Expanding peace journalism: A new model for analyzing media representations of immigration

Introduction

Immigration is one of the key issues of contestation in Europe and an issue that raises the most questions about the fundamental values of the European Union. In Greece, for the past decade and more, immigration has been one of the most controversial political and social topics. Lying at the crossroads of three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), Greece, already since the early 2000s, has become the major gateway into the European Union for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers from Asia and Africa. This condition was further deteriorated by different external and internal factors. Greece’s poor migration policies and serious weaknesses in processing asylum seekers’ requests, the European Dublin system under the first-country-of-arrival rule and an unprecedented financial, political, and social crisis that hit Greece, in 2009, soon led to rising social and political tensions around immigration in major urban centers and especially in central Athens (Kalfeli, 2020).

Media play a significant role in how immigration is presented in the public discourse as well as in how people perceive and respond to this issue. Despite the complex and increasingly diverse contemporary media ecology, characterized by the multiplicity of actors and intersecting flows of news and information (Van Aelst et al., 2017), media are still an important and often primary source of information for individuals about places, peoples, and cultures, especially when direct contact is absent (Ramasubramanian and Murphy, 2014: 385). Several studies, however, have indicated that news media have regularly portrayed immigration in stereotypical terms (Benson, 2013; Kim et al., 2011; Thorbjornsrud, 2015; Van Gorp, 2005). Having said that, the question is, how can we understand media representations of immigration in Greece, especially in the context of a severe financial, political and social crisis? What are the theoretical tools that can be employed in order to do so? Are the available tools sufficient to analyze the complex representation of immigration and asylum issues?

This paper uses framing and content analysis to explore media representations of immigration in Greece through a peace journalism lens. The article suggests that peace journalism, which is experiencing renewed interest in the broader context of journalism studies (Kalfeli and Frangonikolopoulos, 2020), may be a fruitful approach to understanding complex media representations of diversity by investigating overlooked, non-elite discourses, and focusing on people rather than the policymakers (Galtung, 2006; Youngblood, 2017).

In order to do so, and bearing in mind that peace journalism has been mainly applied so far to explore media framing of open war and conflict, the article develops and proposes a new peace journalism model, better adapted to account especially for media representations of immigrants and refugees. We argue that this new model offers researchers an analytical tool that goes beyond the traditional stereotypical and counter-stereotypical approaches, broadens and deepens the scope of research on media representations of immigration (for an implementation of the proposed model in the Italian press, see Garusi et al., 2020). Less attention has been paid, for example, in the literature to how often media content includes migrant voices as sources, how often it explores the roots and complexities of problems related to immigration, how often it reveals violence stemming from structures, laws and state practices or how often it unfolds solutions, human stories or political conflict around immigration. Hence, the proposed model provides researchers with the opportunity to explore aspects of the respective news coverage that, to a large extent, have been little explored in the existing literature. In addition, with some adaptations, our suggested model could be employed by future researchers in other forms of diversity, such as racial, ethnic or religious.

Next, some of the most representative studies that have investigated the ways in which immigration has been covered by the media are reviewed. Considering the great amount of work in the field, we have selected those studies that have influenced the empirical work presented here, both in its formulation and in analyzing the data. The article then outlines and discusses the fundamental aspects related to peace journalism and explores the basic tenets and new developments in the respective field.

Framing of immigration in international and Greek media

Over the last decade, immigration has been one of the leading issues in the global news media agenda. Media representations of immigration play a significant role in shaping the public’s perceptions and attitudes about this issue. In fact, for many people, mass media are the only ‘window’ to groups with which they have either superficial or non-existent relationships, such as minorities or immigrants (Youngblood, 2017).

Extensive research on media coverage of the issue across countries demonstrates that immigration has been framed through a dominant threat frame, in which immigrants are represented as a threat to public order and security or as a risk to public health; through a conflict frame, in which immigration is portrayed as an issue that generates constant conflict among different groups of a society and among political parties; or through a victim frame in which immigrants are portrayed as victims of war, inequality and injustice, who require compassion and help (Benson, 2013; Kim et al., 2011; Thorbjornsrud, 2015; Van Dijk, 2011; Van Gorp, 2005), with all three frames having significant impact on the social majority’s perceptions, attitudes, and emotions about immigrants (Seate and Mastro, 2017).

Overtly racist discourses may be absent in most news discourse, as Chow-White and McMahon (2011: 350) argue. This, however, in no way means a tendency for its disappearance, but rather its transformation into a new kind of racism that invokes a mainly cultural identity that is threatened by the appearance of other identities. In the news media, in many cases, this ‘new racism’ is hidden under the cover of journalistic conventions. For example, as researchers have pointed out (Benson, 2013), by adopting the agenda and the discourse of the elite, both in the United States and in Europe, media frame immigration through a narrative of ‘illegality’ and ‘control’ and as a matter of ‘law and order’, which reflects the arguments made by politicians and governments (Kim at al., 2011; Thorbjornsrud, 2015).

Greece has been no exception to this pattern. From the beginning of the 1990s, when Greece started receiving large flows of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the communist regimes and, especially, large numbers of immigrants from Albania, immigration has been largely portrayed by the Greek media through a frame of ‘security’ and ‘illegality’ and less often through a ‘victim’ frame, with immigrants usually representing a realistic or symbolic ‘threat’ to almost every aspect of the Greek society (a threat to security and health, to jobs and economy, to the Greek identity and culture) (Konstantinidou, 2001; Moschopoulou, 2005). As in the case of international literature, little attention has been paid in Greek literature to other aspects of media coverage of immigration, including how often migrant voices appear as sources or how often media content seeks to reveal the causes of problems related to immigration or give voice to sources that would discuss possible solutions. Can a peace journalism approach be useful in analyzing media representation of immigration and provide a complementary view of what is already known about the issue in the literature?

A peace journalism perspective to media coverage of conflicts

The emergence of peace journalism, almost half a century ago, and a renewed interest in it during the last two decades, evidenced by the production of dozens of research papers that have sought to enhance the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, have been greeted with both optimism and criticism (Kalfeli and Frangonikolopoulos, 2020). They have also sparked a heated but productive debate that has shed light on the theoretical foundations, on the strengths and weaknesses of the new concept, as well as has raised some ‘existential’ questions about the media’s role in a society. What is peace journalism? Is it possible (Hackett, 2006)? Is it desirable? Said otherwise, should journalism be even assigned the responsibility to promote peace (Loyn, 2007)? And, subsequently, is peace journalism a concept closer to the idea of ‘advocacy journalism’ or to ‘constructive journalism’ (Kempf, 2007)?

After spending decades studying news values (Galtung and Ruge, 1965) and the media coverage of war and conflict, Johan Galtung developed the idea of peace journalism as a critique of war reporting. What Galtung observed was that the prevailing journalistic practices follow particular conventions or patterns that are almost never challenged by journalists and editors (Galtung, 2006). In covering conflict, Galtung explains, news media rely on elite sources and on the agenda these sources set, focus mainly on direct and visible violence (the dead and the injured) and on dichotomies (us and them). At the same time, news media often provide a limited approach to the underlying causes of a conflict, its consequences on people and societies and its possible solutions. Galtung (1998) calls this prevailing journalistic practice ‘war journalism’ and, as an alternative to this kind of reporting, he proposes a framework for what he calls ‘peace journalism’.

Peace journalism, conversely, seeks to frame stories in a way that fosters a more constructive societal debate (Youngblood, 2017). It enriches the news agenda beyond current events and the guise of ‘reporting the facts’ and broadens the range of sources and voices used in the news beyond officials and technocratic experts. It provides comprehensive reporting on the roots of a conflict, while simultaneously reveals its long-term consequences and possible solutions (Kalfeli, 2020).

Relying on Entman’s (1993) conceptualization of framing, implying definition of a problem, diagnosis of causes, moral judgment, and suggestion for its resolution (Gavilan, 2011), Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) affirmed that peace journalism is a ‘frame’ and framing theory is employed to reveal when and how often a ‘conflict’ or a ‘peace frame’ is evoked.

