48 Before
one can fully appreciate the CNN effect, it is necessary to take a step
back and account for the underlying parameters that led to the
formation of the transcontinental media networks from which it may