Media impact on conflict reports

Media Impact on Conflict Reports EAP presessional Language Course Tutor: Chris Sciberras

Written by: Kuan-Yun Wang (Cynthia Wang) Words:1502 Presented on:15.09.2015

With the rising number of conflicts happening around the world, media often plays a vital role in providing information to the global audiences. Through the rapid growth in the usage of social media and the technology breakthrough in the traditional media, information gathering and news report have become more and more common and easy that it also has raised people’s awareness related to authentication and purpose of those information. It can be asserted that access to information in conflict zones can effectively reduce violence and possibly facilitate a solution for problems (Powers and O'Loughlin, 2015). The impact of media reports and the growing importance of social media have been claimed as useful ways to influence social movements if we look at the example in the Egyptian revolution during the Arab Spring. (Eltantawy and Wiest, 2011) However, Puddephatt (2006) argues that media coverage in conflicts can lead to two opposite results, either it can help alleviating conflicts, or it can be mistaken as propaganda and provoke more violence. This essay focuses on the correlation between media, information gathering and conflicts. Then it further contends that there are no direct ways for media to build peace in conflict zones, but it remains the role as information provider and places more importance preserving audiences’ rights to know.

Media is defined as platforms to “general communication, information, or entertainment in society, as newspapers, radio, or television”. (Dictionary.com, 2015) As for Information is defined as "facts provided or learned about something or

someone". (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2015) Therefore, the very important part that one should be bear in mind about information is its accuracy. Conflicts around the world, external or internal, do not end after the Second World War. There are still no clear and common explanation on how those conflicts are triggered, which includes reasons such as geography, ethic, and politic. Following by the prosperous of new technologies and the wide spread usage of social media, Powers and O’Loughlin (2015) take example from the Syrian conflict reports and conclude that media as a greater access to information can foster mutual understanding between different nations. They offer three ways on how information can help resolving conflicts. Nevertheless, limitations exist as Bratic and Schirch (2007) discuss that media can only effectively have an impact on how audiences think of topics, issues and beliefs, rather than directly affect their behaviors. In addition, media can be helpful as a promoter and pressure giver to authorities and powerful governments to take action towards humanitarian crises, while it is not possible for media to force directly a certain group or government to change policies or laws.

The three main offers from Powers and O'Loughlin(2015) are listed as follow. Firstly, accuracy and time sensitivity can decrease misjudgments for governmental reactions which often lead to violent over-reaction; To take the Arab spring as an example, social media and media played a crucial role into the result of over throwing political leaders in different countries. Although there are clear differences between traditional media and social media, the main ideas of information gathering in both media platforms does not contain diverse definition. The most significant improvements in

Egyptian revolution during the Arab Spring were the rapid and interactive information exchange throughout the Internet. The traditional media in Egypt before the revolution was strictly governed and watched by authorities that at that time the most efficient way to gather information was through internet and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The result was satisfying as young bloggers used those media platform to initiate the revolution and overthrew the Mubarak regime. However, apart from social media, it cannot be neglected with the reports from international TV channels such as Al-Jazeera and some local newspapers during the process since Mubarak regime sometimes cut off Internet access to those protesters and thus they came out with other resources to information exchange. (Eltantawy and Wiest, 2011) That is to say, the power of information accuracy and time sensitivity on either media or social media played a vital role to help to nurture and succeed in this potential humanitarian crisis.

Secondly, transparency between diverse media can help maintaining the fairness, balancing two sides and reducing misunderstandings due to the fact that not being familiar with cultures and languages of the reporting conflict zones lead to false reports. Therefore, Rosen (2011) suggests the media should better equip their journalists to leave their comfort zones in conflict areas and he believes speak the language of where they are reporting instead of using translator can better transport true aspects of the reports. Accuracy in information gathering and the crucial knowledge in problematic areas stand significant parts in conflict report and “the road to truth involves certain amount of diarrhea.”(Iskandar and Haddad, 2012) This is

why sometimes voices from the people are more powerful than ever due to the fact that the information gathering and sharing rights is no longer held by traditional media through technology breakthrough and rapid growth of internet access.

