It’s Not Just About Afrin
The Role of Diaspora Communities,
Newspaper Ideology and Individual Journalists
in Peace Journalism Practice
Elif Kılık ID: 11188812 Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Research Master’s Programme in Communication Science Supervisor: Dr. Knut de Swert
Abstract
Since peace journalism was first coined by the Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung in 1970s, it raised significant discussions about the media representation of international conflicts. Many studies evaluated the definitive and normative aspects of peace journalism and analyzed the news to explore its practice across countries and conflicts. However, to date, limited research
investigated various micro, macro and meso level factors that may facilitate or restrain the practice of peace journalism. Focusing on a recent case, quantitative content analyses were conducted on the Dutch, British and Swedish newspaper coverage of the Afrin conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish authorities. In addition, journalists’ professional perspectives were introduced through interviews. Using the Hierarchy of Influences model, the presence of conflicting diaspora communities in the audience, the political stance of newspapers, and the perceptions of individual journalists were considered as the different level factors that may influence how the conflict was represented in the news. Findings reveal that the peace journalism frames were used the most in Britain while the Swedish coverage involved the most number of war frames among the three countries. Moreover, in Sweden, where the Kurdish diaspora is well-organized and larger than the Turkish diaspora, more Kurdish official claims were present in the coverage compared to the other countries. Furthermore, the leftist newspapers in the sample gave more space to the Kurdish claims and sources than the rightist newspapers. Surprisingly small number of references to the diaspora communities were detected in the news about Afrin which reveals that news media attention remains solely on the conflict zones rather than the
consequences of the conflict which transcend its geographical borders.
Because a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies were applied, the length of this thesis exceeds the 7500 word limit.
“Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.”
John F. Kennedy (September 1963, New York)
Thousands of people gathered in various European cities in the first quarter of 2018 to protest the conflict in Afrin between the Turkish state and the autonomous Kurdish authorities in the region (Perraudin & Slawson, 2018 March 11; Wiklund, 2018 January 27). The conflict began when the Turkish army launched the operation “Olive Branch” on January 20, 2018 and lasted until March 18, 2018 when the Turkish-backed forces claimed control of the Afrin region. Throughout the conflict, many Kurdish communities in Europe organized demonstrations to protest the actions of the Turkish state. Some of these demonstrations led to confrontations with the Turkish communities protesting the Kurdish militia (Markus, 2018 February 3), which intensified the long-standing tension between the Turkish and Kurdish communities, even between those in Europe, far away from the conflict zone.
The conflict between the Turks and the Kurds is recognized and widely debated not only in and along the Turkish borders but also in many European countries where large groups of Turkish and Kurdish diaspora communities inhabit. It is one of the critical issues regarding the Turkish accession to the European Union, which Turkey has been criticized for disregarding the rights of the Kurdish minority (Cirlig, 2013 January 31). Moreover, through many Turkish and Kurdish organizations in Europe, the diaspora communities participate in social and political discussions in the host countries (Østergaard‐Nielsen, 2001). Different perspectives and conflicting views on the issue migrated to Europe paralleling the formation of the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora in the region, which eventually led to the involvement of the European public and politicians in the discussions regarding the conflict (Blätte, 2003; Macdonald, 2016
Afrin, as the German national parliament for instance was gathered for a session to discuss about the conflict and its consequences, and criticized the Turkish government (Deutscher Bundestag, 2018 February 1). Unsurprisingly, the Afrin conflict was a significant issue on the agendas of the European public and media, sparkling various discussions about its causes, consequences and the reactions it caused in the diaspora.
For journalists, reporting about international conflicts already is a challenging process as they need to find access to various sources of information, discover the truths beyond the
propaganda of the conflicting parties, and represent the reality accurately if they are to conduct good journalism (Kempf, 2007). The presence of the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora communities in their audiences may constitute an additional challenge for the European journalists reporting about the Afrin conflict. In the host countries, the diaspora communities form an audience group that is interested and motivated to follow the news about their homeland (Dhoest, Nikunen, & Cola, 2013). They consume news through the host and home country media, as part of their process of “bridging and bonding social capital” (Putnam, 2000). They also tend to criticize and opt-out from using the host country media when they perceive and criticize the news about their homeland to be biased (Christiansen, 2004). In addition, the Turkish and the Kurdish
communities in Europe maintain their attachment to the social and political matters in their homeland, and are politically organized to reflect these attachments where they live (Østergaard‐ Nielsen, 2001). Their high level of involvement with the matter and their homelands
differentiates them from other members in the audience and may compel journalists to adjust their coverage about issues related to them to avoid criticism from these communities.
How then should journalists report international conflicts without becoming combatants themselves (Hanitzsch, 2004), displease a significant audience group or cause the conflict related tension to grow? Peace journalism scholars suggest a framework for reporting conflicts which
prioritizes a balanced representation of the stakeholders and emphasizes peaceful resolutions. Peace journalism values the traditional norms of good journalism, i.e. objective and balanced approach, fair representation of all stakeholders in a conflict, and encourages journalists to go beyond these norms and find ways to contribute to the peacemaking process (Benn, 2015; McGoldrick & Lynch, 2000). Although this requires some (extra) effort, it is a worthwhile approach that can be valuable particularly for journalists who cover foreign conflicts to an audience which incorporates distinct groups that are highly involved in the matter, e.g. diaspora communities. Through representation of all stakeholders involved in a conflict, including the diaspora communities themselves, the peace journalist can minimize any criticism of bias towards one side in the conflict.
Aside from its challenges, the presence of diaspora communities may also benefit peace-oriented journalists. Since the diaspora communities involve various groups and wide range of opinions regarding the conflict, they can be valuable sources of diverse information regarding the developments and consequences of the conflict, which journalists otherwise may not have access to. Diverse information about the effects of the conflict is especially important for reporting the conflict with its historical and contextual background, which is a valued norm of peace
journalism (Aslam, 2016; Galtung, 1998). In addition, the presence of diaspora communities can provide journalists an easy access to discussions about the peaceful resolutions of the conflict, which can contribute significantly to the peacemaking processes. Furthermore, the presence of the diaspora communities can benefit journalists to frame the news about the conflict to be relevant to their audiences as part of the news domestication process (Gurevitch, Levy, & Roeh, 1991).
To date, research linking the host country media to the diaspora communities mainly focused on immigrants’ media use behavior (Christiansen, 2004; Dhoest, et al., 2013; Peeters &
d’Haenens, 2005). However, previous studies rarely investigated the presence diaspora communities within the audience in relation to the content of news in the host countries, and focused on the negative representation of immigrant communities in the news media (Schlueter & Davidov, 2011). Literature lacks research about the extent to which diaspora communities are involved in the news making process or influence the news in the countries they inhabit. The main goal of this study therefore is to fill this gap by investigating the news coverage the Afrin conflict in the European news media context where the conflicting diaspora communities form large audience groups. Furthermore, the scope of peace journalism research is extended from its normative discussions to investigations of its potential in facilitating the norms of good
journalism in a diverse audience context. In doing so, the findings of the content analyses are evaluated with the interviews conducted with journalists who wrote about the Afrin conflict to incorporate their professional insights on the phenomena in the study.
As the consequences of international conflicts almost always transcend national borders, their media coverage cannot and should not be limited to the conflict zones and conflicting parties. The line between what is regarded as national and foreign is slowly disappearing, parallel to the immigration of masses as a result of conflicts all over the world. Consequently, new
diaspora communities are likely to emerge in the future, while the existing ones grow. Thus, media scholars need to reconsider the formation of ‘national audiences’ and the diaspora communities within them, when investigating the audience as a social institutional factor
influencing the news making processes. The current study should be considered as an initial step of this investigation which raises various relevant questions for future studies to explore.
Theoretical Background Peace versus War Journalism
Peace journalism was first coined by the Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung in the 1970s as a framework for reporting conflicts that is an alternative to the traditional practice in conflict coverage that resembles war journalism (McGoldrick and Lynch, 2000). Galtung (1998) argues that war journalism represents conflicts as a “zero-sum game” that have one winning and one losing party. On the contrary, peace journalism focuses on peaceful transformation and reports what takes place beyond the conflict, its causes, historical background and consequences. To date, scholarly discussions persist to evaluate the characteristics of peace journalism that differentiates it from traditional good journalism (Benn, 2015). Many definitions of the phenomenon exist, evolving from different perspectives on the practice of good journalism. Lynch (2008) defines peace journalism as finding ways to report a conflict such that it “creates opportunities for society at large to consider and to value non-violent responses to conflict” (p.3). While some scholars emphasize the active role assigned to the peace journalist (Kempf, 2007), others argue that it is a repackaged representation of good journalism practice, referring peace journalism as “old wine in new bottles” (Hanitzsch, 2007a, p.2)
Since peace journalism has an interpretative approach to journalistic practice (Lee & Maslog, 2005), it is often contrasted with the well-established journalistic principle of objectivity (Hanitzsch, 2004, 2007a). Objectivity is the most respected and frequently quoted norm in journalism (Hanitzsch et al., 2011; Weaver, & McCombs, 1980) and has been referred to as “a beacon which guides the work journalists do” (Skovsgaard, Albæk, & de Vreese, 2011, p. 24). Nevertheless, previous research found that there is no “one single notion of objectivity” but four distinct dimensions that belong to objective journalism: i.e. no subjectivity, balance, hard facts and value judgments (Donsbach & Klett, 1993, p. 65; Skovsgaard et al., 2011). The no
subjectivity dimension focuses on the exclusion of journalists’ personal beliefs and ideals, and prioritizes detached reporting. The balance dimension refers to the balancing of different and conflicting views on an issue when reporting about it. The third dimension, i.e. hard facts, parallels with the assumption there is an objective and observable truth out there which can be mirrored by journalists (Hanitzsch, 2007b) and journalists should go above and beyond the claims made by the sources and report on these facts. Finally, the final dimension, i.e. value judgments, assumes that journalists should make clear the better position in a dispute and side with the marginalized groups instead of being detached from social issues. Skovsgaard et al. (2011) showed that the perception of the objectivity norm is shaped by the journalistic role conceptions among journalists. His research revealed that journalists who assume a passive mirror role prioritize the notion of no subjectivity, acknowledge the importance of balance but refrain from the value judgments dimensions of objectivity. However, journalists who embrace the watchdog role prioritize the balance and representation of hard facts as the primary
dimensions of objective journalism.
The discussions of peace journalism mirror the long-standing division in journalists’ perception of the good and objective practice of journalism. Some scholars advocate for
developing peace indicators that clearly distinguishes peace journalism from objective reporting (Fahmy & Eakin, 2014, p.99), while others discuss that peace journalism itself “is objective, factual reporting” (Benn, 2015, p. 1). The former group sees the mainstream journalism to be biased as a result of journalists’ dedication to news values (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001) and argues that peace journalists should take an active, interventionist approach to correct these biases, linking peace journalism with advocacy journalism (Kempf, 2007). The latter group, including the frequently quoted reporter David Lloyn (2007), rejects this form of
journalism as it contradicts the professional norms of traditional journalism: objectivity and fact-based, detached reporting (Schudson, 1978).
While the different perceptions of peace journalism may seem to generate contradicting definitions of the phenomenon, these perceptions do not have to be mutually exhaustive since the spectrum of peace journalism can equally incorporate its passive and active form (Benn, 2015). Certain assumptions of peace journalism, i.e. balanced representation of the conflict, giving voice to all stakeholders, uncovering the untruths and reporting the facts about the conflict (Galtung, 1998, 2013) require journalists to adhere to the traditional journalistic norm of objectivity. However, the active form of peace journalism requires journalists to go beyond the traditional definitions of good journalism and objective reporting. The peace-, people- and solution-oriented aspects of the phenomenon expects journalists to take an active role in reporting conflicts in a peace promoting manner which emphasize the negative consequences on people and the value of peace (Benn, 2015). Therefore, peace journalism can be regarded as an objective approach to conflict coverage that has some extra requirements for journalists to actively avoid reporting in a manner that serves the continuation rather than the peaceful completion of the conflict.
The extent to which peace journalism is practiced has been investigated through the link between peace journalism and framing (Fahmy & Neumann, 2012; Lee & Maslog, 2005). Entman’s (1993) frequently quoted definition of framing argues that “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (p.52). By selecting certain aspects of a
conflict and reporting it in a certain manner, peace journalists frame conflicts to make peace more salient. Thus, the claim can be made that peace journalism is theoretically supported by the framing theory (Lee & Maslog, 2005, p. 313). Using this link between the two phenomena,
previous research investigated peace journalism in the coverage of international conflicts through content analyses of war and peace frames in news texts (Fahmy & Eakin, 2014; Lee & Maslog, 2005; Maslog, Lee, & Kim, 2006) and in visual representations (Fahmy & Neumann, 2012).
The current study is in line with Benn’s (2015) assumption that peace journalism facilitates its active and passive forms and should not be judged separately from the traditional norms of good journalism. The definition of peace journalism adopted in this research
incorporates the traditional norms of journalism regarding balanced representation and avoidance of bias (Hackett, 1984) and aims to understand the current state of peace journalism practice in this regard. The approach of this study is different than the previous investigations of peace journalism with a quantitative methodological focus since it takes into account the social and professional context that determines the practice of peace journalism. The presence of war and peace frames in the coverage of the Afrin conflict is compared across three countries with a systematic analysis of contextual factors which can account for differential use of these frames.
Analyzing the News Coverage of International Conflicts
Scholars raised doubts about the practicability of peace journalism due to its normative proposals (Grundmann, 2000) or its “unwelcome departure from objectivity” (Hackett, 2006, p.2). The discussions about the practice of peace journalism mainly evolve around its normative nature or its dependence on the journalists’ perceptions of good journalism. However, the news making process is a more complex phenomenon with various determinants that influence its final product, hence peace journalism research should involve the discussions of these determinants. Using the Hierarchy of Influences model (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996, 2014), Hackett (2006) investigated how different factors within each layer of the hierarchy may facilitate or restrain the peace journalism practice.
The Hierarchy of Influences model, introduced by Shoemaker and Reese (1996, 2014), describes the five levels of various factors influencing the news making process, hence shaping the content of news. These five levels of determinants include “the relationships among
individual-level professionals and their routines, the organizations that house them, the institutions into which they cohere, and the social systems within which they operate and help maintain” (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016, p. 390). In understanding the micro, meso and macro level elements shaping the content of the news, inclusive of those about international conflicts,
analyzing the influencing factors in all five levels undoubtedly is crucial. However, due to time and resource constraints, this study limits its focus to the investigation of the social institutional, organizational and individual level elements that can be particularly important for the media coverage of international conflicts.
The social institutional level of analysis in the Hierarchy of Influences model concern the factors that are external to any news organization but belong to the same social system in which these organizations operate. These elements consist of “everything from audiences, powerful sources, public relations, or even technological forces” (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016, p. 402). Previous research investigated the social institutional level factors with a focus on institutions, i.e. state institutions, financial institutions such as advertisers and investors (McManus, 1995) whereas the non-institutional, citizen-level elements have only been recently discussed (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). In this line of research, citizens are considered either as part of organizational structures, i.e. NGOs, social movements, etc. or as the audience. However, there is a lack of research focusing on the presence of different citizen groups within society, e.g.
diaspora communities, and the extent to which they are involved in the news making process or influence the content of the news.
The audience as the news consumer is a prominent factor shaping the news content with influence through advertisers and investors (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016). In the host countries, the diaspora communities are members of the national audience, to which journalists aim to appeal and address. Because the diaspora communities are motivated to consume news about their homeland (Dhoest et al., 2013), their influence as audiences would be particularly relevant for the news about their community, culture or the homeland. Christiansen (2004) revealed that the diaspora audiences turn away from the host country’s national news programs when they perceive the news about the homeland to be inadequate. To avoid criticisms or opt-outs from a prominent group within the audience, journalists may feel the need to adjust their coverage of issues related to the diaspora communities.
Secondly, since the diaspora communities follow the news from the host as well as the home country (Putnam, 2000), and have various contacts in the home country, they are possibly the most informed audience group about the events in the homeland. Thus, they can contribute to the news making processes by providing journalists information they would otherwise have no access to. In addition, journalists who report about diaspora related issues may benefit from these communities as facilitators for the “domestication” of their news content. Domestication of the news refers to the process in which international issues and events are framed by the national news makers to for a “comprehensible, appealing and relevant” representation to the local audiences (Gurevitch et al., 1991). Journalists can use the link between the homeland and the diaspora communities for domestication of their articles, boosting the chance of their story to be selected by the editors for publishing.
With regards to the news about international conflicts, peace journalism can further enhance the benefits brought about by the diaspora communities. Since peace journalists are expected to give a voice to all parties involved in a conflict (Galtung, 1998, 2013), the distinct
social and political groups within a diaspora community can provide journalists with valuable information in this regard. Through involvement of these communities the balanced
representation of the conflict can be achieved, which is an important characteristic of good journalism as well as peace journalism (Benn, 2015). Moreover, to report about the conflict with its consequences, visible and invisible effects on civilians, the peace journalist can make use of the experiences of the diaspora and their personal connections in the conflict zone. Furthermore, the presence of the conflicting diaspora communities as local sources of information may provide great insights to the peace journalists who work towards the peaceful transformation of the
conflict. Therefore, investigating the coverage of international conflicts in relation to the presence of conflicting diaspora communities as audiences can provide great insights for future research into peace journalism.
One should not expect the social institutional level factors to influence all news
organizations operating in the same social system similarly, since there are various organizational level elements that play a role in news making processes. These meso level factors, as described in the Hierarchy of Influences model, involve the ownership issues, rules, regulations and goals that are structured and enforced in a distinct manner in every institution that may have critical impact on their news making process (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). Although Shoemaker and Reese discuss political stance as a factor of the social system and the individual journalist, organizational political stance may also be relevant with regards to the representation of certain sociopolitical issues. For instance, regarding the news framing of climate change, previous research showed content related differences between liberal and conservative, as well as between left and right leaning newspapers (Carvalho, 2007; Dotson et al., 2012). Similar differences can be expected for the coverage of international conflicts based on newspapers’ ideological leanings, particularly for those conflicts that sparkled significant discussions in the national political
agenda. In their analysis of the news about the Iraq War, which occupied the international public, media and political agenda, Vliegenthart and Schröder (2010) found differences in framing and tone between the leftist and rightist newspapers across four countries: the USA, the UK,
Germany and the Netherlands. Similarly, peace journalism scholars established that newspapers which operate within the same cultural and political context use war and peace frames differently (Lee & Maslog, 2005). Nevertheless, these differences are not yet investigated in relation to the differences in newspapers’ political stance.
Finally, the individual journalist level factors in Shoemaker and Reese’s (2014) model consist of journalists’ personal and professional characteristics along with their relationship to larger social structures. Since news is a selective representation of what is going on in the world (Schudson, 2003), what journalists select to report creates a “contingent media reality”
(Hanitzsch, 2007a, p. 3) which shows the relevance of individual level characteristics of journalists for the studies of news making processes. Previous research found that journalists’ individual characteristics and role perceptions influence their understanding of professional norms (Skovsgaard et al., 2013) and their source selections (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). Therefore, for an in-depth understanding, input from journalists should be incorporated in the analyses of international conflict coverage, as the journalists are the ones who select, judge and report information.
Research Questions and Hypotheses
Previous research into peace journalism investigated the coverage of international conflicts with on cross-national sample of newspapers and established that the use of peace and war frames differ across nations (Fahmy & Eakin, 2014; Lee & Maslog, 2005; Maslog et al., 2006). However, when explaining cross-national differences in framing of these conflicts, these
studies did not focus on contextual determinants that may facilitate or restrain peace journalism practice. To do so, the focus of this study will be on four dimensions of the newspaper coverage of the conflict in Afrin: the use of peace and war journalism frames, the references to and the influences of the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora communities regarding the use of official claims and sources of the conflicting parties. These dimensions will be investigated systematically with the Hierarchy of Influences model, exploring the influence of three factors belonging to the social institutional, organizational and individual levels in the model.
The social institutional level factor in this study concerns the presence of diaspora communities as the news consumers in the host country. To analyze the diaspora level
differences, content analyses were conducted on the newspaper coverage of the Afrin conflict in three countries, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, since these countries inhabit a diverse sample of the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora communities. The Dutch Statistics Netherlands (in Dutch: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) reported that there are 396.000 Turkish people living in the Netherlands, among which 100.000 are Kurds (“Turken en Koerden leven hier goed samen”, 2015). According to the Change Institute (2009a, 2009b), there are 80.000 Turkish (including the Kurds from Turkey) and 130.000 Turkish Cypriots living in Britain, and 50.000 Kurdish people from Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Sweden differs from the other two countries since the number of Kurdish residents (83.000) exceed the number of Turkish residents in the country (45.200) (Simons & Charles, 2018). The UK differs from the other two countries as it hosts more diverse diaspora communities concerning their country of origin. The first research question is formed to investigate whether there are differences in the use of war and peace journalism frames across the three countries that inhabit differing formations of conflicting diaspora groups.
RQ1: Are there differences between the Dutch, British and Swedish newspapers with regards to use of peace and war frames in their coverage of the Afrin conflict?
The second dimension of investigation concerns the extent to which journalists report about the Afrin conflict with references to the Kurdish and Turkish diaspora communities and/or consult them for additional information. Journalists may refer to the diaspora in their coverage about Afrin to present the issue more relevantly as part of the domestication process (Gurevitch et al., 1991). In this sense, the size of the diaspora within the audience may be an influential factor in determining these references since relevance to a bigger audience would indicate a greater domestication of the article. Bearing in mind the differences across countries regarding the
proportional size of the Turkish and Kurdish communities, one can expect that references to these communities to differ across countries. The following research question investigates this:
RQ2: Are there differences between the Dutch, British and Swedish newspapers with regards to the references they make to the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora communities in the coverage of the Afrin conflict?
The third and four dimensions of the analysis concern the extent to which journalists feel the need to adjust their coverage in relation to the size of the diaspora communities within their audience, to avoid criticisms and opt-outs of a large audience groups (Christiansen, 2004). These adjustments can be observed through analyzing journalists’ use of the Turkish and Kurdish claims and officials as sources of information. Since the Kurdish community is bigger than the Turkish community in Sweden, Swedish journalists may give use more Kurdish claims and sources in their coverage, compared to the British and Dutch journalists who have a larger
Turkish audience than the Kurdish. However, since equal representation is a crucial aspect to balanced and objective journalism (Hackett, 1984) and since Western journalists adhere to the objectivity norm (Hanitzsch, 2007a), one can also expect the Dutch, Swedish and British journalists to use these claims sources equally. To investigate this, the third research question is formed as follows:
RQ3: Are there differences between the Dutch, British and Swedish newspapers in their coverage of the Afrin conflict with regards to the representation of the Turkish and Kurdish sources and their claims?
The organizational level factor that is relevant in the current study concerns the influence of organizational political stance on conflict coverage. Skovsgaard et al. (2013) established a positive significant relationship between the rightist political ideology and the importance of the no subjectivity dimension of objectivity while this relationship seemed to be negative and significant for leftist journalists. This indicates that the leftist journalists may give less importance to reporting the conflicts in a detached manner. Because certain aspects of peace journalism require journalists to take an active role (Benn, 2015), one can assume that in leftist newspapers more peace journalism frames can be found in the coverage of Afrin compared to the rightist newspapers. To investigate this, the following hypothesis is formed:
H1: Across three countries, the leftist newspapers use more peace journalism frames when covering the Afrin conflict, compared to the rightist newspapers.
Previous investigations of the Iraq war found differences between the content of the leftist and rightist newspapers (Vliegenthart & Schröder, 2010) and showed that the coverage of the conflict reflected the political predispositions of the citizens and politicians of the same ideology (Walgrave & Verhulst, 2005). Similar findings can be observed in the case of Afrin since the Kurdish party in the conflict openly identifies itself with the left ideology. The Democratic Union Party (PYD) is the governing political party in the predominantly Kurdish de facto autonomous region in northern Syria. The party defines itself with the leftist ideology (Plakoudas, 2017) and presented in the European media as such (Sly, 2017 January 7). In addition, various leftist
political parties in Europe sent supporting messages to the public in Afrin throughout the conflict (Die Linke, 2018 January 23; Liukku, 2018 March 1). Thus, following the argument of Datson et al. (2012) that the ideology of the news organization may influence the sources used in its content (p. 67), one can expect that the leftist newspapers give more space to the Kurdish public and officials through more references to the Kurdish diaspora and to the Kurdish officials and their claims, compared to the rightist newspapers. To investigate this, three hypotheses are formed:
H2a: Across three countries, the leftist newspapers make more references to the Kurdish diaspora in their coverage of the Afrin conflict, compared to the rightist newspapers.
H2b: Across three countries, the leftist newspapers use more claims from the Kurdish officials in their coverage of the Afrin conflict, compared to the rightist newspapers.
