Framing the Colombian Peace Process: Between Peace and War Journalism

ABSTRACT

This bilingual, cross-national study analyzes stories about the Colombian peace process that were engaged with on social media to understand the use of peace and war framing in news reporting. Using content analysis as a method, this paper operationalized Galtung’s classification of peace journalism and follows framing methodological adjustments and improvements suggested by previous peace journalism scholars. Results show that, even during peace talks, media use war narratives more often than peace frames, and social media users amplify more war than peace-oriented content. Proximity to conflict also was shown to be an important factor, as Colombian media used more war frames than foreign media. These findings are relevant for their implications about how national media consistently emphasized a war frame that social media users amplified, which we argue has implications for how citizens viewed the Colombian peace process, ultimately potentially influencing the decision to vote down the referendum.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict reporting
• framing
• peace journalism
• proximity
• social media
• peace negotiation
• news sharing

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Significant events occurred during the timespan selected to collect the news articles. First, the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla announced a permanent cease-fire on June 22nd, 2016. Second, on August 24th both parties reached a final peace agreement in Havana after four years of talks. Third, on September 26, the peace accord was sealed in an official ceremony in Cartagena. Finally, on October 2, 2016, citizens narrowly rejected the peace agreement in a plebiscite convened by the government.

2 The war frame indicators are: Here and now, visible effects of violence, elite sources and voices, two-party conflict reporting, problems and differences, labeling parties as good or bad, victimizing language, demonizing language, and emotive language.

3 The peace frame indicators are: Causes and consequences, invisible effects of violence, common people as sources, multi-party conflict reporting, solutions and similarities, not-labeling parties as good or bad, non-victimizing language, unifying language, and non-emotive language.

4 Coders were trained to identify demonizing words or devices when describing actors, the peace process, and the ongoing conflict between political parties (e.g., backward, uncivilized, threatening, vicious, cruel, brutal, barbaric savage, ruthless, villains, irrational, cruel, despotic, untrusted, heartless, narco-terrorists, criminals, mockers, despotic, traitor, liar, unpatriotic, effeminate, etc.).