Definition and First Research Thoughts
Definition: “Peace Journalism is when editors and reporters make choices – of what stories to report, and how to report them – which create opportunities for society at large to consider and to value non-violent responses to conflict.” (http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peace_conflict/research/peace_journalism.shtml#what)
Progress:
I spend the afternoon/night thinking about a few Topics that I would like to work on. Mostly I like the Idea of Journalism in the sense of photography or filmmaking.
What is the Power behind a picture? There has been Pictures creating a Conflict, so is it also possible, that Pictures can spread peace?
- Together with the headline a picture is the first thing that the reader sees (building of opinion before the article is read)
- Pictures depend on the habitus of the viewer
- Pictures are spread fast (One-Click-phenomena on Social Networks)
- Pictures can show emotions and create emotions in the viewer within seconds
The most up to date example that comes to my head would be the following picture that was spread over Social networks, Newspapers and TV Reports:
http://www.feelguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/VancouverKiss1.jpg
How can I formulate this Idea to a (workable) research topic?
Are other people interested in this topic?
Working with images is a great idea… there is a number of studies which investigate how images affect our perception of events. You could adopt a peace journalistic view on this topic to examine how War and Peace Journalism differ in their use of images in order to convey different messages or stories. From a methodological standpoint you could use (visual) content analysis to investigate these ideas.
A totally different method would be “Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis” (IPA) with which you could examine the different psychological effects of images (framed in PJ or WJ narratives) on the viewer (audience). Does PJ really cause more positive effects on individuals or not? Look up this method if you’re interested in this approach.