H2c: Across three countries, the leftist newspapers give more space to the Kurdish sources in their coverage of the Afrin conflict, compared to the rightist newspapers.
Methods
To best answer the research questions and analyze the hypotheses, a combination of two methodologies was deemed necessary. Quantitative content analysis methodology was applied to investigate the newspaper coverage of the Afrin conflict with regards to the use of peace and war frames, and the potential influence of the diaspora communities and organizational political stance on the coverage. Secondly, through interviews conducted with journalists who wrote about the Afrin conflict on the analyzed newspapers, professional insights of the journalists are
provided for a nuanced understanding of the news making process under investigation.
Content Analysis
Data collection and coding.
To investigate the newspaper content about the Afrin conflict in the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden, two national quality newspapers were selected per country, one representing the political left and one the political right: the Dutch, de Volkskrant (center-left) and NRC
Handelsblad (center-right), the British The Guardian (center-left) and The Times (center-right),
and the Swedish Dagens Nyheter (liberal) and Svenska Dagbladet (conservative). The selection was based on previous research which concluded that these newspapers have high circulation and they reflect left and the right political spectrum in the countries they operate (Allern & Blach-Ørsten, 2011; Boumans, Boomgaarden, & Vliegenthart, 2013). The articles about the Afrin conflict were collected using digital archives, i.e. LexisNexis (the Dutch and British samples) and Mediearkivet (Swedish sample) on April 23, 2018. The following search query and its
“Kurd*” OR “Afrin” OR “Efrin” OR “olive branch” 1. The search query returned 423 Swedish, 201 English and 154 Dutch articles. In total, 573 articles were excluded2 from the study because they did not mention the Afrin conflict at all, leaving in total of 205 articles. All 205 articles were included in the analyses, including the editorial and external opinion pieces because the aim of this study was to include every article about the conflict in the selected newspapers.
Because proactive reporting of conflict is a trait of peace journalism (Galtung, 1998, 2013), the time frame of the present study was set to include the month leading up to the conflict, making the final research period to include articles written between December 20, 2017 and March 18, 2018. The articles were coded by three trained coders who have either native or near-native level of understanding of the language in which they coded. After several pretests, a
largely original codebook was created (see Appendix B). All coders coded 30 articles (15% of the total sample) from the UK sample for intercoder reliability analysis which was measured with Krippendorff’s Alpha. For the items that are included in the analysis, the alpha scores ranged between .32 and 1.00 3. While most items were coded in a reliable manner, some variables did not have an acceptable reliability scores (i.e. lower than .60). Bearing in mind that achieving acceptable inter-coder reliability scores for each item between three coders is quite challenging, these items were carefully included the analyses. However, the findings from the analyses that included these low reliability items must be interpreted with care. Finally, the items with lower than .32 alpha score were excluded from further analyses.
1 “Turk*” OR “Koerd*” OR “Afrin” OR “Efrin” OR “olijftak" (in Dutch) “Turk*” OR “Kurd*” OR “Afrin” OR “Efrin” OR “olivkvist” (in Swedish)
2 To include all articles about the conflict the search query included Turk*. Inclusion of this returned many articles that were not necessarily about the conflict and this was the main cause of the high number of excluded articles. 3 The complete list of reliability scores for all variables is reported in the Appendix A.
Measurement of variables.
A coding scheme was constructed to measure the presence of war and peace journalism, inspired by the work of Lee and Maslog (2005) and Galtung’s (1998, 2013) classification. The measurement in this study contains nine items, seven measuring the approach-based indicators of war and peace journalism frames, while two items measure the language-based characteristics. The indicators and the exact coding items used in this study can be found in the Appendix A. The coding items were either binary (1 = item present or 0 = item not present) or included a five-point scale to have a more nuanced measurement of concepts regarding the focus and the language of the coverage. To create a war journalism and a peace journalism index, all these indicators were summed up as they are. The war journalism index values range between 0 and 28 while the peace journalism index values range between 0 and 234.
The second dependent variable, the number of references to the diaspora communities in an article was measured over two items, one for mentioning of the Turkish diaspora and one for the mentioning of the Kurdish diaspora. If the diaspora was mentioned in the article the items were coded yes (1), if not, the items were coded no (0). For those articles that mentioned the diaspora, the coders indicated (with binary measures) whether the article mentions the viewpoint/position of the diaspora and whether this viewpoint/position was quoted by the journalist.
The third dependent variable concerns the representation of the Turkish and Kurdish claims in the coverage of the Afrin conflict. These claims consist of the discourses and declarations of the conflicting sides that aim to legitimize their goals and actions while
4 The difference between the maximum scores of the war and peace journalism index resulted from different measurement of the elite-orientedness (war journalism) and people-orientedness (peace journalism) of an article. For details, please consult the Appendix B.
undermining or blaming the other side in the conflict. The items measuring the presence of these claims were created based on the declarations from the political and military leaders of the both sides. Eleven Turkish and ten Kurdish claims were identified and coded for the analyses. If the claim was present in the article, the item was coded one, if not the item was coded zero. These items were then summed up to create one variable measuring the presence of Turkish claims (ranging between 0 and 11) and one variable measuring the presence of the Kurdish claims (ranging between 0 and 10).
The final dependent variable concerns the representation of the Turkish and Kurdish sources in the coverage of the conflict. The sources involved the people, countries or
organizations that were directly or indirectly quoted in the article, hence being used as source of information in the coverage. To measure this, the coders were asked to write down the word count of each actor that was used as a source in the article. The number of words given to the authorities in each side (political and military) were summed up and divided by the number of words given to all sources in the article. This method facilitates a proportional measurement of Turkish and Kurdish official sources. The values range between 0 and 1, representing a ratio of the source representation in an article for each party in the conflict.
Statistical analyses.
To answer the research questions and test the hypotheses, the coded material from the newspapers was analyzed with ANOVA models, first comparing the countries then the newspapers based on their identified political stance. The data was then split by the variable indicating the presence of an author to create two datasets composed of articles that were signed and articles that were not signed by a journalist. This was done to exclude those articles that were literally taken from news agencies or other organizations, hence were not written by the
journalists of the newspaper organizations under study. In total 77 articles in the data were not signed by a journalist, and this occurred mostly in the Swedish data as 63.6% (49 articles) of the articles had no authors. In the Netherlands 17 (22.1%) articles and in the UK 11 (14.3%) articles were not signed by a journalist. The dataset without these articles contained 128 articles.
