Research Articles
Beyond peace journalism: Reclassifying
conflict narratives in the Israeli news media
Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt
Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Thomas Hanitzsch
Institute of Communication Studies and Media Research, LMU Munich
Rotem Nagar
Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract
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 con-
flict 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
Keywords
narratives, news, peace journalism
The news media constitute a decisive arena where narra-
tives about conflict, war, and peace are constructed and
disseminated to the public. Despite considerable scho-
larly attention to the journalistic coverage of conflicts,
surprisingly few analytical frameworks allow a compre-
hensive classification of conflict coverage, particularly
in connection with its potential contribution to conflict
escalation/maintenance and de-escalation/resolution.
Peace journalism, a notion originating from the work
of Johan Galtung as ‘a normative mode of responsible
and conscientious media coverage of conflict, that aims
at contributing to peacemaking, peacekeeping, and
changing the attitudes of media owners, advertisers,
professionals and audiences towards war and peace’ (Shi-
nar, 2007: 2), has emerged as a prominent classification
framework within journalism studies and peace research.
Galtung distinguished between two distinct modes of
conflict reporting: war/violence journalism and peace
journalism. War/violence journalism treats conflict as a
zero-sum game and is propaganda-oriented, elite-
oriented, and victory oriented. Peace/conflict journalism,
by way of contrast, has a win-win orientation and is
Corresponding author:
keren.tw@mail.huji.ac.il
Journal of Peace Research
2016, Vol. 53(2) 151–165
ª The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343315609091
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truth-oriented, people-oriented, and solution-oriented
(Galtung, 1998, 2006). This framework has been oper-
ationalized in a large and growing number of studies,
most of which have demonstrated a dominance of war
frames in the news (de Fransius, 2014; Lee & Maslog,
2005; Shinar, 2009; Workneh, 2011).
However, the framework of peace journalism has also
invited much criticism. It was criticized for its simplistic
epistemological assumptions, gross dualism, advocacy
orientation, normative grounding, and insufficient atten-
tion to the various constraints that shape the reality of
news production (Hanitzsch, 2007a; Loyn, 2007;
Wolfsfeld, 2004). Peace researchers have usefully
addressed some of these concerns at the conceptual,
empirical, and practical levels (Kempf & Shinar, 2014;
Lynch, 2013; Ottosen, 2010; Shinar, 2007). In this arti-
cle, we specifically take issue with peace journalism’s
dualism of war versus peace journalism as the conceptual
lens through which conflict coverage is empirically and
critically examined.
The primary purpose of this article is to advance a
nuanced classification framework that deconstructs con-
flict news narratives while addressing some of the weak-
nesses of existing classification schemes, in particular the
peace journalism framework. For this purpose, we draw
on conflict research in social and political psychology,
political communication, and journalism studies, together
with a conceptualization of news stories as narratives (Bell,
1991; Bird & Dardenne, 2009; Tenenboim-Weinblatt,
2008). We demonstrate and assess the applicability and
utility of this classification framework in an exploratory
manner in the context of the journalistic coverage in
Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Iran’s
nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war.
Conflict news stories as narratives
All conflicts, suggests Cobb (2013: 3), are ‘a function of
the stories that are told, retold, and foretold about the
conflict’. Following the ‘narrative turn’ in social studies
(Czarniawska, 2004), narrative approaches have become
increasingly popular in conflict studies (Cobb, 2013;
Gergen & Gergen, 2006; Maoz, 2011). Spanning across
a range of contexts, from individual storytelling in inter-
group encounters (Bar-On & Kassem, 2004; Ron &
Maoz, 2013) to schoolbook texts and other educational
settings (Adwan, Bar-Tal & Wexler, forthcoming;
Bekerman & Zembylas, 2012), scholars have examined
the characteristics and effects of conflict narratives.
