CNN Effect

CNN (Cable Network News) provided live coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, including Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991). Many Americans watched CNN for the latest developments, and the January 28, 1991 New York (NY) Times reported on the “CNN effect.”
 
The “CNN effect” refers to popular media coverage of an event, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Because of this intense interest, interested parties often have to act sooner than normal to put a favorable spin on public opinion. The term “CNN effect” was invented before the rise of social media, but the term is still used.
   
     
Wikipedia: CNN effect
The CNN effect is a theory in political science and media studies that postulates that the development of the popular 24-hour international television news channel known as Cable News Network, or CNN, had a major impact on the conduct of states’ foreign policy in the late Cold War period and that CNN and its subsequent industry competitors have had a similar impact in the post Cold War era. While the free press has, in its role as the “Fourth Estate,” always had an influence on policy-making in representative democracies, proponents of the CNN effect argue that the extent, depth, and speed of the new global media have created a new species of effects qualitatively different from those that preceded them historically.
 
28 January 1991, New York (NY) Times, “War in the Gulf: Tourism Shaken By ‘CNN Effect’” by Ellen Shapiro, pg. A1:
Some potential travelers are riveted to their television sets, captivated by the constant news reports about the war, a condition that some people are calling the “CNN effect.”
(Pg. A12.—ed.)
Some travel specialists say a fascination with television news about the Persian Gulf war is keeping people at home.
 
“Restaurants, hotels and gaming establishments seem to be suffering from the CNN effect,” said John J. Rohs, a lodging industry analyst at Wertheim Schroder & Company, a New York investment firm. “People are intensely interested in the first real-time war in history and they are just planting themselves in front of the TV.”
     
OCLC WorldCat record
Humanitarian crises and U.S. foreign policy: Somalia and the CNN effect reconsidered
Author: Steven Livingston; Todd Eachus
Edition/Format: Article Article : English
Publication: Political Communication, v12 n4 (199510): 413-429
Database: CrossRef
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The CNN effect : the myth of news, foreign policy, and intervention
Author: Piers Robinson
Publisher: London ; New York : Routledge, 2002.
Edition/Format:   Print book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
“The last decade has seen an increased willingness by Western governments to use force to intervene in distant humanitarian crises, and this has been coupled with significant levels of media attention to the human casualties of war and conflict. Central to this new policy of intervention is the so-called ‘CNN effect’: the saturation of Western viewers with non-stop, real-time news footage of wars and military actions on television and the Internet. In turn, these images constitute a powerful plea for action. But can news media drive foreign policy, or are governments oblivious to partial news coverage? Are there any connections between media coverage of humanitarian crises and Western intervention, and what is the truth behind the ‘CNN effect’?” “The CNN Effect examines the relationship between the state and its media, and considers the role played by news reporting in a series of ‘humanitarian’ interventions in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda. Piers Robinson challenges traditional views of media subservience and argues that sympathetic news coverage at key moments in foreign crises can influence the response of Western governments.”—Jacket
 
OCLC WOrldCat record
The CNN effect in action : how the news media pushed the West toward war in Kosovo
Author: Babak Bahador
Publisher: New York : Palgrave Macmillan, ©2007.
Series: Palgrave Macmillan series in international political communication.
Edition/Format:   eBook : Document : EnglishView all editions and formats
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
This project advances the existing theoretical work on the CNN effect, a claim that innovations in the speed and quality of technology create conditions in which the media can act as an independent factor influencing governments, the military and the public. Examining Western media and government activity relating to Kosovo, it provides a novel interpretation of the factors that drove Western policy towards military intervention in this region.