Noteblog

This is a list of the reading I am doing for my Master's thesis. As I'm in the process of doing the reading, I will update the list at least once or twice a week. This is a tool of studying: it helps me to stay organized while doing the reading, in a positive way. I'm keeping it public in the hope that somebody will find it useful in his/her own work.

I welcome all comments and suggestions for further reading. To give feedback, browse to the bottom of the page and leave a comment using the form there.

The literature goes to five categories:

1. The ones I'm done with. References enter this class after I've done enough reading and have good notes so I do not have to keep them at hand.
2. The ones I'm reading. These are the references I'm working on at the moment.
3. The ones I have. I might have browsed these through, and found them useful, so they'll enter the reading category soon.
4. The ones I'm interested in. These are references from the books I have read but for one reason or the other I do not yet have them at hand.
5. The ones I've rejected. I keep this class to stay updated on references that once seemed useful but proved not to be. This helps me to go back in time and remember if I have checked something or not.

I also try to keep some notes here about why I find the content interesting and where am I going to use it.

The literature I'm done with:

Koistinen, M. (1999): Pelkkää taloutta. Retoriikka journalismin tutkimuksessa. In Kantola, A., Moring, I., Väliverronen, E. (eds.): Media-analyysi. Tekstistä tulkintaan. Tampere: Helsingin yliopiston Lahden tutkimus- ja koulutuskeskus: 40–63.

• Practical example of using Perelman's new rhetoric as a framework for media analysis

Väliverronen, E. (1999): Mediatekstistä tulkintaan. In Kantola, A., Moring, I., Väliverronen, E. (eds.): Media-analyysi. Tekstistä tulkintaan. Tampere: Helsingin yliopiston Lahden tutkimus- ja koulutuskeskus: 13–39.

• Constructivism and cultural studies as the theoretical background of media analysis.

The literature I'm reading:

Perelman, C. (1996): Retoriikan valtakunta. Tampere: Vastapaino.

Perelman, C. (1971): The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

• Perelman is probably going to be the theorist I'm going to use to build the theoretical framework for my analysis. If I only could read French better, I would get the original version of Traité de l'argumentation la nouvelle rhétorique and L'empire rhétorique.

Alasuutari, P. (2001): Johdatus yhteiskuntatutkimukseen. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.

Alasuutari, P. (1993/1999): Laadullinen tutkimus. Jyväskylä: Vastapaino. *Alasuutari is one of the most respected Finnish authors of the field of general methodology in the social sciences. I'm going through is latest work to gather up some basic stuff concerning the theoretical basis of my work – the paradigms and their critique.

Vincent, R. (1986/1988): Human Rights and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Very, very interesting book that seems to be a cornerstone of the disipline of human rights. Sadly, I had to go for the old edition – there has been a revision to the book in 1991, but it's not available in libraries...

The literature I have:

OHCHR (1993): Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. Available at http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/vienna.pdf

• This is the original source for some of the human rights thinking and politics during the last decade. I'll probably refer to this in my chapter explaining different concepts of human rights and the development of the human rights thinking / discource.

Ferree, M., Gamson, W., Gerhards, J., Rucht, D. (2002): Four models of the public sphere in modern democracies. Theory and Society 31: 289–324.

• I realized I have to get my context right. This gives me a good basic start-up on the basis of constructivism, whics is my theoretical viewpoint in this study.

Kempf, W., Luostarinen, H. (eds.) (2002): Vol II. Journalism and the New World Order. Studying War and the Media. Göteborg: NORDICOM.

• Propaganda, war and media. The book is a collection of articles on the first Persian Gulf war, and it helps me to build historical perspective. Useful insight to methodology as well. I'll probably get deeper into some spesific articles, not the whole book.

Lund, A. (2004): The Mass-Mediated "We" in Danish Journalism. In Riegert, K. (ed.): News of the Other. Tracing Identity in Scandinavian Constructions of the Eastern Baltic Sea Region. Nordicom, Göteborg: 169–184.