Despite a continuing controversy over it, peace journalism has evolved into a multifaceted field of research, constantly enriched with new research and expanding into different areas of academic and journalistic interest. Within this context, and in contrast to the early literature, which focused mainly on reporting war, recent studies have expanded peace journalism research also in scope. As a result, academics and media researchers around the world have focused on studying the applicability of peace journalism principles to cover issues stemming from a wide range of fields, which include religion (Anderson, 2015), immigration (Lynch et al., 2015; Youngblood, 2017), gender (Tivona, 2011), indigenous people (Chow-White and McMahon, 2011), and human rights (Shaw et al., 2011). In fact, as research has shown, the peace journalism approach can be used to guide reporting about any type of conflict (politics, ethnic, resource disputes, civil unrest, religious) and not just those that involve violence or war (Youngblood, 2017).

A new peace journalism perspective on diversity

As an attempt toward this direction, this study broadens the scope of peace journalism toward the field of diversity and, particularly, toward immigration, in the context of a financial, political, and social crisis in Greece. The proactive stance of peace journalism, together with Galtung’s (1969) definition of ‘positive peace’ as the absence of both direct and indirect violence or, said otherwise, as the absence of social injustice and inequality, allows us to implement peace journalism in a non-war context.

Based on Galtung’s (1998) initial classification of war and peace journalism, combined with a review of the respective national and international literature described earlier, as well as a thorough pilot content analysis of a representative sample of newspaper articles, we developed a new peace journalism model (please see Table 1) as an explicit effort to adapt the framework of peace journalism for the analysis of mediated representations of immigration. Toward this direction, Galtung’s classification of war and peace journalism and the various subcategories it includes, such as, focusing on two parties (us and them) or on many parties (a multi-party approach), seeing ‘them’ as a problem or seeing conflict/war as the problem, giving voice to ‘us’ or giving voice to all sides, giving voice to the elites or giving voice to the voiceless, dehumanization of ‘them’ or humanization of all sides, etc. provided the basis for the development of the new model. The codebook was further supplemented by elements and categories deriving from the literature of media representations of immigration, such as visual representation of immigrants and refugees (Batziou, 2011; Konstantinidou, 2014), or the re-articulation of old stereotypes, sometimes in new forms (Chow-White and McMahon, 2011).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

A new peace journalism model for immigration.

Conflict frame	Peace frame
Absence of migrant voice (A1)	Presence of migrant voice (A2)
Two-party orientation (B1)	Multi-party orientation (B2)
Immigrants (Them) as the problem (C1)	Violence as the problem (C2)
Focus on political conflict (over immigration) (D1)	Focus on cooperation and solutions (based also on human rights law) (D2)
Traditional stereotypes (E1)	Debunking of stereotypes (E2)
Focus on negative events (and on extreme conditions of exception, on massification) (F1)	Focus on humans (on the individual and his/her emotions, on aspects of familiarity and normalcy) (F2)
Emotive language (demonizing, victimizing, divisive) (G1)	Neutral language (G2)
Stereotypical picture (H1)	Non-stereotypical picture (H2)

Eight indicators for each frame (16, in total), developed from peace journalism theory alongside different dimensions of media representations of immigration, as acquired through the literature review, are employed to identify conflict or peace frames and explore voice (of immigrants/refugees), approach, problem definition, political conflict, solutions, stereotypes, human stories, language, and pictures. Which are these indicators and why were they included in the proposed schema?

