Peace and War Journalism in the Coverage of the Russian War against Ukraine

The final session at IAMCR 2024 today starts with Yuxuan Wang, whose interest is in the journalistic coverage of the Russian war on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in 2022. A particular focus here is on the increasing use of nuclear threats by Russian propaganda, and the way this has been addressed in journalistic coverage in the US, UK, and China.

This study explores this from a framing perspective, with particular attention to war and peace journalism frames. Peace journalism emphasises non-violent conflict resolution, while war journalism emphasises military conflict; these differences also come to the fore in the reporting on nuclear threats and nuclear weapons. And of course the news coverage of the war also evolved over the course of the ongoing conflict, which this project divides into four major phases.

The project conducted a content analysis of peace and war journalism frames related to nuclear threats in the New York Times, Guardian, and Global Times, each leading news sources in the global media landscape with extensive coverage of the war. Articles were coded for a number of key attributes.

War journalism was dominant in the coverage of the US and Chinese newspapers, while the UK newspaper focussed more on peace journalism. This also evolved over time, with more peace journalism in the UK in the fourth period as the war reached a relative stalemate. Nuclear weapons were largely covered neutrally, perhaps reflecting the status of these countries as nuclear weapons states.

The US paper displayed a higher sensitivity to the uncontrollability of nuclear risks, though. The Chinese paper also displayed a predetermined and unchanging stance that reflected the predetermined government attitudes towards international conflicts.