When Americans die in international incidents, it's not just the big national newspapers but also the smaller community media that influence personal attitudes and community politics, says UC Davis political scientist Scott Gartner, who studies public opinion during war and its effects.

Although global news is covered more thoroughly in the national newspapers, after one of their own is killed in a foreign conflict, community newspapers spend more space, resources and attention on the international news surrounding the conflict, says Gartner in a report published in the April-June issue of the journal Political Communication.

In a statistical analysis of the 2000 attack on an American naval destroyer, the USS Cole, in Yemen, Gartner focused on the geographic distribution of casualties and compared news about the incident from the corresponding newspapers from those areas with newspapers where there were fewer deaths.

Gartner found that people from communities that experience deaths from international conflicts have more information about foreign policy than those from areas without the casualties.

"Actions taken by the Bush administration during the Iraqi occupation, such as prohibiting pictures of military coffins and avoiding having the president speak at memorial services, show that politicians recognize, and in this case attempt to manipulate, the impact of media images of military casualties," Gartner says.

He suggests the local media constitute a critical link between war and domestic politics.

Gartner concludes that because local casualties affect both the quantity and the quality of the information delivered by the media, both the message and the messenger are being influenced.