According to these inquiries, such narratives can
contribute to reinforcing conflict-supporting beliefs and
the de-legitimization of the ‘other’, but can also contrib-
ute to conflict resolution and reconciliatory efforts, by
opening opportunities for dialogue, empathy, and sup-
port for peaceful solutions (Bar-Tal, 2013; Bekerman
& Zembylas, 2012; Cobb, 2013; Maoz, 2011).
News narratives have largely remained outside of
these narrative-focused investigations in conflict studies,
in part due to a more individual-psychological orienta-
tion of this scholarship, and in part due to the common
view of news stories as a realm of information on current
events rather than storytelling. However, as communica-
tion and journalism scholars have long argued,
journalists can be viewed as prominent storytellers in
contemporary society, and news coverage, correspond-
ingly, as a form of narrative (Roeh, 1989; Tuchman,
1976). A narrative approach to news suggests that the
news media do not merely convey information but also
participate in the construction, maintenance, and disse-
mination of cultural narratives, which refer to the
group’s myths, values, identity, and view of the world
(Bird & Dardenne, 2009; Carey, 1989; Lule, 2001).
These narratives extend from the present to the past and
the future, linking contemporary events to prior events
and collective memories, as well as to future scenarios
and courses of action (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2013;
Tenenboim-Weinblatt & Neiger, 2015). As such,
conflict-related news narratives play an important role
in the public discourse on conflict (Baden, 2014) and
in the social web of conflict narratives within this dis-
course (Bar-Tal, 2013).
Narratives, in our understanding, are conceptually
different from frames, a related and more popular con-
cept in studies of news content in general and conflict
coverage in particular. Framing is commonly understood
as the process through which selected information is
embedded into a coherent interpretative framework
(Baden, 2014; Entman, 1993; Gamson & Modigliani,
1987). The resulting frames differ from narratives in two
major aspects that are relevant to our framework. First,
frames are less accommodating than narratives. They
are ‘ central organizing ide as’ (Gamson & Modigliani,
1987), whic h provide select ive interpretations and
evaluations for some specific situation/problem.
1
In
contrast, narratives can potentially (though not
1
Our discussion of frames refers to issue-specific frames, which are
also the focus of most studies on news framing of conflicts. Our
conceptual analysis does not apply to the notion of generic frames
(de Vreese, 2005).
152 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 53(2)
necessarily) include a wide range of voices, events, and
viewpoints (Czarniawska, 2004). C apturing this com-
plexity (or lack thereof) is important in the context of
this study, as it connects to narrative a pproaches to con-
flict resolution/transformation, which emphasize the
need for ‘opening’ conflict narratives to include differ-
ent voices and viewpoints (Bekerman & Zembylas ,
2012; Cobb, 2013).
Second, frames do not have the temporal qualities
that are at the core of common definitions of narratives.
Narratives can be understood as ‘discursive representa-
tions of time-ordered sequences of events’ (Baden,
2014: 11; see also Abbott, 2008; Rimmon-Kenan,
2002), and as such they often connect conflict-related
events from different points in time (from historical
events to future projections; see Bar-Tal, 2013). Frames
may also include past-oriented attribution of responsibil-
ity and future-oriented treatment recommendation (Ent-
man, 1993), but they function within a restricted time
span, focusing on specific events that need to be coher-
ently framed. Narratives can thus be viewed as higher
discursive constructs, which contain and connect specific
frames (Fisher, 1997). Within this framework, conflict
narratives link frames into a chain of connected events
(a plot) and assign specific roles to important conflict
actors (Baden, 2014).
