Coverage of the conflict in Rwenzururu in The Daily Monitor and New Vision newspapers: frames and peacebuilding

Abstract

This study assessed how two leading daily newspapers in Uganda, the Daily Monitor and the New Vision covered the November 2016 conflict in Rwenzururu Sub-region. The primary purpose of this study was to assess how the newspapers framed the conflict in the context of War and Peace Journalism as advanced in the Galtung Peace Journalism Model. Two theories, Framing and Agenda-setting were used. Framing was used to analyze the media frames of Peace and War while Agenda-setting was used to assess the priority given to peace stories vis-à-vis war stories. The study used both the quantitative and qualitative approaches. Content Analysis as a method under the quantitative approach was used to compute the number of stories published by the two newspapers about the conflict between August 2016 to February 2017 and how long each story was. Quantitative Content Analysis was further used to determine the placement of stories in the two newspapers and this was later used to understand the relevance given to peace-biased stories and war-biased stories depending on where they were positioned in the newspapers. Qualitative Content Analysis was used to examine the language used in the stories so as to identify frames advanced by the two newspapers in the coverage of the crisis. Findings indicate that both newspapers published more stories that embraced war frames compared to peace frames. The assessment based on the Galtung Peace and War frames indicated that more focus was placed on visible effects of the war and less to the invisible effects, elites were given more space to speak-out compared to the local affected people and that voices of peace were given less coverage compared to the politics of justifying the attack of the Rwenzururu Palace. The researcher, therefore, made several recommendations including training for journalists to increase knowledge of the Peace Journalism concept, adoption of newsroom policy to practice Peace Journalism rather than war journalism, and also provision of a conducive environment for journalists to practice during conflict situations.