Presenter Information

Isabella CraigFollow

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Within the greater political science literature, there is a wealth of scholarship on American foreign policy, as well as the growing danger to press freedom and the implications of this expanding phenomenon. However, there appears to be a lack of exploration in the intersection of these two subfields. To begin to address this disparity within the literature, this research poses the following question: How does a president and their administration’s response to killings of journalists in foreign nations impact bilateral foreign relationships with these nations? Three cases of journalist killings have been selected, one for each of the three most recent presidential administrations. A mixed-method approach is applied to the three cases, and their respective policy responses from the presiding American executive at that time are compared. This comparative method has been chosen for its usefulness in evaluating each case and the respective variables. The hypothesis of this work is that there is an impact from executive responses to foreign journalist killings on bilateral foreign relationships. Findings cannot fully support this hypothesis, however, and the null hypothesis is retained. Further research may be able to confirm a relationship between the two variables and potentially examine the effects of lenient responses to journalist killings on bilateral foreign relationships, as is suggested from the evidence gathered in this analysis.

Document Type

presentations

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Executive Responses To Foreign Journalist Killings and Their Impact on Bilateral Foreign Relationships

Within the greater political science literature, there is a wealth of scholarship on American foreign policy, as well as the growing danger to press freedom and the implications of this expanding phenomenon. However, there appears to be a lack of exploration in the intersection of these two subfields. To begin to address this disparity within the literature, this research poses the following question: How does a president and their administration’s response to killings of journalists in foreign nations impact bilateral foreign relationships with these nations? Three cases of journalist killings have been selected, one for each of the three most recent presidential administrations. A mixed-method approach is applied to the three cases, and their respective policy responses from the presiding American executive at that time are compared. This comparative method has been chosen for its usefulness in evaluating each case and the respective variables. The hypothesis of this work is that there is an impact from executive responses to foreign journalist killings on bilateral foreign relationships. Findings cannot fully support this hypothesis, however, and the null hypothesis is retained. Further research may be able to confirm a relationship between the two variables and potentially examine the effects of lenient responses to journalist killings on bilateral foreign relationships, as is suggested from the evidence gathered in this analysis.