Feedback Loop
Peace journalism analysis suggests that typical news on conflict, with its value bias towards violence and violent groups, has important effects on the parties to conflict. Firstly, peace journalism proponents argue that the bias in favour of publicity for violence and violent actors, "plays into" the interests of violent actors to intimidate and disrupt the peace process. This is an important example of the Feedback Loop effect: "it is not the influence of news on public opinion as such, but assumptions by parties to conflict about its likely or possible influence, that condition their behaviour". This bias also weakens and punishes, with less publicity, non-violent groups affected by a conflict, for their lack of violence. Nohrstedt and Ottosen (2002) note: "if traditional media themselves are unable to transmit alternative perspectives and voice the danger is that those that feel marginalised will turn to terror in order to make a difference in the media agenda".
The most visible actions of a group, of which one is not a member, are often considered representative of that group’s behaviour (an effect called the “availability heuristic”). Therefore war journalism's over-selection of violent, as opposed to non-violent, responses to conflict may actually foster a misperception of excessive threat between parties. This is then generally exaggerated by other inter-group social-cognitive biases within war journalism. These include biases towards: seeing an outgroup as more homogeneous (with less internal variety) than it really is, ignoring the variety of attitudes towards the conflict; seeing ambiguous situations, or negative group behavior, as playing out internal, and stable, group characteristics rather than external, and variable, circumstances, favourable ingroup/outgroup comparison to increase collective self esteem; and members of groups who perceive themselves to be under threat to be more pressured internally to conform with and reinforce dominant group norms; premature and immediate resistance to ideas on positive responses to violence offered by members of outgroups.
Indeed Dr. Louis Kriesberg, a sociologist at Syracuse University, and expert on conflict resolution points out that: "conventional thinking among partisans in a fight generally attributes destructive persistence in a conflict to the enemy's character, asserting that the enemy is aggressive by nature, has evil leaders, or adheres to a hostile ideology". And Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, Marc Gopin, agrees with the importance of psychological factors in escalating conflict: "being hated normally generates deep injury and corresponding anger in most recipients is what I call a "conflict dance" of action/reaction".
A peace journalism perspective also highlights another effect of typical conflict journalism on the groups engaged in a conflict: war journalism's common focus on the human drama and tragedy of violence. Hamber and Lewis (1997) note war journalism "often involves painting doomsday scenarios of victims who are irreparably damaged and for whom there appears to be no solution and no future". This creates an increased impediment for the victims of unreported crimes. And the positive experiences of those who have embarked upon a process of recovery is often ignored in war journalism. For example in Israel/Palestine, victims of suicide bombing, house demolition, land and house theft, are often portrayed as defenceless, disempowered victims with no prospect of healing or positive response to their predicament.
Effective non-violent bridge building between communities such as the Hand in Hand Arab/Jewish school network in Israel, are routinely ignored in war journalism coverage. Non-violent initiatives illustrate what can be possible through peaceful responses to conflict but this information is artificially "filtered out" through the coverage biases of war journalism. Parties are therefore presented with a biassed picture of the entire conflict, favouring violent responses to the conflict. Parties are led to believe that that violence is the only way their needs can be met, thereby reinforcing and escalating cycles of dangerous retaliation between groups. Peace journalism would also charge that this pattern of conventional conflict reporting submerges the emotional cost of violent conflict and therefore makes the psychological aspects of cycles of revenge subtle, and so more difficult to prevent.
All of this missed information could represent a crucial movement away from violence, as the only option for threatened groups towards peace. But only if they are not hidden by journalistic assumptions that they are irrelevant, and should not be reported. This is of special concern, given that the collective trauma suffered by a population, and the fear that this generates, can lead to a reduced capacity for decision making and action.
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