Analyses were repeated with this data to explore whether differences exist between the journalists from different countries and organizations with regards to the phenomena under investigation.
Interviews
To investigate the influence of the individual characteristics of journalists on their reporting, interviews were conducted with journalists who wrote about the Afrin conflict in the newspapers that were analyzed for content. For this, e-mails with an interview request were sent to the sixteen journalists who wrote about the Afrin conflict in the newspapers that were selected for the content analysis. Three Dutch and one Swedish journalist5 agreed to answer the interview questionnaire. All four journalists work at newspapers that were categorized as politically left in the literature as well as in the current study. Except from one face-to-face interview, all
interviews were conducted via e-mail exchange.
The interview questions addressed three subjects: war and peace journalism, linking the diaspora with the coverage of the Afrin conflict and the possible influence of the newspaper organizations’ political stance on the news content. Journalists were given a description of war and peace journalism based on Galtung’s (1998, 2013) classification and asked whether they consider themselves war or peace journalists, and the characteristics of their work that led them
5 Interviewed journalists: Ana van Es, Janny Groen, Rob Vreeken (de Volkskrant) and Erik Ohlsson (Dagens Nyheter)
to classify themselves as a war/peace journalist. Secondly, journalists were asked about their viewpoint on the involvement of the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora communities in the Afrin coverage. In addition, they were asked whether they themselves considered the diaspora in their countries when reporting about the conflict. Finally, the journalists’ opinion was asked regarding the influence the political stance of their newspaper may have on their work.
Results
The first research question investigates the cross-country differences regarding the use of peace and war journalism frames in the coverage of Afrin. Table 1 presents the mean and
standard deviation scores of each newspaper regarding their use of war and peace journalism frames. The cross-country comparison revealed that war journalism frames are used in Sweden the most, followed by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom while the British newspapers use peace frames the most, followed by the Dutch and the Swedish newspapers. The differences are statistically significant for war frames, F(2, 130.93) 6= 21.53, p < .001 and peace frames, F(2,
122.71) = 16.95, p < .001, which was also confirmed by the contrast tests between three countries (p < .001). When the analyses are repeated for with the data containing only articles written by a journalist, the ANOVA results remained significant (p < .05).
The second set of comparisons was done between the left and right newspapers across the three countries. The average scores of war frames between the leftist (M= 9.71, SD = 2.63) and rightist newspapers (M= 9.93, SD = 2.62) did not differ significantly, F(1, 192.86) = .34, p = .560. Similarly, on average, the leftist newspapers (M= 11.74, SD = 2.43) do not use significantly more peace journalism frames than the rightist newspapers (M= 11.82, SD = 2.62), F(1, 180.81)
= 1.80, p = .181. Moreover, the results remained unchanged for the articles that were signed by a journalist. Thus, the first hypothesis is rejected
The interviews with four journalists reflected the findings regarding the unpopularity of the peace journalism in the Netherlands and Sweden. None of the journalists identified
themselves with peace journalism. Their reason was mostly that peace journalism assumes an active journalistic role or “the power to change the outcome of conflicts and promote
nonviolence” (Ana van Es, de Volkskrant). Journalists disagreed with this role perception indicating that they should report only the facts, and do so in a detached manner, without “influencing people’s opinions” (Erik Ohlsson, Dagens Nyheter). Since all journalists in the interviews work in a news organization categorized as leftist, the first hypothesis assuming that the leftist newspapers use relatively more peace journalism frames was not supported by the journalists.
Table 1
Mean and standard deviation scores of war and peace journalism frames used in coverage of the Afrin conflict in the British, Swedish and Dutch newspapers (N= 205)
Countries Newspaper Title
War Journalism (0-28)
Peace Journalism (0-23)
Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
United Kingdom The Guardian 7.92 (2.28) 14.35 (2.86)
The Times 8.51 (2.35) 12.80 (2.79)
Sweden Dagens Nyheter 10.45 (2.70) 11.33 (2.36)
Svenska Dagbladet 10.96 (2.72) 10.72 (2.00) The Netherlands De Volkskrant 10.39 (1.85) 11.83 (2.13) NRC Handelsblad 10.33 (1.82) 12.22 (1.72)
The second research question investigated the references to the Kurdish and Turkish diaspora communities in the news about Afrin. Cross-country analyses revealed that the Turkish diaspora was mentioned in four Dutch, four Swedish and in only one British article. Similarly, the Kurdish diaspora was mentioned in four Dutch, three British and only two Swedish articles. Across countries, the left newspapers mentioned the Turkish and the Kurdish diaspora in three times each, whereas each community was mentioned in six articles in the rightist newspapers. Due to the very low number of occurrences in the data, no statistical analysis was conducted to compare these minor differences. However, the results clearly show that in all three countries, the diaspora communities are disregarded in general, including the leftist newspapers which were assumed to mention the Kurdish diaspora relatively more in their coverage of the Afrin conflict (H2a).
In the interviews, only one journalist reported the conflict with a clear link to the Kurdish diaspora living in the Netherlands. Ms. Janny Groen (de Volkskrant), who wrote an article about the consequences of the Afrin conflict on the Dutch-Kurdish community and the tensions
between the Turks and Kurds, claimed that she usually covers these kinds of issues with a link to the communities living in the country. In doing so, she argued that “there might be more
understanding here in the Netherlands for the situation of these communities”. However, all Dutch journalists agreed that this link cannot and should not be in every journalist’s work, as there are different roles within the newspaper organization, ensuring the presence of different angles in the coverage of conflicts. Rob Vreeken (de Volkskrant) responded that link should be made to the diaspora communities but in a separate article than those about the developments in the conflict area. For Ana van Es, the Middle East correspondent (de Volkskrant) in Beirut, reporting about the diaspora communities in the Netherlands was irrelevant since she reported from abroad. Erik Ohlsson, the Middle East correspondent (Dagens Nyheter) in Stockholm,
argued that the coverage of the conflict should first and foremost report about the developments in the conflict, and to a much lesser extent about the diaspora communities in Sweden. In
conclusion, journalists agree on the involvement of the diaspora communities in the news linked to them, however with a limited emphasis. Hence, journalists’ input can be regarded as
supportive of the findings from the content analysis, somewhat clarifying the limited references made to the diaspora communities in the news coverage about Afrin.
