Researching death in international news: a critique of past approaches

Following the end of the Cold War, the world appears to have splintered into smaller, regional alliances and other political, religious and cultural divisions and conflicts. Yet at the same time the world is becoming increasingly smaller due to rapid technological advances in the past few decades, making it imperative for the mass media to foster in their audiences an understanding of other cultures and work in the face of ethnocentric attitudes and stereotypes. One way of examining whether the media is meeting this challenge is to investigate what value the mass media place on human lives in an international context, by way of examining the coverage of death in international news. As part of a larger study, this paper presents and critiques past studies in this field and identifies their shortcomings. Most of the past studies on death in international news have shown a relatively narrow perspective, concentrating on quantitative analysis and presenting political, economic and sociological models. In light of these shortcomings, this paper will argue for the need for a more holistic, inter-disciplinary framework for analysing how death is covered in international news reporting, taking the approach in this area of international communication to a higher level of analysis