MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEDIA AND MARKETING GAMES OF THE OLIGARCHS
government, which refuses intervention. Opposite to this is a “distance
framing” as a supportive for the government to intervene. As already
mentioned, in the early 1990s in the times of Gulf War, a new era in media
coverage was started. And as given by various experts, CNN - as the very
irst 24/7 news broadcasting channels bringing the war into “living
rooms” - became one of the actors of international relations, while also
inspiring other broadcasting media such as BBC in covering the issue
as well. The media was from now able to report on events happening
anywhere in the world in real time.
Framing is followed by another issue, called agenda-setting. Therefore,
another critical parameter must be seen, in this context, in the role of
mass media (in this case a TV broadcasting media) to select the top
topics to show, to bring and thus to make them talking about. Naturally,
there are many events in the world every day and no media is able to
show them all. This “imperfection” gives the media another power, it is to
choose which topics will be discussed as concerned to be important. As
provided by McQuail, agenda-setting is one of the most important roles
of mass media. They follow various criteria considering attractiveness
of the topic or geographical distance of the “hot” place from their
recipients. 23
Recent developments in media should be seen in wider political context.
As given by Krejčí 24 , the second half of the past century meant a sharp
bipolar confrontation enhanced by development of telecommunications
leading to an interstate propaganda marked by growth of systemic
ideological confrontation mirrored in more targeted and complex
campaigns, realistic targets using knowledge from psychology, social
psychology and other related sciences. Due to the spread of media
inluence, propaganda was given typical features of a ight, i.e. strategy,
tactics and logistics. This is because the “moving information” makes the
recipient (i.e. an ordinary man sitting in his living room) directly pulled
into the action, situation, reality and is confronted with his own feelings. 25
Therefore we may claim that in Western liberal democracies based
on free use of information it is impossible to separate media from
23 McQUAIL, D.: McQuail´s Mass Communication Theory. London : Sage
Publications Ltd., 2005,
24 KREJČÍ, O.: Mezinárodní politika. Praha : Ekopress, 2010, p. 419.
25 THUSSU, D. K., FREEDMAN, D. (eds.): War and the Media. Reporting Conlict
24/7, London : Sage Publications, 2003, p. 118.
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