Roundtable: Conflict Management and Media Impact

Keywords: Media, Communication, Social Conflict

Abstract: This roundtable is designed to engage a scholarly dialogue on the role of media in conflict. Very little research is available that addresses the relationship between media and social conflict, and there is even less theory that drives this type of research and practice. Much of the existing work on media and social conflict concentrates on content analyses of media coverage of protracted conflict (e.g., the Vietnam conflict, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict). Standard exemplars of the existing scholarship focus on what the media did and did not report and how this reporting influenced political systems or broad-based attitudes about the conflict. That work, while relevant, is further limited by its focus on conventional media in terms of print and broadcast journalism. The primary goal of this roundtable is to talk about how to advance conflict intervention practice through a more sophisticated understanding of how conflict is affected by media.