print

Legitimization of armed intervention through Western media narratives:
2000-2022, the period of instrumentalization of the Responsibility to Protect Concept

Safranchuk I.A.,

MGIMO University, Moscow, Russia, i.safranchuk@inno.mgimo.ru

elibrary_id: 697972 | ORCID: 0000-0003-2214-6628 | RESEARCHER_ID: O-3257-2017

Zhornist V.M.,

MGIMO University, Moscow, Russia, verazharn@gmail.com

elibrary_id: 1107387 | ORCID: 0000-0001-7406-3192 | RESEARCHER_ID: ACC-4198-2022

Article received: 2025.06.18 18:59. Accepted: 2025.07.24 18:59


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2025.05.09
EDN: DCTMUH

Rubric: Political discourse

For citation:

Safranchuk I.A., Zhornist V.M. Legitimization of armed intervention through Western media narratives: 2000-2022, the period of instrumentalization of the Responsibility to Protect Concept. – Polis. Political Studies. 2025. No. 5. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2025.05.09. EDN: DCTMUH

The research is funded by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No 22-18-00664-P. The authors express their gratitude to D.N. Chernov for methodological comments and advice on data analysis during the preparation of this article, and N.A. Svistunov and Kh.Kh. Nabiev for their contributions to source analysis.

Abstract

The article studies the evolution of the narrative of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P, Responsibility to Protect, RP) concept through the prism of armed intervention cases. This paper is a logical continuation of the article “Legitimizing armed intervention by means of Western media narratives: dominant narratives during the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect concept, 1990s”. The first article outlined the theoretical component and the process of formation of the R2P concept in the last decade of the XX century, as well as the research methodology. In the current article the authors test the conclusions drawn in the first paper on the basis of the most covered interventions in the international media. Using the most covered cases of armed interventions by Western and non-Western countries, the authors analyze the differences in the use of human rights narratives and analyze the differences in media support for armed interventions. Using a content analysis of the 10 most covered interventions for their endorsement by Western media, the hypothesis of using the R2P narrative as a legitimization for armed interventions by Western countries only and ignoring it in cases of interventions by non-Western states is tested. The 10 most covered intervention cases include 6 interventions by non-Western countries and 4 interventions by Western countries. The hypothesis of instrumentalisation of the R2P concept from 2000, i.e. after the end of the active concept formation phase, to 2022, is also tested using the data. The authors conclude that on the data under consideration, the Western media justify the armed interventions of Western countries and delegitimize the interventions of non-Western countries. Furthermore, the concept of R2P is used both to legitimize Western interventions and to delegitimize non-Western interventions. In legitimizing armed intervention, the R2P concept is often used in combination with rationalist narratives of defending international security and supporting democracy.

Keywords

responsibility to protect concept, humanitarian interventions, cycle of norms, narratives, discourse, legitimation of intervention, Western media.

Anderson, K.F., & Brakstad, I.V. (2016). The impossibility to protect? Media narratives and the responsibility to protect. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 9(3), 96-115. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.9.3.1331

Barnett, M. (2005). Humanitarianism transformed. Perspectives on Politics, 3(4), 723-740. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592705050401

Chernov, D., Nesmahnyi, A, Safranchuk, I., & Zhornist V. (2024). International military intervention correlates. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/A7MXJM

Cook, T.E. (1998). Governing the news: the news media as a political institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

De Fina, A., & Tseng, A. (2017). Narrative in the study of migrants. In C. Suresh (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Language and Migration (pp. 381-395). Abington; New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315754512-22

Dragomir, M. (2024). The capture effect: how media capture affects journalists, markets and audiences. Central European Journal of Communication, 17(2), 162-184. https://doi.org/10.51480/1899-5101.17.2(36).586

Finnemore, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). International norm dynamics and political change. International Organization, 52(4), 887-917. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081898550789

George, A.L. (2019). Domestic constraints on regime change in US foreign policy: the need for policy legitimacy. In O. Holsti (Ed.), Change in the International System (pp. 233-262). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429052187-10

Joshi, D., & O’Dell, R.K. (2017). The critical role of mass media in international norm diffusion: the case of UNDP human development reports. International Studies Perspectives, 18(3), 343-364. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekv018

Kennedy, D. (2006). Reassessing international humanitarianism: the dark sides. In A. Orford (Ed.), International Law and Its Others (pp. 131-155). New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511494284.006

Livingston, S., & Eachus, T. (1995). Humanitarian crises and U.S. foreign policy: Somalia and the CNN effect reconsidered. Political Communication, 12(4), 413-429. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.1995.9963087

Robinson, P. (1999). The CNN effect: can the news media drive foreign policy? Review of International Studies, 25(2), 301-309. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210599003010

Robinson, P. (2005). The CNN effect revisited. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22(4), 344-349. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180500288519

Alekseev, N.N., Gurov, O.N., Karnaukhova, O.S., Kovaleva, O.A., Ryzhov, I.V., Savenkova, I.Yu., & Tsyplin, V.G. (2023). “Novaya normalnost’” i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya: narrativy, kontsepty, konteksty [“New normality” and international relations: narratives, concepts, contexts]. Moscow: Aquilo-Press. (In Russ.)

Malinova, O.Yu. (2010). Ideas as independent variables in political research: in search of an adequate methodology. Polis. Political Studies, 3, 90-99. (In Russ.)

Pavlov, V.V. (2024). Assembly line for ideas in US foreign policy and the issue of international relations actors’ trust hereinunder. Polis. Political Studies, 4, 89-104. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2024.04.07

Safranchuk, I.A., & Zhornist, V.M. (2025). Dominant narratives in Western media during the 1990s formation of the Responsibility to Protect. Polis. Political Studies, 2, 110-123. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2025.02.08

See also: