Journalism and Human Rights

This is the first collection to explore links between demographics and media coverage of human rights issues, including cross-national reporting on human trafficking, HIV/AIDS, water contamination, and child labour; and same-sex marriage, Guantanamo detainee rights, immigration reform, and post-traumatic stress disorder in the USA. Using community structure theory and innovative Media Vector content analysis, this book reveals that differences in rights reporting often reflect non-elite interests and can vary with levels of female empowerment, social and economic vulnerability, and Midwestern newspaper location, defying conventional belief that media typically serve as "guard dogs" for political and economic elites. This book was published as a special issue of The Atlantic Journal of Communication.