Peace Journalism Research Articles

“Peace propaganda”? the application of Chomsky’s propaganda model to the Daily Nation’s coverage of the 2013 Kenyan elections

ABSTRACTThis article uses the third and fourth filters of Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model, namely, official sources and flak, to examine how the Daily Nation, which is the largest circulating newspaper in Kenya, covered the 2013 Kenyan elections. In the run up to the elections, several institutions, among them the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of Kenya and the Media Council of Kenya (MCK), organised several workshops with media owners and journalists in the name of “peace journalism” to avoid a repeat of the 2007/2008 post-election violence. Although such efforts paid off because there was no physical post-election violence, questions have been raised as to whether this extensive peace training translated to “peace propaganda” making journalists and the media in general engage in excessive self-censorship in the name of peaceful elections thereby neglecting their watchdog role. Using the findings from a qualitative content analysis of the Daily Nation as a case study and semi-structured interviews with civil society organisations as media monitors, it can be arguably observed that the Daily Nation avoided any “contentious electoral issues” for fear of flak and relied overly on the IEBC and other government agencies as official sources of critical electoral information.

New Roles for Media in the Western Balkans

After almost 20 years of political instability and ongoing conflicts in the Western Balkans, the region is still haunted by the past, and there is an ongoing synergy of influence between media and the political sector. Media in this region have frequently been criticized for fueling conflicts, instigating ethnic hatred and taking political sides. This article suggests a new research agenda in the practice of transitional journalism in this part of Southeastern Europe. This research strand combines elements from troubled pasts, war reporting, peace journalism and issues of transitional justice. This article analyzes how journalists in the Western Balkans consider the roles of journalism in times of transitions in the region. Findings from the Worlds of Journalism (WJS) study reveal that journalists and editors in the Western Balkans perceive their roles to be broader than those in traditionally western societies. They subscribe to traditional journalism values but also argue that the media has a broad responsibility to contribute to enhance transitions of societies after longer periods of conflict. At the same time, journalists have little trust in the institutions of society entrusted with the task of leading the countries through many issues of transitional justice. The article draws on empirical material from the WJS survey in 2014 and 2015 in Albania, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia.

Execution of Mumtaz Qadri & Urdu Print Media of Pakistan: Exploring Consistency and Discord Frames in Editorializing of Blasphemy & Freedom of expression

This paper focuses on the frames; through which execution of Mumtaz Qadri’s editorialized by the Urdu print media of Pakistan. Eighteen editorials on the selected topic, from March 1, 2016, to April 1, 2016, are selected as a sample from five leading national newspapers viz. Jang, Nawa-e-Waqt, Ausaf, Ummat, and Islam. Freedom of expression and blasphemy depicted through consistency and discord frames is explored with the help of Galtung’s peace and violence journalism indicators. The content analysis approach is applied, with the Framing theory providing theoretical background. It has been found that Media portrayed the issue through discord frame as a dominant frame, which approved the notion of Galtung that media usually portray the conflicts through violence journalism frame. It also approved that the media have not continued framing by a uniform pace. They play an active role in opinion formation of a public. With the passage of time media changed their framing tone from discord to the consistency frames. This proves that media is conscious to enjoy the right of freedom of expression with reference to the blasphemy, in such a volatile situation.

Uprising to Proxy War: How Time and Newsweek Framed the Syrian Conflict (2011-2016) from War versus Peace Journalism Perspectives

Uprising to Proxy War: How Time and Newsweek Framed the Syrian Conflict (2011-2016) from War versus Peace Journalism Perspectives

Teaching journalism ethics: Constructing model for teaching journalism ethics on the basis of local wisdom to create peace journalism

AbstractEthics or morale is becoming a serious matter in journalism practices in Indonesia lately. The increase in ethical offences done by Indonesian journalists is the symptom of the delicate morale conduct among Indonesian Journalists. This is an indication that Indonesia journalism education faces a serious problem. Through experimental method, this study was trying to construct and examine a teaching model enabling students to have better understanding about journalism ethics and to explore moral obligation on the basis of local wisdom so that they have wider ethical reasoning to explore moral obligation. This study concludes that sequential order of teaching materials/content plays very important role in the success of the method. The use of Javaness phrases significantly improves the students’ understanding about morale reasoning and its application in journalistic practices.