• I just happened to run into this at the library. It seems the editorials do construct a "we"–"them" situation and put human rights into the sphere of "us", so this might give me some ideas.

Luostarinen, H. (1994): Mielen kersantit. Julkisuuden hallinta ja journalistiset vastastrategiat sotilaallisissa konflikteissa. Juva: Hanki ja jää.

• Propaganda theory. This is definitely not going to be my primary source of theory, but browsing through it has given me some inspiration. I should check it at a later time, there might be good one-liners and useful thoughts about media influencing the public opinion.

Doise, W., Spini, D., Clémence, A. (1999): Human rights studied as social representations in a cross-national context. European Journal of Social Psychology 29, 1–29.

• This is an interesting study showing some empirical support for the universality of the human rights values. I have to read this, though for some reason I'm not 100% about the validity of the conclusion...

Thakur, R. (2001): Human Rights: Amnesty International and the United Nations. In Diehl, P. (ed.): The Politics of Global Governance. International Organizations in an Interdependent World. Second Edition. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 365–387.

• Background for human rights concepts.

Palonen, K., Summa, H. (eds.)(1996): Pelkkää retoriikkaa. Tutkimuksen ja politiikan retoriikat. Tampere: Vastapaino.

• This is a collection of articles about rhetoric analysis. I've browsed this through, and it does give some good ideas. I'll have to go for Perelman, though.

Aarnio, E. (2000): Pääkirjoitukset vuoden 2000 presidentinvaaleissa. Tiedon politiikan näkökulma. In Isotalus, P., Aarnio, E. (eds.): Presidentti 2000. Mistä vaalit on tehty? Jyväskylä: SoPhi.

• An analysis of Finnish editorials. Should give me ideas about the opinion/editorial genre as a field / sector of communication. Just to get something beyond the ordinary common sense...

Rasskasov, A. (2001): Ihmisoikeuksien kieli Kosovon sodassa. Pro gradu –thesis. Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä.

• A thesis about human rights language used in the war of Kosovo. Does not seem really that high quality, but it refers to sources I should definitely use. I guess I might use the main results of the study somewhere, but definitely it's not worth a big fuzz.

Friman, S. (2001): Kuka nyt ihmisoikeuksia vastustaisi – ihmisoikeudet kansainvälisen yhteisön jäsenyyskriteerinä. Pro gradu –thesis. Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä.

• I haven't really gone through this yet, but it does seem interesting: Human rights as criteria for the membership of the international community. This should give perspective to the idea of the establishment of human rights as an institution.

Gready, P. (2003): The politics of human rights. Third World Quarterly, Vol 24, No 4. 745–757.

• An article about the impact of human rights issues to politics and vice versa.

Vuokila, R. (2004) Kansalaisjärjestön julkisuuskuva suomalaisessa lehdistössä. Case: Amnesty Internationalin vuosiraportti. Pro gradu –thesis. Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä.

• I don't know if I have any use for this, but at least there is a good list of references here...

Cassara, C. (1998): U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Human Rights in Latin America, 1975–1982: Exploring President Carter's Agenda-Building Influence. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol 75, No 3, Autumn 1998. 478–486.

• Good historical background for human rights in the media.

Pogge, T. (2000): The International Significance of Human Rights. The Journal of Ethics 4: 2000. 45–69.

• Browsing through this was frustrating. I'm not sure if I can use it, but maybe it does give perspective after all.

Tulkens, F. (2001): Human rights, rhetoric or reality? European Review, Vol. 9, No 2. 125–134.

• Jargon about the situation with Human Rights issues and the role played by European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. I'm not sure if this is useable.

Höijer, B. (2003): The Discourse of Global Compassion and the Media. Nordicom Review, 2 (24): 19-29.

• very useful. This is one of the rare cases of decent study on my subject. And it's terribly short...

