Black Hawk Down and the Framing of Somalia: Pop Culture as News and News as Pop Fiction

Abstract

Barely one month before leaving office, President George H. W. Bush ordered28,000 American troops into Somalia. It was the largest American humanitarianoperation in many years. The operation was intended to halt the starvation ofthousands of Somali civilians caught in the crossfire of warring factionsjockeying for power following the collapse of the country’s central government.In the end, the operation failed. This paper seeks first, to examine the basis andnature of the framing of this event by American news and entertainment mediaduring the American adventure in Somalia and in the aftermath of the events ofSeptember 11, 2001, and second, to explore the image of the Somali created in theAmerican public mind by this framing.