Turkish newspapers’ peace journalism exam: Gezi Park protests

The basic aim of this study is to explore Turkish newspapers’ news coverage of the “Gezi Park protests” in 2013. These newspapers are published under Dogan Media Group (DMG) conglomerate. The main aim of this study is to examine peace journalism principles in practice in the context of three DMG newspapers. The study examines the news coverage of the protests in order to formulate a peace journalism approach for journalists. Coverage on the protests, the framing analysis was used as a method. Gezi stories have been analyzed from the front pages of newspapers between 29 May and 30 June 2013. In Turkey, many newspapers have distorted the reality, emphasized marginality and did not pass the test of democratic examination while covering protests came to ignore the peaceful actions. However, peace journalism assumption should be used by journalists while covering the peaceful actions or protests. In democratic dispensation, representation of the electorate should continue both in public spheres and in media. The role of the media is becoming more and more important. The media should not only focus on the violence, but should give voice to nonviolence and peace protests as well. Results show that these three newspapers give more voice to former Prime Minister R.T. Erdogan than other official sources and tend to use the voices of elite authorities. This research found that, Posta quoted more elite sources in relation to the protests than Hurriyet and Radikal. At the end of this research DMG’s “Written Press Publication Principles” have been found to have little effect on coverage of newspapers.

The Media in Cameroon faced with the Boko Haram Conflict

For the first time in the history of Cameroon, it is facing a conflict that can be compared to no other one. The Boko Haram conflict has not just posed so much difficulty to the population and the government but especially media men and women who are always looking for information to feed the public. It is further complicated because journalists in Cameroon do not have a mastery of Peace Journalism, or conflict sensitive journalism or conflict management and resolution. In this light, they have all dived into the matter with much focus on recounting just the story on the ground, counting the victims and use the war to gain notoriety. They have neither work in favor of pacific resolution of the conflict nor promoting alternatives to the use of force but have been either been embedded in the military’s version of the story while depending so much on the official phase of it and on second hand information. This paper argues that in the communication of the Boko Haram conflict the Cameroonian media have proven to follow the official version in its practice of Straight Journalism, War Journalism and Embedded with very little effort in Peace Journalism.

Peace Journalism: Preparing Aspiring Journalists to Value Culture of Peace

This article takes off from the findings of the author’s postgraduate study on the best practices of peace journalism (PJ) as reflected in the reportage of Inquirer.net and MindaNews.com of the Bangsamoro peace process in the Philippines. The author confirmed through content and discourse analysis that the conflict between the government and Muslim rebels in Mindanao is still often reported in a manner that is biased against the Muslims, especially when it escalates to violence. Articles that scored high on PJ indicators were written by senior journalists who are proponents of PJ. Younger reporters wrote none of such articles. This implies that knowledge and application of PJ can help reduce, if not remove, bias in reporting conflicts. This article argues that PJ training should go beyond media practitioners and encompass journalism and communication students in university programmes.

Citizen, mainstream and peace journalism relationship in covering Syria events: a content analysis of Aljazeera

With the intercession of the new media, individuals were able to write news and publish videos through their participations on Social Networking Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. This article is centered on citizen journalism which comes from the participation of citizens in making news. The main purpose of this article is to show the relationship between citizen journalism and mainstream journalism in covering Syrian news, and how peace journalism represents in both. A questionnaire designed to analyze the content of five Syrian events on Aljazeera news channel. The five Syrian events are Al-Bayda and Baniyas, the siege of Bab Amr, al Qusair and Khalidiya in Homs, Yarmouk camp, chemical on Al Gota. Result shows that Aljazeera uses a significant number of footages and contents which came from Syrian citizen journalists; it is presented as 46.3 %. Due to shared political agendas between Aljazeera and citizen journalists, Aljazeera depends on their footages more than their own reporters while they are covering Syrian news. Majority of footages reflect Syrian opposition and the killing of Syrians which resulted from Al-Assad Regime. We suggest that news content published by citizen journalists on their blogs and YouTube should be analyzed for other studies.

Socio-cultural contexts and peace journalism: A case for meso-level comparative sociological investigation of journalistic cultures

The article argues that through explorations of differing identity formation among journalist groups according to socio-cultural contexts, Peace Journalism has to test the applicability and acceptability of its normative frameworks in different settings. The article identifies lessons Peace Journalism can include from other academic sub-fields to understand the professional life-worlds of journalists in post-conflict societies. The study proffers a meso-level investigation framework of journalists’ awareness of and negotiation with the circulation of ‘flaks’, ‘frames’ and ‘myths’ through the ‘feedback loop(s)’ they work within and re-categorizes micro-level findings from a study conducted in Kenya with this meso-level framework as an illustration.