Existing classifications of conflict news
Scholarship on conflict news coverage is abundant, offer-
ing various perspectives and entry points into the subject
matter (for a useful review, see Cottle, 2006). As noted
above, this article is particularly concerned with the con-
ceptual dualism of war versus peace journalism as a
dominant approach to account for different ways of
framing and narrating conflicts in the news. Therefore,
the focus in the review is on key classifications in the
peace journalism framework, and selected additional
scholarship which links to these aspects. The dualism
in the peace journalism approach is strongly spelt out
in Galtung’s (1998: 261) heavily cited framework that
suggests conflict coverage is either ‘peace-oriented’ or
‘war-oriented’, ‘truth-oriented’ or ‘propaganda-oriented’,
‘people-oriented’ or ‘elite-oriented’, and ‘solution-
oriented’ vs. ‘victory-oriented’. To be fair, Galtung him-
self concedes that most media are ‘in-between’ (p. 262),
but this is not how his framework has been applied to the
realities of conflict reporting (de Fransius, 2014; Lee &
Maslog, 2005; Workneh, 2011). While some of these
dualisms were largely discarded in operationalizations
of Galtung’s framework – in particular the truth versus
propaganda distinction – others, as well as the general
framework of peace versus war journalism, have
remained relatively intact.
One such fundamental distinction is between elite
and non-elite actors, with war/violence journalis m
being ‘elite-oriented’ and peace journalism being ‘peo-
ple-oriented’ (Galtung, 20 06: 1). In studies which
operationalized the pe ace journalism framework, t he
indicator of elite orientation has been central in clas-
sifying a news story as belonging to ‘war journalism’.
Based on the assumption that ‘the more the coverage
relies on elite and official sources, the mor e it displ ay s
a tendency towards war’ (Workneh, 2011: 46), exam-
inations of the media coverage of di verse confli cts
consistently found that reliance on elite/official
sources was one of the most salient indicators o f war
journalism (e.g. Lee & Maslog, 2005; Shinar, 2009;
Workneh, 2011). In studies examining the level of
press independence, political communication scholars
similarly found a dominance of g over nment sources
and frames in c onflict coverage (Bennett, Lawrence
& Livingston, 2007; Robinson et al., 2009). Indeed,
the general tendency of the n ews media to rely on
official/elite sources (Bennett, 1990; Gans, 1979)
seems to be even more pronounced in con flict sit ua-
tions, where demands for p atriotis m and authori tative
information move to the forefront (Cottle, 2006;
Zandberg & Neiger, 2005).
However, the elite vs. non-elite actor classification
mechanism, particularly in the context of peace journal-
ism, raises several difficulties. First, it disregards the con-
text in which official sources are used. Are all references
to official sources equal? Should calls for violence and
peace by official sources be classified under the same
category within a peace journalism framework? Second,
it disregards the salience of the references within the
story. Should the appearance of elite or non-elite actors
in the headlines have the same weight as a passing refer-
ence to them at the end of the story (often out of a need
for balance)? Third, it obscures important distinctions
within the non-elite group. For example, should foot sol-
diers or armed rebels be coded the same way as ordinary
citizens or NGO members in the context of peaceful ver-
sus violent narratives?
Another actor-based distinction that is central to
peace journalism concerns the representation of different
sides of the conflict. In Galtung’s (1998: 261) frame-
work, the subcategories of ‘‘‘us–them’’ journalism’, ‘voice
for ‘‘us’’’, and ‘dehumanization of ‘‘them’’’ are defining
features of war journalism, while peace journalism is
associated with ‘giving voice to all parties’ and
Tenenboim-Weinblatt et al. 153
‘humanization of all sides’. As suggested by Zandberg &
Neiger (2005), journalists can be seen as serving two
masters, through being members of ‘contradicting com-
munities’ – the professional and the national. While the
professional community adheres to values such as objec-
tivity, neutrality, balance, and criticism, the national
community demands solidarity. In times of crisis and
war, the pendulum often swings toward a more
patriotic-ethnocentric mode of coverage (Cottle, 2006;
Schudson, 2002), resulting in a positive representation
of ‘our’ ethno-national group, and marginalization or
demonization of the ‘other’ group (Carter, Thomas &
Ross, 2011; Liebes, 1997; Steuter & Wills, 2010). Yet,
recent studies suggest that during the 21st century,
media representations of conflicts around the world tend
to give more visibility to the other side in conflict
(Kampf & Liebes, 2013), and to use non-domestic
sources more generally (Hayes & Guardino, 2010). For
instance, in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian con-
flict, Israeli media started giving more visibility and voice
to Palestinian actors (Balmas, Sheafer, & Wolfsfeld,
2015; Kampf & Liebes, 2013). Notably, these new
trends have been primarily documented in the context
of the level rather than the nature of the representation.
