"This article presents and discusses data from two research methods on journalism in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover of power in August 2021. News reports from the time of the intra-Afghan peace talks in September 2020 were analyzed using the Peace Journalism model. These were found to be pr ... edominantly War Journalism, leaving audiences cognitively primed for violent conflict responses and likely to overlook or fail to value peace initiatives. Interviews with 16 Afghan journalists revealed this pattern to be at odds with their aspirations and role perceptions. They wanted to report more in the style of Peace Journalism: revealing backgrounds and contexts; highlighting successes and achievements; giving a voice to all rival parties, and covering peace initiatives from whatever level. The constraints they identified, as impeding their preferred reporting approaches, were categorized using Reese and Shoemaker’s Hierarchy of Influences model. Some were attributed to the commercial competitive market structure of Afghan media under the internationally supported government, after an initial infusion of development aid was reduced. In any such intervention in future, it is argued, news can play a positive role in building a constituency for peace—but only if aid interventions ensure that media are not left to operate on a purely commercial basis." (Abstract) more

"This article presents and discusses results from an exercise in comparative content analysis of news articles about issues of conflict produced by Afghan journalists before and after participating in an internationally sponsored training and mentorship programme in Peace Journalism. The programme w ... as part of a Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) project, intended to create community resources for resilience, in the information sphere, towards conflict issues contributing to recruitment by non-state armed groups such as Islamic State–Khorasan Province (IS–KP). Peace Journalism is familiar as the basis for media development aid in contexts of conflict; however, its use in an intervention aimed specifically at PVE is relatively new. The results showed that the programme was effective, it is argued, in terms of benefits transferred to and applied by participating journalists. A sample of articles after the training showed a markedly higher Peace Journalism quotient than a baseline sample of articles by the same journalists before it. This suggested that the training and mentorship had successfully stimulated and enabled journalistic agency, taking account of constraints imposed by media structures and wider political and social contexts. The latter have become steadily more onerous under the Islamic Emirate (Taliban) government, in power since August 2021, according to international monitoring organisations. Implications are considered, in light of the findings, for future media development aid to Afghanistan." (Abstract) more