The first two categories of the new model refer to the absence (A1) or presence (A2) of migrant voice in a news story. Stemming from both Galtung’s category of ‘voice to the voiceless’ and the literature about media framing of immigration, with more recent studies exploring the use of migrant voice in the media (Crawley et al., 2016; Thorbjornsrud and Figenschou, 2016), this indicator seeks for direct quotes from immigrants on an individual level or a collective voice expressed by their official representatives. The third and fourth indicator, deriving directly from peace journalism theory (Galtung, 1998; McGoldrick and Lynch, 2000), explore an ‘us and them’ (two-party) (B1) or a multi-party approach (B2). Within this context, both ‘Us’ (in this case, Greeks) and ‘Them’ (immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers) appear as two antagonistic groups (native and alien, legal and illegal, healthy and sick) in a battle for living space. Our fifth and sixth indicator, a variation of Galtung’s pair categories for the definition of the problem (see ‘them’ as the problem or see war/conflict as the problem), seek to examine whether news stories portray immigration (C1) as being the problem or violence (C2), mainly in the form of inequalities and injustice stemming from structures, laws, institutions (immigrants having limited access to health services, education, and the asylum procedure or in the form of illegal push-backs in the sea as a state practice) (Galtung, 1998). Indicators seven and eight emanate from both peace journalism theory and the literature on media and migration (Crawley et al., 2016; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2012) and examine whether news stories focus on political conflict over immigration (D1) or, under a peace frame, on (political) cooperation and solutions (D2) (Galtung, 1998), based also on human rights law. The ninth indicator (E1) looks for evidence of previously identified in literature negative stereotypes, particularly for representations of immigrants as a ‘threat’ to public health and security, associated with all sorts of illegal activities, such as crime, drug trafficking, and prostitution or as carriers of diseases (Kim et al., 2011; Thorbjornsrud, 2015; Youngblood, 2017). Conversely, our tenth indicator (E2) seeks to reveal how often news stories challenge and counteract stereotypes through the representation of immigration in non-stereotypical ways (Chow-White and McMahon, 2011). To create indicator 11 (F1), we were based on literature suggesting that if immigration is always portrayed through negative events and frames of immigrants either as sufferers or as a threat, stereotypes are perpetuated (Batziou, 2011; Branton and Dunaway, 2008). Within this context, this category explores how often immigration is linked to negative events or, more specifically, how often immigration is portrayed through threat and victim frames, or as a mass of people in extreme conditions of exception (in detention, extreme poverty, dirt) (Branton and Dunaway, 2008; Chouliaraki, 2006). Conversely, under a peace frame, indicator 12 (F2) looks for news articles that focus on human stories and represent immigrants as individuals with a name and specific characteristics, with emotions, hopes, and goals (Chouliaraki, 2006). Indicators 13 and 14 stem from Lee and Maslog’s (2005) employment of peace journalism and examine the language and whether it is emotive, that is, demonizing (immigrants described as ‘terrorists’ and ‘invaders’ or as harmful animals, e.g. ‘flies’, ‘rats’), victimizing (immigrants as ‘slaves’, ‘helots’), and divisive (immigration in war terms, e.g. ‘health bomb’, ‘battle’ or ‘invasion’ or as natural disasters, e.g. ‘waves’ or ‘tsunamis’) (G1) or neutral (G2). Finally, categories 15 (H1) and 16 (H2) refer to stereotypical and non-stereotypical visual images (to distinguish between that and stereotypes in words in E1). In order to create the two indicators, we were mostly based on Greek bibliography on visualization of immigration as more appropriate for our study (e.g. stereotypical pictures may differ in the American context, in which immigrants may often be of Central and South American origin). Within this context, the two categories explore either the presence of stereotypical pictures, that is, immigrants of African or Asian origin, mostly men, portrayed in groups and as a mass, sitting or lying down in public places, boat people, images of people behind bars in detention centers or images from police operations arresting immigrants (H1) or non-stereotypical pictures, with a focus on the individual, images also of women and children, portrayed as expressing emotions (H2) (Batziou, 2011; Konstantinidou, 2014). We believe that the different indicators provide evidence of a more multilayered representation of immigration.

Based on the above, the study attempts to answer the following main research questions:

Method

This study is based on a content analysis of 549 newspaper stories from four Greek language daily newspapers about immigration in Greece: I Avgi (‘The Dawn’), Ta Nea (‘The News’), Kathimerini (‘Daily’), and Eleftheros Typos (‘Free Press’). The criteria used to select the newspapers were first, their circulation rates, with two of them (Ta Nea and Kathimerini) having the highest circulation rates when the study began, in 2011, and second, their political affiliation in a way that would be representative of the dominant political spectrum from left (I Avgi) to center-left (Ta Nea), center-right (Kathimerini), and right (Eleftheros Typos). The unit of analysis was the individual story including news stories, feature stories, and opinion pieces.