Media representations of victims in a conflict are par-
ticularly important in the context of us–them construc-
tions. While war journalism, in Galtung’s (1998: 261)
terms, focuses on the victims and the suffering on ‘our’
side, peace journalism emphasizes the ‘suffering all over’.
And indeed, research points to a clear difference between
the representation of ‘our’ victims and ‘others’’ victims.
Wolfsfeld, Frosh & Awabdy (2008) argue that when
one’s own citizens are hurt, the news media employ a
‘victims mode’ of reporting – which personalizes the vic-
tim – but when injuries and loss of life on the other side
are inflicted by the own group, the news media tend to
use a ‘defensive mode’ of reporting, by depersonalizing
the victims. At the same time, there is evidence for a
greater focus on victims on all sides of conflicts in con-
temporary news coverage, due to profound changes in
the global media environment (Kampf & Liebes,
2013; Orgad & Seu, 2014).
The countervailing trends in the representation of dif-
ferent conflict parties, on top of the tension between pro-
fessional and national loyalties of journalists, leave open
questions as to the classification of different dimensions
of the respective representations and their interplay. For
instance: does greater visibility necessarily mean more
positive portrayals? And where do we locate negative por-
trayals of the ingroup in relation to peace versus war
journalism?
With regard to classifications of reported, conflict-
related events, the peace journalism framework
focuses on t wo major categories: events associated
with violence and war, and those associated with
peace initiatives and processes (Galtung, 1998,
2006). The normative expectation is that instead of
the pre valent emphasis in the news on violent events,
the news media would give more emphasis to negoti-
ations and peace initiatives (e.g. Galtung, 2006; Shi-
nar, 2009). This approach was criticized for its
advocacy orientation (Loyn, 2007), a s well as for pay-
ing insuffi cient attention to the various constraints
and values that shape news production (Hanitzsch,
2007a; Wolfsfeld, 2004). Furthermore, this classifica-
tion does not only obscure the likely coexistence of
the two orientations in news stories (as in reports
on poli tical debates about the pre ferred course of
action), but also the existence of other, middle-
ground realms of con flict management, such as polit-
ical and economic p ressures.
Finally, a key distinction in the peace journalism
framework is made between a focus of war journalism
on the here-and-now versus a focus of peace journalism
on the causes and consequences of the events, including
historical and cultural contexts (Galtung, 1998, 2006).
Indeed, as in the case of reliance on official sources, a
focus on here-and-now events was found to be one of the
most salient indicators of war journalism (Lee & Maslog,
2005; Shinar, 2009). However, the social meaning of
context and consequences may depend on the context.
Collective memory of past traumas and rivals’ conflicting
versions of the historical causes of conflicts can be detri-
mental to conflict resolution (see Bar-Tal, 2013). Simi-
larly, future scenarios which foreground violence or
negate the possibility of peace are not necessarily condu-
cive to conflict resolution. The news media, which serve
as narrators of the present, agents of collective memory
(Zelizer & Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2014), and shapers
of future scenarios and agendas (Neiger, 2007;
Tenenboim-Weinblatt & Neiger, 2015), can construct
both positive and negative longitudinal narratives (Cot-
tle, 2006).
In summation, peace journalism and other related fra-
meworks offer valuable distinctions and important
insights regarding the narration and framing of conflict
news stories. At the same time, by often glossing over rel-
evant subdistinctions, the context in which specific con-
tent elements are positioned within the news story, and
the interplay between the different elements, they do not
sufficiently account for the complexity of conflict
coverage.
