Keywords
Rwanda, rwandan genocide, genocide
Abstract
Upwards of one million people died during the Genocide, Civil War, and Refugee Crisis in Rwanda and surrounding nations, during one of the fastest Genocides to occur in modern history. Even though the United Nations and its member states had a legal mandate to intervene in cases of Genocide due to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the world chose not to. While there were a myriad of reasons for this the media played a part in this situation. Using the coverage of US print magazine articles, this thesis argues that the media missed the point and the signs of what was happening on the ground due to a fundamental lack of understanding of Rwanda, the African Great Lakes region, and Africa itself. Borrowing concepts of the creation of the “other,” lack of understanding of Africa, imperial language, and first world views of the third world from Edward Said and Curtis A. Keim this master’s thesis shows that there were intellectual disconnects happening within the American press that made intervention nearly impossible. Once the Genocide was nearly complete and a more prosaic refugee crisis started America jumped at the chance to aid the refugees, a large number of them perpetrators of the Genocide, and the media showed reinvigorated interest in Rwanda. What misconceptions about Rwanda caused the media to miss the point? Did the print media help perpetuate those misconceptions, knowingly or unknowingly? With a death toll from the Genocide alone of roughly 8,000 people per day and the vast majority of them dying within iii the first several weeks of the Genocide, many lives may have been saved if Rwanda was made a priority by the media. Instead, while the media reported stories about chthonic hatred, the world was more concerned about a much slower Genocide in Eastern Europe. While attention was focused on other global and national stories, a racist regime intent on exterminating the Tutsi was allowed to stay in power in Rwanda
Notes
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Graduation Date
2013
Semester
Fall
Advisor
Walker, Ezekiel
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
College
College of Arts and Humanities
Department
History
Degree Program
History
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0005043
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0005043
Language
English
Release Date
December 2014
Length of Campus-only Access
1 year
Access Status
Masters Thesis (Open Access)
Subjects
Arts and Humanities -- Dissertations, Academic, Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Humanities
STARS Citation
Parrish, Skip-Thomas, "Too Few Voices, Too Many Distractions, Too Little Concern, Too Little Understanding: The American Media During The Rwandan Genocide Of 1994" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2874.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2874