Probing peace journalism: The discursive construction of blackness within the racial democracy of Colombia

Abstract

This study examines the discursive construction of blackness in the Colombian men’s magazine SoHo, using peace journalism as an evaluative framework. Specifically, it examines 116 feature stories focused on race, published from June 1999 to June 2017. The study found that SoHo did not openly cover racial-structural inequalities, did not contextualize racism, omitted the voices of people of African descent, neglected the race of Black leaders, evaded controversial language, disregarded racial polarization, and presented Black people as disempowered individuals while championing non-Blacks as agents of change. Although SoHo is not a peace journalism project, the magazine’s coverage of blackness revealed that avoiding incendiary language – a key tenet of peace journalism – may in fact maintain power dynamics between oppressors and oppressed, as misunderstanding interaction with collaboration does.

Keywords

Colombia critical discourse analysis news storytelling peace journalism racial democracies racism war journalism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ahva

Hautakangas

(2018) Why do we suddenly talk so much about constructiveness? Journalism Practice 12(6): 657–661.

Alberto

Hoffnung-Garskof

(2018) ‘Democracia racial’ e inclusión racial, historias hemisféricas. In: de la Fuente

Andrews

(eds) Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Clacso, pp. 317–378.

Andrews

(2004) Afro-Latin America 1800-2000. New York: Oxford University Press.

Arocha

(1989) Democracia ilusoria: El plan nacional de rehabilitación entre minorías étnicas. Análisis Político 7: 33–45.

Baden

Tenenboim-Weinblatt

(2018) The search for common ground in conflict news research: Comparing the coverage of six current conflicts in domestic and international media over time. Media, War & Conflict 11(1): 22–45.

Baker

(2002) Media, Markets, and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Barrios

(2017) Colombian cries: International armed conflict and emotions in letters to the editor. Journalism 18(2): 159–175.

Benson

(2008) Journalism: Normative theories. In: Donsbach

(ed.) The Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 2591–2597.

Biazoto

(2011) Peace journalism where there is not war. Conflict-sensitive reporting on urban violence and public security in Brazil and its potential role in conflict transformation. Conflict & Communication Online 10(2): 1–19.

10.

Bogle

(1973) Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking Press.

11.

Bonilla-Silva

(2003) Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield.

12.

Carter

Thomas

Ross

(2011) You are not a friend: Media conflict in times of peace. Journalism Studies 12(4): 456–473.

13.

Chasteen

(2011) Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

14.

Cottle

(2006) Mediatized Conflict: Developments in Media and Conflict Studies. Buckingham: Open University Press.

15.

Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE) (2005) Boletín: Censo general 2005, Perfil Tumaco-Nariño. DANE. Available at: https://www.dane.gov.co/files/censo2005/perfiles/narino/tumaco.pdf

16.

De La Fuente

Andrews

(eds) (2018) Estudios afrolatinoamericanos: Una introducción. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Clacso.

17.

Dixon

Linz

(2000) Race and the misrepresentation of victimization on local television news. Communication Research 27(5): 547–573.

18.

El-Nawawy

Elmasry

(2018) Is America ‘post-racist’? How AC 360 and The O’Reilly Factor discursively constructed the Charleston church shooting. Journalism Studies 19(7): 942–959.

19.

Entman

Rojecki

(2000) The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

20.

Estupiñan

(2006) Afrocolombianos y el Censo 2005. Revista de Información Básica 1(1). Available at: https://sitios.dane.gov.co/revista_ib/html_r1/articulo7_r1.htm

21.

Fairclough

(2010) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.

22.

Fowler

(1991) Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge.

23.

Freire

Díaz-Bonilla

Orellana

, et al. (2018) Afrodescendientes en Latinoamérica: Hacia un marco de inclusión. Washington, DC: Grupo Banco Mundial.

24.

Fürsich

(2009) In defense of textual analysis: Restoring a challenged method for journalism and media studies. Journalism Studies 10(2): 238–252.

25.

Galtung

(2003) Peace journalism. Media Asia 30(3): 177–180.

26.

Galtung

Ruge

(1965) The structure of foreign news: The presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of Peace Research 2(1): 64–91.

27.

Gómez

(2017) Lo que ha hecho la explotación de oro en el Chocó. Semana, 15 December. Available at: https://www.semana.com/contenidos-editoriales/atrato-el-rio-tiene-la-palabra/articulo/consecuencias-de-la-explotacion-de-oro-en-el-choco/551283

28.

Hall

(1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: SAGE.

29.

Hall

(2000) Racist ideologies and the media. In: Marris

Thornham

(eds) Media Studies: A Reader. New York: New York University Press, pp. 271–282.

30.

