Media and Change

Abstract

The task of this first chapter is to frame the state of the relations between media operation and social change, in order to fully place the discussion about journalism and its role in conflict transformation within current dynamics and tendencies. As not all aspects of these relations can be captured here, the chapter offers a walk through selected examples and past research, which help to highlight some of the most important peculiarities and contradictions in the interactions between journalists and their representations on one hand, and events represented (or not) in the news on the other. The chapter thus examines the many different ways in which journalism and the concept of change can be looked at; it debunks simplistic visions of journalism as a detached observer; and it reveals how news reporting is deeply rooted in the historical and cultural contexts in which practitioners live. The complexity highlighted through this contextualisation provides a clear sense of the challenges that transformative models like peace journalism face in the Israeli—Palestinian conflict. These challenges are further historically contextualised in Chapter 2, which is dedicated to the negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and their associated narratives since the first Intifada in 1987. Together, these two chapters provide the macro-analytical contextualisation framing the analysis presented in Chapters 3 to 6. In particular, this first chapter provides a conceptual frame for the ethnographic material on grassroots peace promotion and journalists’ perspectives on this conflict.