Handley, Robert L. “Systematic Monitoring as a Dissident Activist Strategy: Palestine Media Watch and U.S. News Media, 2000–2004.” Communication, Culture & Critique 4.3 (2011): 209-28.
URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-9137.2011.01101.x/abstract
Abstract
When news organizations began covering the Intifada in 2000, activists formed a media-monitoring group called Palestine Media Watch to lobby journalists to interpret the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within an international law framework. Activists minimized their dissidence in relation to journalism, systematically monitoring coverage over a period of several months, and meeting face-to-face with newsworkers. Drawing upon archives and interviews, I demonstrate that dissident media-monitoring groups play a small, but meaningful role in the newsmaking process. Dissidents can produce changes because they can formulate criticisms that newsworkers define as “journalistically useful.” I define these criticisms to show how the definition facilitates and limits what can be accomplished via systematic monitoring, and suggest alternative dissident media strategies.