Colombian cries: Internal armed conflict and emotions in letters to the editor

Letters to the editor published by two Colombian newspapers during 1999–2008 were examined. Most addressed themes, domestic politics and the citizens’ affairs, were analyzed herein to describe emotions from a qualitative perspective. Findings showed that the internal armed conflict was the main driving force to express the individual’s emotions and judgments. Significant events triggering a wide range of emotions were identified. Two units of meaning emerged: patriotism under siege, to account for people’s love for the nation regardless of their affliction; and fear, the predominant emotion, to explain public distress caused by this intractable conflict. Being aware of the public’s emotional condition questions whether it is worth considering the paradigm of objectivity as an ethical ideal in the journalistic field. It also encourages reporting conflicts through the perspective of peace journalism, emphasizing possible solutions. Since Colombia is currently moving to a post-conflict phase, this could help to heal the social issue.

Communicating With the “Other”: Peace Journalism as a Form of Self–Other Relationship

ABSTRACTThe starting point of this article is Clifford Christians’ argument that peace journalism presumes a liberal-contractual self and that it must transform its philosophy of the human, where “the liberal self be exorcised and replaced by a relational self.” In this article, the author discusses what the relational self is, how differently it can be conceptualized from the liberal-contractual self, and what difference it would make in terms of conflict reporting to presume a relational self instead of a liberal-contractual self.

The Impact of Peace Journalism Training on Journalists’ Reportage of the 2015 Elections in Nigeria: An Action Research Case Study

ABSTRACTDuring the run-up to the 2015 general elections in nigeria, there was widespread trepidation within and outside the nation that the increasing cases of electoral violence and political intimidation ravaging the country would snowball into full-blown violence, and possibly plunge it into civil war. this fear was largely instigated by the 2011 election, which was marred by pre- and post-election violence. Human rights Watch (2011) estimated that the violence led to over 800 deaths in three days of rioting which engulfed parts of northern nigeria. since the First republic elections in the early 1960s, the nigerian media have been very involved in the political process. the diverse nature of the media makes its ideological inclination easy to decipher, because of reportage that is often tilted along ethnic and religious lines. using data obtained through participatory action research involving 40 purposively selected participant journalists, this article proposes an alternative method of news reportage using the peace-journalism model. developed by lynch and mcGoldrick (2005), the model encourages journalists to report social issues in ways that create opportunities for society to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict, using insights from conflict analysis and transformation to update concepts of balance, fairness and accuracy in reporting. it also provides a new route map which traces the connections between journalists, their sources, the stories they cover and the consequences of their reportage.

Development Journalism and Its Potential Contribution to The State Building: The Case of Somalia

Development aspect is a key target and agenda for all governments in the world. The concept embraces different facets of development including political, social, economic, infrastructure, societal, environmental, and intellectual aspects. Numerous factors contribute to the achievement of the above goals. Among these is a communication policy factor; an effective and comprehensive policy can help the state accelerate development success rate. In underdeveloped countries, the mass media play an essential role in mediating the development in the country. Systematic and comprehensive communication policies are greatly needed in these countries compared to developed and developing countries. In Somalia, where there was no effective and functioning state since 1990s, the need for such policies is great. The country has been in chaotic and unstable political situation, where the media has negatively contributed to hostility and conflict. In this paper, the author discusses the concept of development journalism and its evolution and relevance particularly to the newly independent states in Asia and Africa since 1960s. Although some people may argue that, the concept is out of date; this author believes that it is more relevant in today’s current political dilemma in Somalia. The paper provides numerous rationales for adopting the development journalism and how it can contribute to the state building efforts. Implications for policy and decision-makers were also discussed along these lines. For media practitioners, the paper recommends to follow peace journalism when covering tribal and political conflicts and to fully participate in current development projects.

Media Coverage of Taliban: Is Peace Journalism the Solution?