154 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 53(2)
Towards a new classification approach: An
actor-event framework
The classification framework advanced by this article is
based on a comprehensive deconstruction of conflict-
related news narratives (see Figure 1). Following a defini-
tion of narratives as discursive representations of
sequences of events, which commonly focus on the
actions of specific actors (see Abbott, 2008; Baden,
2014; Rimmon-Kenan, 2002), we categorize conflict
coverage based on the depicted actors and events – the
two building blocks of any narrative. The proposed
framework attempts to address the weaknesses identified
above in existing approaches by offering more complex
categories and more nuanced distinctions in relation to
the actors and the conflict-related events depicted in
news stories. Furthermore, this framework suggests a
contextual approach, based on a compositional logic.
Following the criticisms discussed above, we argue that
what is important is not only if specific dimensions are
present or not, but how different dimensions are linked
to one another and grouped together within specific nar-
ratives. For instance, which conflict actors are portrayed
in the context of different types of events? What is the
interplay between different dimensions of actors’ repre-
sentation, and which realms of events are grouped
together?
Actors in conflict coverage
For conflict actors, the classification framework first
distinguishes between ingroup and outgroup actors.
This distinction, which is fundamental in narrative
approaches to conflict (Bar-On, 2008; Bar-Tal, 2013;
Bekerman & Zembylas, 2012; Ron & Maoz, 2013),
allows us to evaluate the representation of different sides
of the conflict in news narratives, while taking into
account the position of the examined news media in rela-
tion to the conflict (a dimension which is often ignored
in studies employing the peace journalism framework).
Within this framework, ingroup actors are those who
belong to the country/group where the news outlet
operates.
In both ingroup and outgroups, there is a wide array
of actors who populate conflict coverage (Kampf &
Liebes, 2013): a sole classification into establishment
vs. non-establishment actors does not do full justice to
the more complex realities of conflict. Thus, we identify
four categories of subgroups: (1) establishment actors,
consisting of political officials as well as other state offi-
cials (including the high command of the army); (2)
armed forces, consisting of soldiers, police, armed
resistance groups, and other militants; (3) civil society
actors, consisting of members of conflict-related NGOs
and other private organizations (who appear in the news
story in association with their membership in the respec-
tive organization); and (4) lay publics, consisting of ordi-
nary citizens and other private individuals, including
victims of violence.
Our classification framework evaluates a range of tex-
tual dimensions in relation to the actors portrayed. We
examine (a) the diversity and visibility of the different
types of actors; (b) characterization; and (c) the level of
information about victims.
Diversity and visibility. This dimension addresses the
range of actors from the different subgroups that appear
in the news narrative (diversity), and the level of atten-
tion given to each subgroup in the story (visibility). Giv-
ing voice to a range of actors is a normative demand that
links to the peace journalism framework (Galtung, 2006)
and narrative approaches to conflict resolution (Cobb,
2013), as well as to journalistic norms (see Baden &
Springer, 2014). At the same time, even when different
types of actors are represented in the story, some actors
are given more prominence through journalistic quoting
practices and editorial selections (Dor, 2005). Thus, vis-
ibility in the suggested framework reflects the extent to
which different subgroups are present in different textual
elements of the news story, from headlines and pictures
to quotes and descriptions in the main text.
Characterization of ingroup and outgroup actors. As
argued above, a systematic distinction should be made
between the level and type of representation of conflict
Conflict news narratives
Conflict actors
Distinction between ingroup
and outgroup actors and
between four types of
subgroups:
Establishment
Armed forces
Civil society
Lay publics
Visibility and diversity
Characterization
Identified victims
Conflict events
In four major realms:
Violence and military action
Political and economic
measures
Ceasefire and avoidance of
violence
Dialogue, gestures, peace
negotiations
Salience of event
realms
Supported course of
action
Attribution of
responsibility
Figure 1. Classification framework
Tenenboim-Weinblatt et al. 155
