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THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
Access to Zone of
Conflict/Suffering
Unexpected and
Media
Criteria
Emotive Images
Challenging Framing
Policy Change
Government
Criteria
Comments Linking
Change to Media
Graph 2.2 The Challenging CNN Effect Model
opportunities emerge within a competitive policymaking framework
in which different subsystems and agents struggle to promote differ-
ent policy outcomes. Policymaking, as such, is not a unitary or neces-
sarily rational affair, but subject to bargaining and negotiation
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amongst competing interests within the government. In the context
of a third-party military intervention, when unexpected and emotive
media images and framing of events that challenge official policy
emerge, agents within the government decision-making apparatus in
favor of an interventionist policy gain leverage over those opposed. In
most cases, such leverage gains weaken the hand of those subsystems
and agents that support the official policy of nonintervention, and
repeated episodes of challenging, unexpected, and emotive images, as
mentioned, can have an accumulating effect, deteriorating the
defenders of the official policy to the point of making their position
untenable.
Second, the nature of the CNN effect, as outlined here, can more
accurately be described as one of influence on policy rather than dictate.
This is because the media, or any other single factor, can almost never
fully account for a policy shift, given the complexities and multiple
variables that influence policy. In addition, in conducting this study,
the goal is not to prove a CNN effect, but merely to collect cor-
roborating evidence from multiple methods in order to structure a
convincing argument for one. 76 The CNN effect model presented
here will serve as a tool in this regard.