This article combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to investigate the reporting of the Taliban conflict in Pakistan media and finds the coverage escalatory and elitist from the peace journalism perspective. While the security-related aspects of the conflict are highlighted, the problems of victims are ignored. The data for this study were collected through content analysis, discourse analysis and interviews with conflict reporters and analysts. The key findings of this study are quite consistent with the existing peace journalism scholarship that in conflict where national interests are involved, media become nationalistic and patriotic, leaving behind the considerations of quality and good journalism.

Awareness towards Peace Journalism among Foreign Correspondents in Africa

Much has been said about the news media’s role in instigating war, conflict and violence. Less attention has been paid to the news media’s role in mitigating conflict. Criticism has been directed towards the ways in which journalists and war correspondents cover conflict with an emphasis on violence, suffering, polarization of the views of main stakeholders, and over-simplification of the underlying causes of conflict. The growing literature and scholarship around Peace Journalism stands as a response to this. In the context of the African continent, further critique has been levelled against frames and narratives of war, conflict and violence grounded in Western epistemologies and dominant discourses of African conflicts and stakeholders. Based on data collected from interviews with a selected group of journalists working on—and covering—the African continent, the article assesses awareness towards alternative narratives and news frames, as well as attitudes towards alternative practices and models for journalism. Particular attention is paid to ideas and responses regarding Peace Journalism as an alternative model for reporting.

War–peace journalism in the Turkish press: Countries come to the brink of war

The news coverage of the Turkish and Syrian jet planes that were hit by Turkey’s and Syria’s armies is being researched in Turkish newspapers. Stories about the Turkish jet that was hit by the Syrian army in June 2012 and the Syrian jet that was hit by Turkish army in March 2014 have been analysed as a peace journalism model. This study utilizes framing analysis to examine how Turkish newspapers covered two events (jet planes) and identify what frames ‘they’ tend to use. The general tendency of the Turkish press is towards accusation, blame and the creation of suspicion of the ‘other’ side. In this study, we find that the Turkish press is strongly affected by ownership structure, political pressure, regulations, mainstream news values and market conditions. All these factors determine journalists’ usage of dominant frames on their front pages in conflict situations.

The Safety of Al Jazeera English Journalists in Egypt

The imprisonment of Al Jazeera English (AJE) journalists (Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian national Mohamed Fahmy, and Egyptian Baher Mohamed) in Egypt between 2013 and 2015 reflected the recent ten agenda items of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) about the safety of journalists (Poyhtari & Berger, 2015). Building on the relevance of press theories (Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1956; Curran, 2002) as well as developmental and peace journalism (Carpentier, 2007 cited in Cammaerts & C arpentier, 2007) as a theoretical basis, this paper examines the twenty-one month reportage of the AJE case by public broadcasters such as AJE, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It assesses whether the UNESCO’s Safety of Journalist agenda was covered. A “mixed method” (Kolmer, 2008), quantitative and qualitative content analysis research design, was used. Four hundred and ninety-five articles from the three broadcasters’ coverage were analyzed in two stages which overall began from the day (December 29, 2013) of arrest of the AJE trio until a week after Fahmy’s and Mohamed’s final release (September 30, 2015). The analysis found that items noted in the UNESCO’s Safety of Journalists’ agenda were not overtly spelt out in the coverage by the broadcasters but cloaked under a wider press freedom framework that hung over the case. Findings also reflected the critical need to address the safety of journalists in Egypt and other parts of Africa, despite the democratic awaking of the 2011 Arab Spring.

Beyond peace journalism

This article presents a general framework for deconstructing and classifying conflict news narratives. This framework, based on a nuanced and contextual approach to analyzing media representations of conflict actors and events, addresses some of the weaknesses of existing classification schemes, focusing in particular on the dualistic approach of the peace journalism model. Using quantitative content analysis, the proposed framework is then applied to the journalistic coverage in the Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Iran's nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war. The coverage is examined in three leading news outlets – Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Ynet – over a six-month period. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article identifies four characteristic types of narratives in the examined coverage. These include two journalistic narratives of violence: one inward-looking, ethnocentric narrative, and one outward-looking narrative focusing on outgroup actors and victims; and two political-diplomatic narratives: one interactional, and one outward-looking. In addition to highlighting different constellations of points of view and conflict measures in news stories, the identified clusters also challenge several assumptions underlying existing models, such as the postulated alignment between elite/official actors and violence frames

Peace journalism: Theoretical and methodological developments

Peace journalism: Theoretical and methodological developments