Media Effects During Violent Conflict: Evaluating Media Contributions to Peace Building

This document discusses the potential for traditional media to contribute to peace in a conflict environment. The author states that "[t]raditional media effects theories have an enormous potential to provide theoretical support for the study of media contributions to peace in a conflict environment." He warns against the assumption that "if media can motivate people to engage in conflict, they must also have the power to exert influence in the opposite direction, thus promoting peace." He synthesises media effects literature, examines the various types of media messages, audiences, and conditions in the environment on which media have the most powerful impact in times of conflict, and proposes ways to most effectively employ mass media in promoting peace.

Three media projects are described as projects deemed to be successful media implementations in a conflict environment:
1) The McCann Erickson advertising agency's campaign marketing the acceptance of the 1998 Good Friday agreement to settle the conflict in Northern Ireland.
2) The Israeli Palestinian version of Sesame Street, Rechov SumSum/Shar'a SimSim, about which a 2002 study found improved levels of tolerance in child viewers.
3) Studio Ijambo (Wise Words), founded in Burundi in 1995 to contribute to peace development in Rwanda and Burundi by radio.

The author seeks more evidence of a causal link between media promoting peace and the facilitation of peaceful outcomes. The document reviews theories of the reception of various media messages, including those based on the needs of audiences in conflict situations in which the need for information, hence attention to media, increases. As this need for information is increased by the uncertainty in conflict situations, the power of media as the main agenda setter increases, in part due to its power to summarise overarching developments in the conflict. The opportunity for reporting two sides of the conflict increases. However, audience characteristics, e.g. level of education, contribute to their reception of one-sided or two-sided messages. Predisposition and a low level of education contribute to audience receptivity of one-sided messages, but in post-conflict situations, the importance of presenting two-sided arguments or multiple opinions increases, according to the author. Opinion leaders, such as journalists, community leaders, and local politicians, are needed to present the multiplicity of opinion. Further, though information may be acquired through media, attitude change is not necessarily the result when preconceptions interfere with how message content is received. Cognitive knowledge may be the only result. This, the author points out, is in agreement with social learning theory, which states that people learn best from behaviour that they understand to be beneficial, rather than from increased knowledge.


The author cites studies of the effect of the conflict environment on the audience reception of media messages. Insecurity, according to the study, increases the audience uptake of media. However, conflict circumstances often lead to a dominant and monolithic media, reinforcing the opinions of the conquerors and silencing minorities. Thus, the author recommends building a media system saturated with images and messages of the benefits of a peaceful society which also increases the messages of new and marginalised voices. The author emphasises the effect of "form" over "message", suggesting that media representing all sides and opinions in a conflict and post-conflict environment promotes the potential of reconciliation and acceptance of a diversity of ideas.


The document describes two strategies concerning message content: suppressing nationalist or inflammatory message content in conflict situations; and increasing messages promoting peaceful solutions and conflict cessation. Examples of the former occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia, but they have ethical implications that are controversial. Hence, the author recommends further study of the potential of the latter. He cites the ability of television, specifically, to create a "symbolic environment" through its images that might offer potential for modelling attitude change toward peaceful society through cumulative and consistent long-range message exposure, or "mainstreaming", to override differences in perspectives that may be conflictive.


Further, the document cites an effect called "priming", which can activate an idea or behaviour in the audience, e.g. evidence from studies showing that witnessing violence increases the likelihood of aggressive behaviour. The author reasons that, based on this evidence, pro-social behaviour may also be primed. In another model, media agenda setting is described as giving an audience a shared agenda through the influence of journalists and politicians. This can include the social responsibility role of the press, exemplified here as the editorialising that was done in favour of participation in a peace process in Northern Ireland in 1998. The author states his certainty that the journalistic "agenda of social responsibility could facilitate the agenda of peace development."


Among the conclusions discussed regarding the complexity of media influence on behaviour, actions, and opinions is the determination that attitude, belief, and opinion formation depend, in part, but not exclusively, upon the media type, form, source, environment, and timing. Hence, as stated here, the role of media is not to replace social organisations and institutions, but rather to assist and support them in conveying messages in forms that contribute to the formation of attitudes and opinions and to the increase of knowledge and awareness.