Disentangling media effects: The impact of short-term and long-term news coverage on Belgian emergency assistance
| Author | Jeroen Joly |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836716640829 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Cooperation and Conflict
2016, Vol. 51(4) 428 –446
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836716640829
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Disentangling media effects:
The impact of short-term and
long-term news coverage on
Belgian emergency assistance
Jeroen Joly
Abstract
Whether and how media are able to influence policy and the political decision-making process is
still the topic of much debate. However, if news media are indeed able to influence policy, they
are commonly believed to do so indirectly through their agenda-setting function – by getting
issues onto the political agenda after sudden peaks of attention. Yet, despite the assertion
of agenda-setting theory that policy changes occur mainly through steady advocacy of policy
alternatives, little attention has been paid to the long-term effects of media exposure. The analysis
of emergency assistance in Belgium from 2000–2008 shows that short-term and long-term media
attention to specific countries affect decision-making in quite different ways. This study reveals
different ways in which media attention can impact policymaking, as short-term attention mainly
determines which countries receive assistance, while long-term attention affects the amount of
assistance granted.
Keywords
CNN effect, emergency assistance, humanitarian aid, media effects
Introduction
While it appeals to our instincts and logic that emergency assistance should be spent
according to the urgency and the needs of affected local populations, it is, actually, rarely
the outcome of calculated and proportionate reactions to the consequences of occurring
events, like disasters or violent conflicts. In fact, most of the time a variety of other fac-
tors and considerations come into play and determine which countries receive assistance
and how much (Drury et al., 2005; Nelson, 2012; Strömberg, 2007). To this day, we still
Corresponding author:
Jeroen Joly, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON
M5S 3G3, Canada.
Email: Jeroen.joly@utoronto.ca
640829CAC0010.1177/0010836716640829Cooperation and ConflictJoly
research-article2016
Article
Joly 429
only partially know what those factors are and what really determines emergency
assistance.
Following the extensive research on the CNN effect and the ensuing media effects
studies on foreign aid, Drury et al. (2005) examined the impact of media and other deter-
minants on disaster relief in the US from 1964 to 1995. This was the first systematic
effort explaining decision-making of assistance allocation in a comprehensive way, and
over such a long period of time. In addition to the magnitude of the disaster and strategic
motives, they found news media to have an important impact on humanitarian aid alloca-
tions. Considering the rather limited predictability of natural disasters and emergency
situations, as well as of their management logistics (Balcik et al., 2010; Pettit and
Beresford, 2009: 459), assistance policy is very reactive, which prevents planned and
incremental policymaking (Kovacs and Spens, 2012: 46). This makes emergency assis-
tance considerably more susceptible to external influences than other (foreign) policy
subdomains. To explain emergency aid policymaking, and particularly the role of news
media in this process, this study examines the determinants of Belgian emergency assis-
tance from 2000 to 2008. Hence, the goal is to understand why certain countries receive
aid while others do not, and why some countries receive more assistance than others.
This study contributes to our understanding of the different ways in which news
media are able to influence policymaking – in this case in response to dramatic foreign
events. While most media studies focus on short or medium-term media effects, this
study also examines the long-term effects of media exposure. The importance and rele-
vance of long-term media attention originates from agenda-setting theory, and specifi-
cally punctuated equilibrium theory, which argues that one of the ways major policy
changes occur is through the steady – and often long-term – advocacy of a given issue or
policy alternative (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; Baumgartner et al., 2014).
To examine the differential impact of event-related peaks of attention and non-specific
long-term media exposure on emergency assistance allocations, this study builds on the
work of Cingranelli and Pasquarello (1985) and Drury et al. (2005) by disaggregating the
decision-making process into different stages. The first stage corresponds to the initial
decision to grant aid and the subsequent stage determines exactly how much aid is allo-
cated. This two-stage model thus represents a unique opportunity to examine the impact of
media attention and other determinants at different stages of the policymaking process.
Currently, little is still known about the political agenda-setting effect of media, espe-
cially outside the United States. This is true for the general effects of media on politics,
but even more so for the influence of media on emergency assistance. While govern-
ments from different countries operate within different political and media systems
(Hallin and Mancini, 2004, 2011), Belgium is a particularly interesting case because of
its closed political system. As a prime example of a partitocracy (De Winter and Dumont,
2006; De Winter et al., 1996), Belgium is ruled by political parties at all political levels
and, thus, Belgian governments are ‘not particularly receptive to new issues that pop up
in the media’ (Walgrave et al., 2007: 3). Such a closed political system does not offer
many alternative policy venues besides the government, which is run by the political
parties. Moreover, Belgium is divided along its linguistic divide, which means that there
are no true national media read or viewed by both major communities. Interest groups,
such as NGOs, are also mainly regionalized, significantly reducing their impact.
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