Thirdly, international cooperation to put pressures on leaders from both conflict sides through a greater access to information and the presentation to audiences worldwide. Conflict reports often generate public pressures on authorities that may lead to different stage of help in reducing conflicts. The most powerful weapon that media can have is the public opinion and public pressures it arouses echos with. However, the media coverage and information gathering related to conflicts are often influenced by powers, namely the response of powerful authority can in turn have effects on media reports due to political significance. Apart from the influence with power, the priority and emphasis of what media report in different conflicts affect how audiences respond to the issue while it can be resulted in certain type of public opinions and awarenesses.(Puddephatt, 2006) Rosen(2011) draws another example that very often do the American media form a problematic image related to conflicts in developing countries. He claims that the duty and responsibility of the media should not be propagandists for any powerful sides, and rather should they empower the people who are inside the conflicts to speak for their stories. Another example is the comparison between the Gulf war and the Rwandan Genocide, both are huge humanitarian crises, however, the previous one received more concerns and attention from western governments to take action as more reports on it led to public pressures. On the contrary, Rwandan genocide was comparatively neglected, or being misunderstood as

the western media did not have enough concerns related to local customs. Without intervene by powerful global authorities thus it lasted for a longer period of time. If we now look into the case of the ongoing Syrian civil war, it has been defined as the most digitalize and documentable war. Comparatively easier access to information gathering than ever has caused problems as well since it is more complicated to distinguish whether the released information are serving as a propaganda or not, while too much information provided at a time can also contribute to difficulty in weighing the importance of them all at once that potentially it may cause misjudgements to current situation. The complexity and difficulty for Syrian conflict reporting is that the conflicts was a combat between regional and international powers, so it leads to many angles and explanations with different powers on how international media report them through their own perspectives of views in their country’s approaches to it. It can be possible that different nations receive different stories and facts. (Powers and O'Loughlin, 2015) All of the above reasons have caused the complication of making peace progress there since the breakout of their civil war years ago. In other words, the media often shape what public think about certain issues, not only the political significance and individual interests would affect the results in conflict zones, but also the priority media place through their daily reports regarding news quantity and quality.

In conclusion, it can be argued that media which accurately gather information can have higher possibilities to alleviate conflicts by time sensitivity, cooperation from different sides, knowledge on problematic areas as well as the positive public

pressures that push governments to take action against violence. On the other hand, it has higher possibilities to be manipulated or even exacerbate violence if media is affected by power and benefits, or causes of misunderstanding. Although theoretically accurate media reports can result in peace building, nowadays media focus more on reporting news rather than making peace promotion since the definition of media is the role to open communication and provide information (Bratic and Schirch, 2007 and Wolfsfeld 2004). That is to say, one can not deny the power which media have brought for the mass audiences throughout history and how it shaped our perspective of views that generate improvements from time to time; however even though we can see media as a tool to achieve peace deal sometimes, the most effective way for media to do for making an impact on conflicts and crises is to stay as the news provider and the gatekeeper who keeps an eye on the accuracy of provided information.

Bibliography Bratic, V. and Schirch, L. (2007). Why and when to use the media for conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Den Haag: European Centre for Conflict Prevention.

Coombs, W. (1999). Ongoing crisis communication. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Dictionary.com, (2015). the definition of medium. [online] Available at: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/medium [Accessed 13 Sep. 2015].

Eltantawy, N. and Wiest, J. (2011). Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering

Resource

Mobilization

Theory.

International

Journal

of

Communication, 5(1207–1224).

Iskandar, A. and Haddad, B. (2012). Mediating The Arab Uprisings. Tadween publishing.

Oxforddictionaries.com, (2015). information - definition of information in English from

the

Oxford

dictionary.

[online]

Available

at:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/information [Accessed 13 Sep. 2015].

Powers, S. and O'Loughlin, B. (2015). The Syrian data glut: Rethinking the role of information in conflict. Media, War & Conflict, 8(2), pp.172-180.

Puddephatt, A. (2006). Voices of war: Conflict and the role of the media. International Media Support.

Wolfsfeld, G. (2004). Media and the path to peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.