A DISCUSSION ON THE METHODOLOGY OF PEACE JOURNALISM

Abstract

Peace journalism is a normative mode of journalism that aims to contribute to nonviolent transformation of conflicts. The theory, which supports that news about conflict should be given in a way to enhance empathy and understanding among adversaries, is referred to as a revolutionary or insurgent form of journalism by various sources. Peace journalism had an ambiguous start regarding its methodology, which seems to be related to the movement’s pragmatic take-off in the late 1990’s, and did not discuss its methodology until the mid-2000’s. Later Jake Lynch (2006, 2007, 2014) proposed critical realism as the methodological foundation of the movement. This paper discusses the methodology problem of peace journalism and suggests instead a constructionist methodology, which is based on the premise that there is no truth independent of the observer; rather everything we know about the world is socially constructed. Critical realism prioritizes ontology over epistemology and argues that there is a certain shape of reality that one has to believe in. This paper argues that this transcendental ontology is a form of story-telling and there are thousands of ways of telling a story. Therefore, the priority for journalism should be on epistemology, that is to say, on the question of “how to know” as news is a representation of reality, and not a reflection of it.