Somalia: Creating Space for Fresh Approaches to Peacebuilding

jessica brandwein
9 Hammond, “Framing Post
Cold-War Conflicts”: p. 6.
10 According to John Paul
Lederach, conflict transformation
“proposes an effort to maximize
the achievement of constructive,
mutually beneficial processes
and outcomes [of a conflict].”
(Lederach, John Paul, Preparing
for Peace: Conflict Transformation
Across Cultures, (Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press, 1995),
19).
11 Galtung, Johan, “High Road,
Low Road: Charting the Course
for Peace Journalism”, Track Two,
7, 4 (1998): p. 3.
12 Shinar, Dov, “Why Not More
Peace Journalism? The Coverage
of the 2006 Lebanon War in
Canadian and Israeli Media,”
Peace Journalism in Times of War,
ed. Susan Dente Ross and Majid
Tehranian, New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers, 2009):
p. 9.
13 Jakobsen, Peter, “Focus on
the CNN Effect Misses the Point:
The Real Media Impact on
Conflict Management is Invisible
and Indirect”, Journal of Peace
Research, 37, 2 (2000): p. 138.
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The emphasis that the media puts on certain aspects of the conflict over others
influences our understanding of the situation, and implicitly proposes specific
solutions over others. For example, internal conflicts can be framed in a variety
of ways, including as civil wars, genocides, ethnic conflicts or humanitarian
crises, each of which implies certain assumptions about the causes of the conflict
and the responsibilities of the international community. Suggesting that an
internal conflict is an “ethnic conflict” often implies to readers that there is a
reified division between the warring groups based on primordial identities. In
this case, intervention may be viewed as futile, as it will not change the underlying
ethnic identities that perpetuated the conflict. On the other hand, framing
that same conflict as a genocide or a humanitarian crisis suggests that intervention
is both legitimate and potentially legally or morally mandated to stop the
unnecessary suffering of the innocent. 9
Peace journalism
Peace journalism refers to Johan Galtung’s theory that the media should move
beyond its focus on polarizing descriptions of war and violence to instead emphasize
conflict transformation. 10 With regards to the media, war journalism uses
a zero-sum analysis of violence that villainises one or both sides of the fighting,
while peace journalism seeks to “depolarize by showing the black and white of all
sides, and to deescalate by highlighting peace and conflict resolution as much as
violence”. 11 This dynamic of war journalism is particularly evident in the coverage
of the warring parties in Somalia. Specifically, the consistent negative framing of
al-Shabaab in much of the media is at odds with a peace journalism approach,
which would provide a more nuanced view of the organization, emphasizing
potential avenues for engagement with it.
In addition to providing depolarizing and nuanced coverage of the warring
parties, peace journalism may highlight challenges faced by ongoing peace processes,
potentially even offering solutions or areas of common ground that have
been downplayed in national dialogues. It also involves focusing on the pre- and
post-violence phases of conflict, emphasizing preventive and long-term peacebuilding
opportunities. 12
Generally, the media does a relatively poor job at attaining the standards of
peace journalism, particularly the desired focus on pre- and post-violence. In the
era of 24-hour media coverage, outlets strive for the most sensational story that
will sell newspapers and pull in viewers. These stories tend to be those of violence
and suffering more so than recovery from violence or peacebuilding efforts.
“Media focus on humanitarian suffering in the violence phase has contributed to
a channeling of funds from long-term development projects aimed at preventing
conflict … to short-term emergency relief.” 13 Furthermore, the continuous portrayal
of negative frames focused on violence and suffering lends the impression that
the conflict is intractable, making it less likely that there will be foreign political
support for either international or local peacebuilding activities. In this lens,
international media should be analyzed not only according to its negative frames