The third research question investigated the possible influence of the diaspora
communities on the news content about Afrin. Table 2 presents the average scores regarding the presence of the Turkish and Kurdish claims and the official sources in the articles. The cross-country comparisons did not find significant differences with regards to the use of Turkish (F(2, 202) = .53, p = .590) or Kurdish claims (F(2, 202) = .83, p = .439). Moreover, no differences were identified with regards to the amount of space given to the Turkish (F(2, 202) = .19, p = .825) or Kurdish sources (F(2, 202) = .12, p = .888). However, when the analyses were repeated only for the articles with a specific author, the use of the Kurdish claims across countries
approached to a nearly-significant difference, (F (2, 66.53) = 3.00, p = .056). The contrast tests showed that on average, the Swedish journalists (M= 1.71, SD = 1.58) used more Kurdish claims than the British (M= 1.05, SD = .96) and the Dutch journalists (M= .97, SD = 1.24) when
reporting about the Afrin conflict (p = .017).
Table 3 presents the mean and standard deviation scores of the left and right-leaning newspapers regarding their use of the official claims and sources of the Turkish and Kurdish parties in the conflict. The comparison analysis showed that the rightist and leftist newspapers do not significantly differ when reporting the Turkish claims (F(1, 203) = 1.53, p = .217) or Turkish sources(F(1, 203) = .52, p = .471). However, in line with the predictions of the hypotheses 2b and 2c, the leftist newspapers across three countries indeed reported more Kurdish claims (F(1, 203)
= 4.28, p = .040) and gave more space to the Kurdish sources (F(1, 159.29) = 4.24, p = .041) than the rightist newspapers. The significant differences were not apparent when the analysis included only the articles signed by an author (p > .05, N = 128) which indicates that the significant findings can be observed only when every article produced by leftist and rightist newspaper organizations are included.
In the interviews, the journalists were asked whether they reported about the conflict with the diaspora communities in mind as an indication of adjustment of the news content to the diaspora audience. Ms. van Es responded that in a conflict like this, reporting from the ground always is bound to make some groups unhappy and while she accepts this, she does not adjust her coverage. Ms. Groen wrote about the communities (hence adjusted her coverage to talk about the communities), whereas Mr. Vreeken and Mr. Ohlsson reported that they did not consider the Table 2
Mean and standard deviation scores of Turkish and Kurdish official claims and sources in coverage of the Afrin conflict in the British, Swedish and Dutch newspapers (N= 205)
Countries Newspaper Title Turkish Claims Kurdish Claims Turkish Sources Kurdish Sources Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) United Kingdom The Guardian 2.00 (1.41) 1.23 (1.11) .30 (.34) .23 (.37) The Times 1.80 (1.89) .88 (.78) .21 (.34) .10 (.23) Sweden Dagens Nyheter 2.02 (1.70) 1.21 (1.17) .28 (.36) .17 (.31) Svenska Dagbladet 1.28 (1.46) 1.04 (1.35) .26 (.35) .11 (.27) The Netherlands De Volkskrant 1.48 (1.38) 1.13 (1.33) .28 (.34) .17 (.30) NRC Handelsblad 1.81 (1.71) .59 (.80) .30 (.30) .10 (.17)
diaspora. Mr. Ohlsson added that he prioritized informing the vast majority of their readers. In contrary, the findings of the content analysis revealed the relatively more use of Kurdish claims in Sweden which corresponds to the relatively bigger size of the Kurdish community in the country.
Finally, the journalists were asked whether they perceive the political stance of their organization to be influential on what they report. All four journalists emphasized that the organizations they work for are independent from any political organization, and do not necessarily have a firm political position. Journalists from de Volkskrant responded that the leftist tendency of the newspaper was in the past (Ana van Es) and being independent from a political influence is always prioritized in the organization (Janny Groen). Similarly, Mr. Ohlsson categorized Dagens Nyheter as liberal democratic and said that this has no impact on their news. However, the current study established differences between the leftist and rightist newspapers’ coverage of the Afrin conflict. Thus, although journalists do not report, or maybe not even perceive the influence of the organizational political stance, significant differences in content prevail between the leftist and rightist newspapers.
Table 3
Mean and standard deviation scores of Turkish and Kurdish official claims and sources in coverage of the Afrin conflict in the leftist and rightist newspapers across the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands (N= 205)
Newspaper Political Stance
Turkish
Claims Kurdish Claims Turkish Sources Kurdish Sources Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Left-Leaning
Newspapers 1.88 (1.54) 1.20 (1.16) .29 (.34) .19 (.32) Right-Leaning
Conclusion and Discussion
This study aimed at investigating the current state of peace journalism practice in three countries, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden, with a focus on a significant and recent conflict between the Kurds and Turks in the Afrin region. Four dimensions of the coverage were
evaluated: the use of peace and war journalism frames, the references to and the influence of the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora communities with regards to the use of official claims and sources of the conflicting parties. In doing so, the Hierarchy of Influences model was used as a “heuristic device” (Hackett, 2006, p.5), which rendered the possibility of investigating various micro, meso and macro level factors determining the news. The presence of diaspora communities, the
political stance of the newspapers and journalists’ role perceptions were considered as relevant macro, meso and micro level factors that may influence the news representation of foreign conflicts.
The use of peace and war journalism frames was significantly different in the Dutch, Swedish and British newspapers as peace journalism was most relevant in the British context while the Swedish newspapers covered the conflict with significantly more war frames. Even when the articles originally from Reuters -more than half of the Swedish sample- were excluded from the analysis, the results remained unchanged. The findings are in line with the assumptions leading to the first research question, that the differences in the Turkish and Kurdish audience in the three countries may correspond to different framing of the conflict in these countries, since audiences as extramedia factors may influence the practice of peace/war journalism (Hackett, 2006). This is not to claim that the differences in the use of peace and war frames are caused by the presence of diaspora communities but to reveal that in the countries where the diaspora groups differ in size, the conflict is framed also differently. Hence, there may be an indirect
influence of these communities through various social, organizational and individual level
factors. Therefore, future studies focusing on the audience influence on peace journalism practice should distinguish the groups within the audience, such as the diaspora communities, and
examine the potential differences in their involvement in the news making processes. No significant differences were observed between the leftist and rightist newspapers regarding the use of peace and war journalism frames, rejecting the first hypothesis assuming that the leftist newspapers would cover international conflicts with relatively more peace frames. The interviews with the journalists, who work at the newspapers categorized as leftist, somewhat explain why ideology may not be a factor facilitating or inhibiting the practice of peace journalism. None of the interviewed journalists identified themselves with the active form of peace journalism (Benn, 2015) and emphasized the value of reporting facts in a detached manner. This presents completely different tendency of leftist journalists regarding their perception of objectivity than the findings of Skovsgaard et al. (2013) that leftist journalists attach less importance to detached form of journalism than rightist journalists. The results of this study reveal that Western journalists perceive objectivity as reporting “just-the-facts” in a neutral way this is a “dominant professional ideology as it is deeply inherited by many, if not most, journalists in the Western hemisphere” (Hanitzsch, 2007a, p. 4).