Purposive sampling (Krippendorff, 2004) was used to select five shorter periods within the first years of the Greek financial crisis between January 2011 and January 2014, making sure that our sample included important incidents and different frames of immigration in Greece. 2011 was selected as a starting point for this study since, from that year onwards, as noted by Konstantinidou (2014), immigration climbed up the political and news agenda and was portrayed as an ‘exceptional crisis within the financial crisis in Greece’. Respectively, 2014 was selected as the year of completion of the present study since from 2015 onwards, the so called ‘refugee crisis’ unfolded on the Greek shores, as a result of the significant increase in asylum seekers’ arrivals in Europe. In our view, this is a period with distinct characteristics and requires separate analysis (Kalfeli, 2020). To make sure that our sample did not include only negative events, collection of news stories for each one of the selected periods started many days before and after the incidents happened, with the exception of the first period, due to unavailability of data.

Particularly, news stories were collected from the following five periods:

The 16 indicators above were used to elicit from each story which frame – conflict or peace frame – dominated the coverage of immigration. Each story was judged, for example, for whether it included migrant voice, whether it included a multi-party approach and so on. Both the conflict and the peace journalism index ranged from 0 to 8. Based on the scores, the coder classified the story as conflict journalism, peace journalism or neutral. A score of 1 was recorded each time an indicator was detected. When the total score for peace journalism indicators exceeded the total score for conflict journalism indicators, the story was classified as a peace journalism story. When conflict journalism indicators exceeded peace journalism indicators, the story was classified as conflict journalism. When the scores were equal, the story was neutral (Lee and Maslog, 2005).

In terms of inter-coder reliability, a coding of 55 news items (11 from each period) in a total of 549 items or approximately 10% of total news items was executed by three independent coders who were trained appropriately, based on a percentage agreement method. According to this measurement, percentage agreement between coders ranged from 78% to 96%, which exceeds typical standards of reliability (Neuendorf, 2002).

Findings

This section summarizes the main findings and addresses the main research questions of this study. By doing so, it reveals (1) the dominant frame of media coverage of immigration in Greece, (2) the most salient indicators of a conflict and peace frame as well as (3) the differences and similarities in the different newspapers and time periods.

Dominant frame

Out of the 549 stories, 329 (59.9%) were framed as conflict journalism, compared to 151 stories (27.5%) framed as peace journalism and 69 (12.6%) that were neutral (please see Table 2). As a result, the conflict frame was more dominant, overall in the sample, than the peace or neutral frame. However, in two of the examined periods (containing incidents portraying immigrants as victims) and in specific newspapers (Avgi, left and Ta Nea, center-left), the peace journalism frame prevailed.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Distribution of conflict and peace frames across periods.

Period	Conflict frame	Peace frame	Neutral	n
1st	60 (65.9%)	17 (18.7%)	14 (15.4%)	91 (100%)
2nd	88 (68.8%)	25 (19.5%)	15 (11.7%)	128 (100%)
3rd	99 (77.3%)	17 (13.3%)	12 (9.4%)	128 (100%)
4th	52 (40.9%)	54 (42.5%)	21 (16.6%)	127 (100%)
5th	30 (40%)	38 (50.7%)	7 (9.3%)	75 (100%)
Total	329 (59.9%)	151 (27.5%)	69 (12.6%)	549

In particular, the strongest conflict journalism frames appeared first, in August 2012 (3rd period) (77.3%), second, in April and May 2012 (2nd period) (68.8%) and third, in January 2011 (1st period) (65.9%); that is, at times when political discourse in Greece got highly polarized and, subsequently, immigration was portrayed in the public debate as a parallel – to the crisis – problem that the country had to deal with. Reflecting this discourse, immigration was very frequently represented in the examined newspapers as an issue that generated constant conflict among different political and social groups, as a threat to security and a threat to public health and as a problem to almost every aspect of the Greek society; a problem for tourism, trade, the economy and even for the country’s relationships with the EU, having, as indicated by the following extract from an opinion piece of the right-leaning Eleftheros Typos, ‘such a negative impact for the country that it [immigration] has the power, by itself, to push the country out of the euro zone!’ (Kaklamanis, 2012).

Conversely, the strongest peace journalism frame appeared first, in January 2014 (5th period) in 50.7% of the news stories and second, in April and May 2013 (4th period) in 42.5% of the news stories, in time periods mostly including incidents when immigrants were victims or survivors of boat voyages or exploitation, respectively.

