Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The paper analyses Swedish, Danish and British news about Europe from the perspective that television news narratives are sites where collective (i.e. national and international) identities are cultivated and mobilised through the contrast between ‘we’ and ‘others’. The issue is not if European stories are domesticated to fit national news bulletins, but how events are domesticated, and what meanings are made from these by the programmes’ producers. The results indicate that viewers are offered different images of Europe during the week 15-21 November 1999, and that the journalists play active roles in constructing ‘themes’ which link together different types of news stories about Europe into stories about ‘us’. The Swedish ‘we’ was characterised as a moralising global villager, slightly superior but willing to adapt to the outside world, the Danish ‘We’ appeared as an anxious and conscientious European, trying to do its share, despite its reservations on EU cooperation. The British ‘We’ was characterised as the engaged international humanitarian who prefers to keep a distance from time-consuming Euro-squabbles.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Central to fiscal federalism is the idea that matching grants stimulate local spending more than lump-sum subsidies. The paper questions the conventional wisdom with empirical evidence from a change of grant regime in Danish local governments.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Those concerned with the geography of crime have long noted that the
buffer zones (areas of non-offending surrounding offender residences) and
median trip distances are smaller for journeys made in connection with
violent as compared to property crimes. Yet buffer zones and trip
distances are generally treated as uniform phenomena when considered
within crime types. This is misleading. The current study examines 3,238
trips by convicted Danish burglars at six types of residential property.
The results suggest that the standard findings concerning buffer zones and
crime trip distances are largely driven by data from burglaries at
one-family houses. Crime trips to apartment dwellings exhibit no buffer
zones whatsoever and limited trip distance (both attributable to rich
target backcloth), while trips to farm houses and country houses exhibit
extensive buffer zones and extended trip distances (attributable to both
limited target backcloth and, in the latter case, methodological biases
introduced by vacationing burglars). This study is unique in terms of
overall data quality and property-specific sample sizes. While the results
are not particularly startling in hindsight, they indicate a need for
caution in connection with the reification of notions like "buffer zone"
and "average trip distance."

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper sees globalization as the emergence of multiple logics of production, flow and audience reception, based on identity. They are very unequal or asymmetric in their reach and power, but they are also dynamic, changing along with both structural and cultural forces, as an examination of the viewing and broadcast time for television from various countries in Denmark, 1993-2007, shows. As channels have multiplied over time, the proportion of Danish content has gone down, but viewing of Danish content remains high. U.S. content has increased but viewing of it has not. Both screening and viewing of other Anglophone content has gone up considerably, while screening and viewing of Nordic and European content remains low. So while Danish viewers focus in viewing (and arguably in identity) is still on Danish culture, their secondary interest (and identity?) has become more Anglophone, not Nordic or European, from 1993-2007. This study reviews language impact studies and other cultural theories to consider reasons for that.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: There is little clarity regarding which factors regulate states’ choice of where and how to participate in interventions, led or authorised by the UN. This poster, which is an extract from a book, focuses on media impact on such decisions. The underlying assumption of media impact on such foreign policy is that domestic public opinion can set the decision-making agenda, for example in reaction to humanitarian disaster or deteriorating human rights conditions, or in response to national policy failure.

A specific model of the CNN effect is elaborated, and applied to decision processes in Denmark and Sweden regarding participation in all UN-interventions into intra-state conflicts in the 1990s. Moreover, I examine, whether media are used to manufacture consent for government foreign policy, subsequent to such decisions.

Two methods are combined in the empirical investigation: First, 10.000 news items from TV and newspaper coverage of the 16 conflicts in each of the two states are content analysed in order to establish whether national media are able to take on an influential role. Second, key foreign- and defence policy decision-makers are interviewed, and asked to rate the importance of media and public opinion, along with other factors, which are assumed to be influential.

Results show that media do not play a role in state decisions on whether or not to participate in UN operations. Also, media are not used for manufacturing consent for government decisions, but do, to a certain degree, index themselves to the prevailing government foreign policy. This challenges much of the existing literature on media impact on democratic foreign policy, which is primarily Anglo-American.

The results indicate that the CNN effect is best understood as a complex concept, which is strongly influenced by a range of other factors. Hence, the conditions under which media can push states into interventions, or pull them out of running operations are highly context specific, and media influence on states’ decisions to participate in UN-interventions should be regarded as limited.

By discussing the CNN effect in wider terms than has been done before, and undertaking extensive empirical investigation of hypotheses regarding media’s relations to foreign policy, the overall aim of the study is generalisation about these relations. The book combines a comparative design, with both traditional quantitative methods and qualitative methods. Moreover, by challenging the notion of media effects on foreign policy, specifically in relation to (humanitarian) intervention, the book constitutes a forceful contribution to research on intervention and conflict resolution.