| This thesis explores constructions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) within four North American newspapers: The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. The Court, which came into being on July 1st 2001, was established to end the climate of impunity for grave violations of international human rights. Virtually all forms of support, including monetary and jurisdiction, rely upon nation-state's voluntary ratification of the Rome Statute. Since studies have shown that one of society's primary sources of information is the news media; public perceptions based on newspaper constructions of the Court could potentially have an impact on state support and cooperation. Furthermore, social constructionism tells us that news stories manufactured by the media are socially constructed portrayals of events -- not a simple regurgitation of the facts, leaving room for bias, inaccuracy and misrepresentation. The main focus of the theory chapter is upon assertions made by Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model that "media serve the interests of that state ... framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate accordingly" (Herman & Chomsky, 1998, p.32). These propositions will be considered throughout the analysis, and have informed two of the three specific research questions. Thus, the current study employs a social constructionist perspective to analyze how the Court is represented, specifically (1) if the notion of impunity is present, and if so how; (2) is any kind of critical analysis present; and (3) if a connection between state support/opposition and favourable/negative portrayals of the Court exist. A thematic qualitative content analysis and several tools of grounded theory were utilized to deconstruct 1,982 articles collected from the aforementioned newspapers. The analysis was carried out using memoing and open and closed/focused coding in order to uncover emerging trends and patterns within the data. Overall, all four newspapers contained a surprising amount of insight into debates occurring within academic literature. Some of these conversations were quite limited and/or biased; specifically, American newspapers manipulated debates in an attempt to justify American opposition to the Court. That said, some authors provided well-researched perspectives on debates surrounding the Court's legitimacy, effectiveness, and peace versus justice. |
