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Informing Science + IT Education Conference 2003 Proceedings
| Informing Science + IT Education Conference |
| Pori, Finland June 24-27, 2003 |
| Bush, the Media & the New American Way |
| University of Arkansas, USA |
| The run-up to a full-scale U.S. military attack on Iraq – “shock and awe” -- provided an unusual and ideal test the |
| effectiveness of a parsimonious content analysis methodology designed to determine when a national leader made |
| or would make a decision to go to war. As W. Ben Hunt’s work that is the model for this study anticipated, |
| editorials in The Wall Street Journal clearly ramped up war fever with not only the number of “get to it, George” |
| editorials but also with the language. Critical editorials ad-vised/urged/demanded Bush to get on with the second |
| phase of the long-planned remaking of the Middle East -- taking out Saddam Hussein. The paper links several |
| aspects of post-Cold War, postmodern American life -- low levels of knowledge, use of poll data throughout |
| society, declining news consump-tion and others -- to paint a picture of a newly vulnerable society, one willing – |
| polls would indicate – to listen to and follow clear, perhaps simplistic, policies even to the point of a pre-emptive |
| strike on a small nation that many could not locate on a map. |
| Keywords: The Wall Street Journal, Newspapers, Media, public opinion, war, W. Ben Hunt, Iraq, Presi-dent George |
ISSN
1535-07-03
Unless otherwise indicated, this paper has undergone blind external review by three or more reviewers.
Types of Papers: A Best Paper, Regular Paper, Short Paper, Informal Paper,
Unrefereed Panel Paper
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