Globalizing Political Action: Building bin Laden and Getting Ready for 9/11

Francis A. Beer
G. R. Boynton, University of Iowa

Abstract

As globalization gathers momentum at the beginning of the 21st century, global communication is increasingly important. Part of this process is global news, which has emerged as a separate genre made possible by the development of new communication technology. Media elites have used the ability to communicate from anywhere to anywhere in real time to create a new global space, which has become a domain for global political action. In this space, media elites mix political content with entertainment values in news reality television, the global political theater of the real. Capturing images from the vast ocean of daily human activity, they create breaking news. They help construct dramatic political characters like Osama bin Laden. They weave past and present experience together in gripping ongoing stories like terrorism that give meaning to current events and prefigure the future.