Completely Unnecessary

Nothing says ‘fun reading’ like examining media coverage of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

I started out trying to look at DR Congo. I was going to argue that the media’s sporadic and surface-level coverage added to the perception of endemic crisis in the country. But - and here’s the funny part - no one’s even touched it. Media coverage of the enormous country is so sparse and irrelevant that no one’s even taken a crack at exploring how truly bad it is.

So I moved onto Rwanda, which no one can get enough of and, might I say, during which the media did a particularly bang up job of totally stuffing up a complex and volatile situation.

You’ll be glad to know, however, that I am saving time. I now just I read straight media analyses like Babysitters’ Club books.

For those of you unfamiliar with the escapades of Kristy et al, allow me to recap:

There’s an opening chapter where they lay out the basic plot of the book. Then, a long and involved Chapter Two is devoted to, I believe quite literally, the same detailed explanation of who the Club members are and how the Club works.

The litany is so precise that, years later, I remember that Kirsty is the tomboy who lives with her dad and step-mom; MaryAnne’s mom died and her dad is conservative; Claudia is Japanese-American and wears funky clothes and loves junk food; which is an anathema to Stacey because she has diabetes.

And Dawn moved to California, but they go visit every once in a while.

Media analyses are kind of the same. Intro, figure out what we’re talking about. Quick skim of the Lit Review - ah, we’re talking about ‘framing’ Entman, etc, check. And then it’s just skipping more or less blindly through the Methology and Results to get to the Discussion, where we actually get into whatever they hell it is they’re talking about.

Occasionally, I stop and think about how much pain, effort and chunks of my soul went into that one particularly obnoxious paragraph in my Methodology and I want to cry.

And then I’m glad I’m not the kind of person to make graphs (I skip those, too).

ps - Attentive readers will note that, without students or structured places to be, I’m back on my 6pm-3am writing schedule. No more 7am!

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