Frequency of indicators of conflict and peace frames

The two indicators of the conflict frame with the highest frequency in all newspapers and in all periods were first, the ‘absence of migrant voice’ (A1) appearing in 82.3% of all news stories and second, the ‘focus on negative events’ (F1) appearing in 77% of the total number of news stories (please see Table 3). In contrast, the two peace indicators with the highest frequency in all newspapers and in all periods were first, the neutral language appearing in 48.8% of all news stories and second, the multi-party approach, present in 33% of the total number of news stories. Therefore, the two most salient peace indicators refer to some of the core values of traditional journalism: neutrality and pluralism. Conversely, the peace indicators that reveal a broader set of journalistic practices, that is, a solution-seeking approach or a focus on humans, migrant voice or the debunking of traditional stereotypes, appear with a low frequency throughout the newspapers and the different time periods.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 3.

Indicators of conflict and peace journalism (in order of frequency of appearance).

Conflict journalism frame	Frequency of appearance (% of appearance in the news stories)
1. Absence of Migrant Voice (A1)	452 (82.3%)
2. Focus on Negative Events (F1)	423 (77.0%)
3. Stereotypical Picture (H1)	338 (61.5%)
4. Emotional Language (G1)	281 (51.2%)
5. Focus on Political Conflict (D1)	213 (38.8%)
6. Immigrants as a Problem (C1)	167 (30.4%)
7. Two-Party Orientation (B1)	155 (28.2%)
8. Traditional Stereotypes (E1)	120 (21.8%)
Peace journalism frame
1. Neutral Language (G2)	268 (48.8%)
2. Multi-Party Orientation (B2)	181 (33.0%)
3. Violence as a Problem (C2)	174 (31.7%)
4. Non-Stereotypical Picture (H2)	145 (26.4%)
5. Presence of Migrant Voice (A2)	97 (17.7%)
6. Focus on Solutions and Cooperation (D2)	60 (10.9%)
7. Focus on Humans (F2)	53 (9.6%)
8. Debunking of Stereotypes (E2)	48 (8.7%)

Discussion

Over the last decade, immigration has been among the most controversial topics on the Greek policy agenda and one of the principal issues that shape public discourse in Greece (Kalfeli, 2020). Media representations of immigration have played a significant role in how this complex issue is presented in the Greek public discourse as well as in how people perceive and respond to it.

Within this context, this study offered a quantitative contribution to media framing of immigration through a peace journalism lens. Based on Galtung’s (1998, 2006) original classification of war and peace journalism and by drawing insights from the respective literature on media portrayals of immigration, this paper developed a peace journalism model for analyzing media representations of immigration (outlined in Table 1). In particular, the paper took a closer look at the example of Greece and presented the key findings of a study exploring the ways in which four Greek daily newspapers portrayed immigration in the first years of the Greek financial crisis between 2011 and 2014. We believe that this new model could be employed, with some adaptations, in other forms of diversity, such as racial, ethnic or religious.

That being said, we believe that a valuable contribution of this study has been exactly that; by taking a different angle in our research and by testing a different model offering a broader set of coding categories, we had the opportunity to explore aspects of media framing of immigration, stemming from the respective coding categories, that to a large extent have been little explored in the literature. In fact, this study displayed how an approach rooted in peace journalism could contribute to explore the less discussed aspects of media coverage of immigration.

Following from the above, we believe that an important finding of our diachronic and comparative research was that some indicators of content analysis did not change significantly across different newspapers and periods. In other words, some findings (e.g. absence of migrant voice or lack of solutions) were repeated regardless of the political affiliation of the newspaper or the incident. This disclosed a set of repeated, deep-rooted and undisputed journalistic practices or ‘conventions’ (Galtung and Ruge, 1965) that have become common sense for journalists and for the audience, although having important consequences on the quality of information.

