Thread by @JohanGaltung

1/.
12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

1of12: #Contextomy = Ignoring chronic conflict-syndromes preceding outbreaks of violence + focusing on violence as "irrational" & "ex nihilo" + showing it's endemic without exposing its underlying, unresolved contradictions&polarizations.

2/.
12 Ways Media Misreport Violence
2of12: #Dualismjg: reducing the number of parties in a conflict to 2, when more stakeholders are involved upward&downward. Media focus on scandals & tragedy often ignores covert & overt "external" foreign governments & transnational companies.

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12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

3of12: #Manichaeism = qualified #dualismjg = portraying 1 side as exlusively good, infallible, innocent & without blemish while demonizing the other as exclusively evil, devoid of any constructive qualities,ignoring evidence to the contrary.

4/. 12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

4of12: #Armageddonjg: articles present violence as inevitable! & as non-relational in its causation & sometimes even as socially uncaused.This systematically omits how different interactions could very well have avoided the violence at hand.

5/. 12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

5of12: #Atomism: Focus on individual acts of violence & avoiding structural, relational, interactive, procedural, historical exchange-causes as poverty, exclusion, government neglect, military or police repression & protracted grievances.

6/. 12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

6of12: #ConfusedReductionism: Reducing the scope of analysis to focus ONLY on the conflict arena (= battlefield or location of violent incidents) but not on the actors, forces & factors outside of that immediate arena fanning the violence.

7/. 12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

7of12: #ReductionistEmpathy Excluding & omitting from the focus of reporting, those that are bereaved & how they process the unfolding violence, thus never predicting the seeds of future acts of revenge or why spirals of violence harden.

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12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

8of12:#Escalationblindness: Failure to explore the causes & factors of escalation in an unfolding conflict; (violent or not) AND blindness to the impact of media coverage itself on the unfolding conflict. See: #escalationmodeljg for help.

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12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

9of12:#Partialism. Failure to explore grand strategy, longitudinal aspirations, the material goals & cultural values of outside interventionists, especially of big powers.

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12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

10of12: #ZeroPeaceLiteracy = Near complete ignorance of conflict resolution techniques for #PeaceBuilding as developed by & in applied peace studies since 1959. Journalists: PLEASE study peace-prerequisites & check politics accordingly.

11/.

12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

11of12:#CeaseFireFixation = Reporting ceasefires in only 2 keys:
1. As a dishonest ploy for the "evil" party to rest, recover, return.
2. Confusing Ceasefires with "Mission Accomplished" or with "Peace" when they are at BEST #negativepeace.

in statu nascendi.

12/12 Ways Media Misreport Violence

#Traumaconciliation blindness:
Conflicts explode violently, if collective prejudicial tropes aren't disconfirmed empirically & psycho-social wounds, fatalism or suppressed aggressivity from past #violencesjg aren't healed nonviolently.

End.