Blackwell Reference Online

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The rise of 24-hour news programming, associated with the shift from the electronic news gathering (ENG) of the 1970s to the satellite news gathering (SNG) of the 1980s, marks a shift in the temporal and spatial connectivity of the globe. The continuousness and sheer expanse of 24/7 news has driven an appetite for immediacy, proximity, and simultaneity, so that today these are the dominant modes of television news programs, defining how the world is represented to millions and shaping news agendas and allegedly the events being represented (→  Television News ). The so-called “CNN effect” or “phenomenon” is the idea that television news shapes the behavior of influential, sometimes disparate, and especially political actors in events that are being covered as they happen “live” in “real time” (→  CNN ). This term is synonymous with CNN's name-making coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. With the war in the living room, the accountability of politicians, diplomats, military strategists, and journalists was subjected to the unblinking eye of the television camera, as the relentless if simulated intimacy and urgency of the coverage created the first significant global TV audience. For all its vacuous images, this was a new kind of present history and it was an emotionally involving experience. The war had a continuous presence in everyday lives – an experience usually localized to actual ... log in or subscribe to read full text