Revisiting Peace Journalism in the Kenyan News Landscape

This book revisits the concept of peace journalism, a framework that emerged to question and redefine the professional ethos of conflict reporting by challenging traditional news values, such as the focus on negativity, violence, and the elites, to emphasise reconciliation and dialogue, contextualisation of conflicts and giving voice to all involved parties.

The author argues that in a globalised and diverse world, the notion of peace journalism continues to mutate and evolve every time it enters specific contexts and, for that matter, it cannot be regarded as a one-size-fits-all approach. The book reviews and challenges the dominant ways in which peace journalism has been studied and understood to date, before exploring the multiple tensions and relationships between notions of peace journalism and journalistic roles and practices in the reporting of electoral conflict and terrorism by legacy newspapers in Kenya. After deconstructing this complex concept and tracing its motions, mutations, and evolutions in a specific setting, peace journalism is redefined as a dynamic concept that is continuously negotiated between the particulars of context and a shared essence that circles around the values of peace, non-violence, and reconciliation.

This book will interest journalism and media studies scholars, educators, and graduate students, in particular those interested in or specialising in peace journalism or conflict reporting, or the East African (or Kenyan) news media scene.