In order to better understand how the world viewed the US 2016 presidential election, the issues that mattered around the world, and how nations made sense of how their media systems constructed presentations of the presidential election, Robert S. Hinck, Skye C. Cooley, and Randolph Kluver examine global news narratives during the campaign and immediately afterwards. Analyzing 1,578 news stories from 62 sources within three regional media ecologies in China, Russia, and the Middle East, Hinck, Cooley, and Kluver demonstrate how the US election was incorporated into narrative constructions of the global order. They establish that the narratives told about the US election through national and regional media provide insights into how foreign nations construct US democracy, and reflect local understandings regarding the issues, and impacts, of US policy towards those nations. Avoiding jargon-laden prose, Global Media and Strategic Narratives of Contested Democracy is as accessible as it is wide-ranging. Its empirical detail will expand readers' understanding of soft power as narrative articulations of foreign nation's policies, values, and beliefs within localized media systems. Communication/media studies students, as well as political scientists whose studies includes media and global politics, will welcome its publication.

How did a new, irresistible brand of television emerge from the Lebanese Civil War (1975-91) to conquer the Arab region in the satellite era? What role did seductive news anchors, cool language teachers, superheroes, and gossip magazines play in negotiating a modern relationship between television and audiences? How did the government lose its television monopoly to sectarian militias? Pretty Liar explores the rise of language and gender politics in Lebanese television during the Civil War of 1975-91. Khazaal tells the untold story of the coevolution of Lebanese television and its audience, and the ways in which the war influenced that transformation. Khazaal analyzes news, entertainment, and educational shows from Tele Liban and LBC, novels, periodicals, and popular culture to explain how controversies over language and gender became a referendum on television's relevance. Based on empirical data, Khazaal shows how television became a site for politics and political resistance, feminism, and the cradle for postwar Lebanon. Pretty Liar challenges the narrow focus on present-day satellite television and social media, offering the first account of how broadcast television transformed media's legitimacy in the Arab world. This groundbreaking book shows how the history of television in Lebanon is a history not merely of corporate technology but of a people and their continuing demand for responsive media, especially during times of civil unrest.