The presence of conflicting diaspora communities within national audiences and its influence on the coverage was explored on two dimensions, the references made to these communities, and the representation of the Turkish and Kurdish claims and sources in the coverage. Considering that the size of the Turkish and Kurdish communities differs across the three countries, the second research question investigated the cross-country differences in references to the Turkish and Kurdish diaspora in the news. Analyses revealed that the diaspora groups were mentioned only in very limited number of articles which did not allow for statistical
comparisons, hence the second research question and the hypothesis 2a were not tested.
Surprisingly, journalists did not benefit from the presence of diaspora communities within their audiences to enhance the domestication process of their coverage (Gurevitch et al., 1991). Nor did they take advantage of easily accessible information these communities could provide about their personal experiences. In doing so, journalists could describe the human side of the conflict which would enrich the content of their coverage and render the possibility to give a more vivid, relatable and appealing representation at a rather low cost.
Because the diaspora communities are motivated to follow news about their homeland (Dhoest et al., 2013), and they tend to opt-out from consuming news they perceive to be biased (Christiansen, 2004), the third research question was asked to investigate whether journalists adjust their coverage to avoid such reactions from these communities. Only when the articles originating from news agencies were excluded from the data, cross-country differences were observed in journalists’ use of official claims and sources. Swedish journalists used significantly more claims from the Kurdish officials, which may be an indication of diaspora related content adjustment, since the Kurdish community in Sweden is larger than the Turkish community in the country. However, one can also argue that if journalists adjusted their content based on the size of the diaspora in their audiences, the British and the Dutch journalists would have given
significantly more space to the Turkish claims and sources. However, such assumptions should not neglect that the Turkish party in the conflict is a nation state that is recognized in the international arena and built alliances with the Western countries for decades. Therefore, the power dimension cannot be ignored when contrasting the media representation of the Turkish state with the Kurdish de facto autonomous governance. While indeed one marginally significant finding is not sufficient to generalize the influence of the diaspora communities as audience
members, the different representation of the Kurdish communities in the Swedish coverage of the conflict still is an important finding that requires further investigation.
Finally, findings revealed that the leftist newspapers gave significantly more space to the Kurdish claims and sources than the rightist newspapers, supporting the hypotheses 2b and 2c. These results are in line with the previous studies which revealed that the leftist and the rightist newspapers reflect the perspective and claims of the public and the politicians of the same ideology (Walgrave & Verhulst, 2005). As Vliegenthart and Schröder (2010) established in their analysis on the Iraq War coverage, newspapers’ political stance is indeed an influential factor on how conflicts are framed in their coverage. However, journalists did not agree with such
influence of newspaper ideology and they emphasized the independence of their work. It is not unexpected that journalists’ comments are not in line with the findings regarding the influence of ideology, as such influence may be regarded as bias in journalists’ work, which strongly clashes with their professional role perceptions (Hanitzsch, 2007a). Still, previous research and the findings of the current study suggest a pattern that the coverage of foreign conflicts
systematically differs across newspapers, based on the ideological evaluations of these conflicts. The shortcomings of this study should not be disregarded when evaluating its findings. Although the selected countries provided a diverse representation of the diaspora communities, the scope is limited to three countries and two diaspora communities. Therefore, more research focusing on different conflicts and diaspora communities is necessary to replicate and generalize the findings of this study. In addition, although the selection of newspapers was done carefully and relied on previous research (Allern & Blach-Ørsten, 2011; Boumans et al., 2013), their content is never perfectly comparable as these newspapers operate in different social, institutional and political systems. Finally, some items included in the analyses did not produce acceptable reliability scores. Therefore, findings established with the analyses of these items should be
evaluated with utmost care. Future studies should focus on establishing measurements of peace and war journalism that can be used in a reliable manner across countries by more than two coders.
Previous research comparing peace journalism practice across countries established significant differences (Fahmy & Eakin, 2014; Lee & Maslog, 2005; Maslog et al., 2006). However, these differences are usually explained with conflict or country specific characteristics and do not involve discussions of systematic factors that may restrain or facilitate its practice. This research is first in conducting a case study that involved the analysis of macro, meso and micro level factors and discussed their influence on peace journalism practice. Therefore, it should be regarded as the initial step of investigating peace journalism phenomenon within its context, and stimulate more studies to explore other systematic influential factors, such as cross-country differences in media systems.
The main purpose of this study was to evoke discussion among scholars and news media professionals about the need to recognize and investigate different groups, communities,
segments within audience, and their influence on the news making processes. It is more challenging than ever to define one national audience and analyze its characteristics, needs, interests, motivations or influences. Concerning the coverage of wars and other international conflicts, the specification and representation of the different communities in the audience that are linked to these conflicts can become particularly relevant, as excluding their perspective and contribution would result in biased and/or incomplete representation of a crucial matter.
Moreover, conflicts may not have similar consequences for every community in the audience, and disregarding prominent consequences would similarly lead to an incomplete portrayal of the reality. The limited number of references to the diaspora communities in the coverage of Afrin revealed an alarming image of the current state of conflict reporting, which focuses extensively
on the conflict area to report its developments and consequences while disregarding its influence that transcends geographical borders. As a result, not only the diaspora communities and their concerns are not sufficiently represented in the host country media but also the non-diaspora audiences are not fully informed about the matters that affect the well-being of their fellow residents. Therefore, scholars should address the biases in the traditional practice of conflict coverage that does not account for the changing composition of national audiences, and evaluate alternative frameworks for reporting conflicts, e.g. peace journalism, which can facilitate these changes. In doing so, news media professionals can be better served by media scholars showing them the relevance of informing the public not only about the conflict zones but also about the extended consequences on civilians, through which journalists themselves can stimulate discussions and contribute to the peaceful resolutions of conflicts.
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