Description
In contemporary international relations, perceptions of the facts are arguably as important as the facts themselves. In such an environment, state and non-state actors alike expend considerable efforts on moulding these perceptions to their advantage. The ways they do this, however, are often indirect or mediated by other objectives, processes, institutions or contextual factors. With a particular eye to this contingent dimension, this panel is dedicated to critically interrogating whose perspectives make it through into the news or into discussions of politics and history, and the security and governance implications that this has. It interrogates a range of contingences (including journalists’ unwitting complicity, policymakers’ domestic motivations and religious organisations’ self-legitimation) that together shape whose perspectives on news and history predominate in a given instance. In so doing, it presents a more nuanced picture of the web of actors and interests capable of threatening - or defending - liberal models.