In the example of our study, very few news reports focused on the benefits of immigration on Greece’s economy and culture or on demographic growth. Although references to crime associated with immigration were not infrequent in the selected newspapers, not a single news story was about the roots of criminal networks. More importantly, by following the discourse of the elites, news articles, in their overwhelming majority, seemed unable to capture the bigger picture of the upcoming 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ in Greece and lay the foundations for social dialogue, although already in this period, there were all indications of a significant rise in the numbers of Syrians and Afghans entering the country (Hellenic Police, 2014), as a result of the escalating tension in the Middle East. The concept of ‘journalism of conventions’, consequently, emits an important message. As long as conventions are not questioned, journalism, regardless of the political affiliation of the media outlet, will represent a poor version of complex events and phenomena, leaving the audience vulnerable to simplistic forms of understanding and interpreting the world. Subsequently, although the conditions under which these conventions are established is beyond the scope of this study, journalists’ lack of training and understanding of diversity-related issues, combined with the need to broaden journalistic practices to meet the framework described here, remains one of the main issues that media professionals need to address.

At the same time, research findings lead us to conclusions that transcend the peace and conflict journalism dualism and approach it rather as different subframes than as a dichotomy. In this process, five distinct subframes of the general conflict and peace frames were brought into light (please see Figure 1), suggesting a more nuanced and analytical view of the peace journalism concept.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Beyond dualism: subframes under the general conflict and peace frame.

In particular, research findings revealed two distinct subframes under the general conflict frame; first, a ‘direct conflict subframe’ and second, a ‘journalism of conventions subframe’ [or ‘indirect conflict subframe’]. A direct conflict subframe involves many or most of the conflict indicators that could be described as ‘directly conflictual’, since, compared to others, they enhance dispute over immigration in a more direct way. This subframe, consequently, refers to a kind of journalism that reproduces traditional stereotypes, uses an ‘Us and Them’ approach, portrays immigration as a problem to the hosting society, is characterized by an emotive language and a focus on political conflict over immigration. In other words, it represents a kind of journalism that directly enhances polarization, division and dispute in the society over immigration. ‘Journalism of conventions’, on the other hand, or the ‘indirect conflict frame’, does not have the characteristics mentioned above (e.g. the use of traditional stereotypes), but follows faithfully some well-established journalistic practices, which are hardly ever contested. This subframe involves categories that could be described as ‘indirectly conflictual’ (such examples are the absence of migrant voice or focus on negative events), which are not necessarily problematic in a single news story, but if traced in a large percentage of articles, these categories may be dubious; by systematically not using migrant voice as a source, by focusing only on negative events around immigration, by not debunking stereotypes, by not discussing possible solutions, a journalism of conventions subframe consistently leaves critical pieces of information out of its content as, in the end, some aspects are almost never touched by journalists.

Similarly, results showed that the peace indicators that are closer to the idea of positive peace, for example, a solution-seeking approach or focus on humans, appear with a low frequency throughout the newspapers. Conversely, the most frequent peace indicators, that is, the neutral language and a multi-party approach, are closer, not to positive peace, but to the core values of traditional journalism. As a result, three distinct subframes are proposed and placed under the general peace frame. First, a subframe we call here ‘journalism of values subframe’, second, a ‘diversity journalism subframe’ and third, a ‘positive peace subframe’. Journalism of values refers to news stories in which there is neutral language, a multi-party approach or an absence of traditional stereotypes, in other words, elements that are closer to the traditional values and principles of journalism but still may follow certain conventions (e.g. lacking solutions or migrant voice, human stories or debunking of stereotypes) ¹ . Second, the ‘diversity journalism subframe’ (in our study, mainly the case of the left-wing Avgi), is associated with news stories that include all the elements referring to a pro-immigration discourse but, at the same time, display a divisive approach against other political and social forces or portray immigration as a field of political conflict and again, follow certain conventions (lacking solutions, migrant voice, etc.). Third, the ‘positive peace subframe’, representing a broader framework, as it is closer to Galtung’s notion of positive peace and is therefore characterized by a more proactive and ‘dynamic’ approach toward (positive) peace. It includes, not only the categories that are closely linked to the traditional values of journalism (neutrality, pluralism or avoidance of stereotypes), but is also diversity-oriented and transcends journalistic conventions to include voice, context, solutions, counteract stereotypes or reveal human stories.

Ultimately, we believe this approach is more appropriate to the philosophy of a peace journalism classification, which, otherwise, risks of being trapped into a gross dualism (Hanitzsch, 2007; Tenenboim-Weinblatt et al., 2016) of media representations, not far from the simplistic dichotomies of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that it attempts to eliminate.