News & Archive

The Kelman Seminar Series on Negotiation, Conflict and the News Media

with Tom Ashbrook, On Point, NPR and
William Gamson, Professor of Sociology at Boston College

Tuesday, May 1, 2007, 4:00-6:00 pm
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS)
1737 Cambridge Street, Bowie Vernon Room (N262)
(click for map)

The discussions in the Negotiation, Conflict and the News Media series focus on exploring the relationship among government, news media, and the conflict resolution community in framing and responding to conflict. Topics examine how conflict is framed and how that influences the escalation and de-escalation of conflict and the public understanding of various responses to terrorism. Participants consider ways to strengthen the capacity to prevent, resolve, and transform ethnonational conflicts.

Tom Ashbrook, a former Nieman Fellow, is the award-winning host of NPR's On Point. A graduate of Yale University, he worked as a surveyor and dynamiter in Alaska's oil fields before becoming a foreign correspondent. He spent ten years in Asia, jumping between India, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Prior to NPR, Ashbrook served as deputy managing editor of The Boston Globe, directing coverage of the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War.
 
William A. Gamson is a Professor of Sociology and co-directs the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP) at Boston College. He is the author of Talking Politics (1992) and The Strategy of Social Protest (2nd edition, 1990) among other books and articles on political discourse, the mass-media and social movements. He is a past president of the American Sociological Association.

This Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution series is sponsored by the Program on Negotiation, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, and the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, as well as Boston-area members of the Alliance for Peacebuilding.