| dc.description.abstract | In November 2014, the film “Syrian hero boy” went viral. It depicted a young boy targeted by snipers. He dodges the bullets, and manages to save another child from the scene. After the story was published in newspapers worldwide, however, it became clear that it was a fabrication, shot and directed at a set in Malta. This thesis explores the media coverage of “Syrian hero boy” through a content analysis of 93 articles written about the film in online newspapers, asking how this coverage fit with the ongoing propaganda war in Syria. It also asks what this coverage might tell us of the media’s potential for guarding the normative ideals of the public sphere, first and foremost those associated with sincerity and rational-critical debate.
34 online newspapers published the film unverified, and the majority of these articles indicate that “Syrian hero boy” was understood as an activist film depicting a real life event on the ground. Some of these 34 articles, however, debated the authenticity of “Syrian hero boy” in front of their readers, showing that there is potential within the media to perceive such user-generated content in a critical matter without ignoring it. The content analysis show that the majority of the 93 articles analyzed were written after it was revealed that “Syrian hero boy” was false. All of these articles focused on the fabrication and its possibly negative consequences. The film sparked enrage, which in turn indicate that deception is not accepted in the virtual public sphere, especially not by journalists.
This thesis argues that it is too simplistic to assume that unmediated information flows automatically contribute towards a deliberative democracy, and that the online journalism domain is an important actor when it comes to the safeguarding of democratic values on the Internet. | nb_NO |