Hanitzsch

(2004) Journalists as peacekeeping force? Peace journalism and mass communication theory. Journalism Studies 5(4): 483–495.

31.

Hanitzsch

(2007) Situating peace journalism in journalism studies: A critical appraisal. Conflict & Communication Online 6: 1–9.

32.

Hanitzsch

Vos

(2017) Journalistic roles and the struggle over institutional identity: The discursive constitution of journalism. Communication Theory 27(2): 115–135.

33.

Horvit

Cortés-Martínez

Kelling

(2018) Journalism, war, and peace. In: Vos

(ed.) Journalism. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 453–472.

34.

Human Rights Watch (2003) Human Rights Watch Report, 2003. New York: Human Rights Watch.

35.

Hutchison

(2012) Reexamining Jack Johnson, stereotypes, and America’s white press, 1908–1915. Howard Journal of Communications 23(3): 215–234.

36.

Karppinen

(2013) Uses of democratic theory in media and communication studies. Observatorio 7(3): 1–17.

37.

Kian

Mondello

Vincent

(2009) ESPN – The women’s sports network? A content analysis of internet coverage of March Madness. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 53(3): 477–495.

38.

Kovach

Rosenstiel

(2014) The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and What the Public Should Expect, 3rd edn. New York: Three Rivers Press.

39.

Loyn

(2007) Good journalism or peace journalism? Conflict & Communication Online 6(2): 1–10.

40.

Lynch

McGoldrick

(2005) Peace Journalism. Stroud: Hawthorn Press.

41.

McGoldrick

(2000) Peace journalism: An introduction. In: Friedrich Ebert Foundation (ed.) The Media in Conflicts: Accomplices or Mediators? Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, pp. 19–24.

42.

McMahon

Chow-White

(2011) News media encoding of racial reconciliation: Developing a peace journalism model for the analysis of ‘cold’ conflict. Media, Culture & Society 33(7): 989–1007.

43.

Mandelzis

(2007) Representations of peace in news discourse: Viewpoint and opportunity for peace journalism. Conflict & Communication Online 6(1): 1–10.

44.

Meyers

(2016) Universals without absolutes: A theory of media ethics. Journal of Media Ethics 31(4): 198–214.

45.

Mitra

(2018) Socio-cultural contexts and peace journalism: A case for meso-level comparative sociological investigation of journalistic cultures. Journalism 19(11): 1517–1533.

46.

Peleg

(2006) Peace journalism through the lenses of conflict theory. Conflict & Communication Online 5(2): 1–17.

47.

Prager

Hameleers

(2018) Disseminating information or advocating peace? Journalists’ role perceptions in the face of conflict. Journalism. Epub ahead of print 13 August. DOI: 10.1177/1464884918791788.

48.

Salcedo

(2017) Cinco apuntes sobre periodismo narrativo. Telar: Revista del Instituto Interdisciplinario de Estudios Latinoamericanos 11(18): 21–28.

49.

Saldaña

(2016) The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers, 3rd edn. Los Ángeles, CA: SAGE.

50.

Shaw

Lynch

Hackett

(eds) (2011) Expanding Peace Journalism: Comparative and Critical Approaches. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney University Press.

51.

Sheriff

(2001) Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

52.

Shinar

(2003) The peace process in cultural conflict: The role of the media. Conflict & Communication Online 2(1): 1–10.

53.

Shinar

(2009) Can peace journalism make progress? The coverage of the 2006 Lebanon war in Canadian and Israeli media. International Communication Gazette 71(6): 451–471.

54.

Squires

(2014) The Post-Racial Mystique: Media and Race in the Twenty-First Century. New York: New York University Press.

55.

Steiner

Okrusch

(2006) Care as a virtue for journalists. Journal of Mass Media Ethics 21(2–3): 102–122.

56.

Strömbäck

(2005) In search of a standard: Four models of democracy and their normative implications for journalism. Journalism Studies 6(3): 331–345.

57.

Thomas

(2011) Media morality and compassion for ‘faraway others.’ Journalism Practice 5(3): 287–302.

58.

Tumber

(2009) Covering war and peace. In: Wahl-Jorgensen

Hanitzsch

(eds) The Handbook of Journalism Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 386–397.

59.

Tyree

Byerly

Hamilton

(2012) Representations of (new) Black masculinity: A news-making case study. Journalism 13(4): 467–482.

60.

Wade

(1997) Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. London: Pluto Press.

61.

Ward

(2011) Ethical flourishing as aim of global media ethics. Journalism Studies 12(6): 738–746.

62.

Youngblood

(2017) Peace Journalism Principles and Practice: Responsibly Reporting Conflicts, Reconciliation, and Solutions. New York: Routledge.