Global Views
Portraits of an Insurrection: Global Media Perspectives on World Opinion Regarding the January 6, 2021 United States Uprising View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Roberta Fiske Rusciano, Frank Louis Rusciano, Lauren Harvey
This paper studies global media perspectives on world opinion on the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D. C. It proceeds by collecting and analyzing news stories and editorials containing references to world opinion in international newspapers of record on the event using a pre-designed questionnaire. References included such explicit phrases as “world opinion”, “international opinion”, “global public opinion”, and other assorted synonyms; implicit phrases were more common and included cases where an opinion or action was attributed to the world. Past studies (Rusciano and Fiske-Rusciano, 1990; Rusciano, Fiske-Rusciano, and Wang, 1997; Rusciano 1997; and Rusciano, 2002) have suggested that while national origin does not determine a newspaper’s discourse, it provides clues to how certain issues are discussed and framed. This approach allows one to study how use of the concept of “world opinion” varies with nation, region, and historical context. Further, it deconstructs how world opinion as a concept conveys power in different media outlets. This study examines perceptions of world opinion on whether the insurrection threatened U. S. democracy, isolated the nation in the world, or affected the country’s international image. It concludes by analyzing how international news outlets’ constructions of world opinion affected the United States’ reputation and capacity for using “soft power” in global affairs.
The Roots of International Community: World Opinion and the Threat of International Isolation View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Frank Louis Rusciano
This paper first surveys the failures of international law and such approaches as realism, liberal internationalism, and the English school to create a suitable model for international community. I note that global institutions, regardless of how democratic we perceive them to be, do not create global communities; global communities create global institutions. Similarly, international law does not define international community; laws do not make communities, communities make laws. Otherwise, would have no boundaries, especially on the global level. The next part explores the nature of national identities and their link to world opinion and a nation's international image. Even its most ardent defenders admit that a vague sense of group identity exists in the international community. A prerequisite for the existence of an international community is the threat of global isolation, as community is defined, in part, by those excluded from it. Often, nations collectively practice isolation through indirect, or “soft”, sanctions including criticizing the image of the targeted nation, questioning the nation’s reputation, and other more abstract strategies. I conclude that the potential for such isolation provides boundaries for an international community, as shown by the United States's experience recently.
Body and Belonging : The Role of Martial Culture in North Caucasian Allegiance and Identity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alika Zangieva
How should one make sense of the anti-Russian origins of Islamic governance in the North Caucasus, as Chechen troops in Ukraine profess their praise for Vladimir Putin amid shouts of “Allahu akbar”? To examine renegotiated notions of citizenship, belonging, and loyalty in the North Caucasus, this paper traces the continued reverence of masculine aesthetics in political legitimacy from the Three Imāms of the "murīd movement" (Ghāzi Muhammad, Hamzat Bek, and Shāmil) to the Head of Chechnya today, Ramzan Kadyrov. This paper relies on social media discourse analysis of MMA, UFC, wrestling, and boxing channels and employ field interviews with North Caucasian immigrant athletes in the United States to explore how North Caucasian autochthonous values of physical prowess and masculinity are used to renegotiate communal understandings of allegiance, gender, body, and violence. Today, the UFC is the last Western institution to maintain cultural links to the Russian “homeland” of the North Caucasian diaspora and is a crucial means of economic survival for immigrant athletes and their families. To understand the importance of martial culture among this migrant community is to uncover the subversive and unifying potential of the body as it relates to governance, spirituality, and ethnic identity in the current era of globalization.