Le, E. (2002): Human rights discourse and international relations: Le Monde's editorials on Russia. Discourse & Society, Vol. 13, No. 3: 373-408.

• Goes to the same category as Höijer. These are the articles I will definitely discuss with in my conclusion.

Höijer, B., Nohrstedt, S. A. & R. Ottosen (2002): The Kosovo War in the Media - Analysis of a Global Discursive Order. Conflict & Communication online, 1(2). http://www.cco.regener-online.de/

• Something good, but the other Höijer is better. Has the same thoughts, parts of the articles are clearly just copied and pasted from the same draft. Not to say there was something wrong to do that...

Donnelly, J. (1998): Human rights: a new stantard of civilization? International Affairs 74, 1 (1998): 1–24.

• A nice article which basically discusses the different kinds of criteria that has been given to valuate the barbarian nations. Suggests that we are moving on to a phase were the level of the adaptation of human rights legislation would be the defining thing... "the new civilization". Good stuff for my perspective-building.

Kantola, A. (2002): Kielellisen käänteen jälkeen. Kysymys yhteiskunnasta viestinnän tutkimuksessa. Tiedotustutkimus 4/2002: 32–41.

• A nice article addressing the question about the relationship of linguistic study of media and the society aspect. As I'm making a linguistic analysis but would like to address a more wide question about the way we talk and the way society works, this gives me a kind of a "tool" to refine my thinking.

Beetham, D. (1998): Democracy and Human Rights: Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural. In Symonides, J. (ed.): Human Rights: New Dimensions and Challenges. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

• This seems a book I should get. And the article seems like a one I should read. There are not too many of these in the libraries, had to make a reservation. Waiting...

Fields, A. B. (2003): Rethinking human rights for the new millennium. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

• I just accidentally ran into this while doing searches. Synopsis tels me, Fields agues a new kind of human rights consept is needed, a one that combines juridical, historical and philosophical views of human rights. Seems this has interesting views on building the concept of human rights.

The literature I'm interested to get:

Forst, R. (1999): The Basic Right to Justification: Towards a Constructivist Conception of Human Rights. Constellations 6 (1), 35-60.

• This is a nasty bit. It seem like I desperately need it, as I'm trying to build a similar construction: a Constructivist conception of human rights. There are severe problems with accessing the article, though, as it's way too expensive (25€) and

Murphy, S. (1996): Humanitarian Intervention. United Nations in an Evolving World Order. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

• This definitely seems worth checking out. Humanitarian intervention is parallel concept to human rights. Well, not parallel, but... Rasskasov refers to this a lot.

Donnelly, J. (1999) Human Rights, Democracy, and Development. Human Rights Quarterly (21) 3, 608–632.

Buergenthal, T. (1997): The Normative and Institutional Evolution of International Human Rights. Human Rights Quarterly (19) 4, 703–723.

• I should browse through the Human Rights Quarterlies anyway. This article might be a good reason to do it... Up to the library of the Faculty of Law!

Herman, E., Chomsky, N. (1988): Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.

• Okay, I just have to get some Chomsky! :). This would give theory about how good victims – and I have to say, the victims in Abu Ghraib weren't that good for Media: victimized by "the good guys" and being the "ugly enemy". The only version of this has vanished from the library system of the University of Helsinki Reserved it from the library of the City of Helsinki, where one copy is found in the eastern skid row.

Messer, E. (1993): Anthropology and Human Rights. Annual Review of Anthropology, October 1993, Vol. 22: 221-249 *Seems rather interesting background to the different aspects of human rights. Found this from Google scholar because it refers to R. J. Vincent...

Dunne, T., Wheeler, N.J. (eds.)(1999): Human Rights in Global Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• This compilation of articles seems to have fresh ideas. At least the article by Donelly about the social construction of human rights seems like a must. Reserved it from the library of the Finnish parliament, which was the only library that seemed to have it. Going to get it in late March, I presume.

The literature I've rejected.