Xu Zhang

This study analyzed news stories published on the online sites of CNN, Al-Jazeera English, and Sputnik to investigate how the transnational news outlets framed the human suffering associated with the Syrian war. Unlike prior studies that have tended to be based on traditional nation-state paradigms, this research approached the analysis from a cosmopolitan perspective. The findings revealed that in concert with standard journalistic routines and news values, all three news outlets commonly employed a mass death and displacement frame to depict human suffering inside Syria. The adoption of this frame suggests that in telling the story of human suffering, the three media outlets focused on brief facts and shocking statistics without detailed depictions of the human suffering. The meager presence of a cosmopolitan outlook in the news coverage indicates that although transnational media target a global audience with English as Lingua Franca, they cannot be completely independent of geopolitics.

Building on previous research that has theorized and operationalized the concept of global journalism, this study analyzed 287 photographs published on CNN International and Der Spiegel online news sites to examine the evidence of global journalism practices in visual news content. The results of the quantitative content analysis revealed that the transnational news outlet CNN International more frequently used close-ups and tracking shots to feature refugees in its visual reportage than the German news magazine Der Spiegel. The large presence of the 'human interest' and the 'lose/gain' frames in CNN International's visual coverage emphasized the humanitarian aspect of global suffering. In contrast, apart from the 'human interest' frame, the 'law and control' and 'xenophobia' frames were adopted in Der Spiegel's visual coverage. Using such a comparison, this study discussed if news sources' capacity of managing the visibility of suffering could reflect a cosmopolitan viewpoint on a global issue.

This study examines elements of what has been defined as global journalism and compares online news stories of Al Jazeera English and CNN regarding the ISIS threat. The empirical inquiry presents the similarities and differences in transnational news outlets' coverage of a global crisis. The results of a quantitative content analysis (N = 320) suggest that different transnational news outlets share some features in their news coverage of a global challenge but still differ significantly. CNN mostly cites governmental official sources, whereas Al Jazeera English relies more on information from other news media. In addition, CNN mainly adopts a geopolitics frame focusing on the strategies of dealing with ISIS, whereas Al Jazeera English uses the dominant frame of existential threat. Results further indicate that elements of global journalism do not go beyond human rights issues.