Building New Pathways to Peace

8. Media Discourses of Peace: An Imperfect but Important Tool of Peace, Security, and Kyosei

126 8 Media Discourses of Peace An Imperfect but Important Tool of Peace, Security, and Kyosei susan dente ross s the preceding chapters suggest, the progression from theories of peace to a more just and peaceful world is fraught with complexity and difficulty. Scholars disagree on the necessary role of the state in “building a more peaceable society and a safer world characterized by convivial life spaces . . . that include social justice, cooperation, and equity” but recognize that the state and its dependent institutions are deeply implicated in shaping the ideas and actions of “the people,” whose engagement is vital to any rich and long-lasting peace. The differing degrees to which states engage directly in the indoctrination of the people may have important effects upon the people’s orientation toward peace or bellicosity. Nonetheless, and acknowledging the widely disparate structures and autonomy of elite social institutions around the globe, it is clear that institutions such as schools and the media serve a significant intermediary role between the state and the people. These institutions thus are not only participants in but essential to the creation of pro-peace attitudes and practices among the people.1 This chapter explores one of the two elite social institutions most deeply involved in the acculturation of citizens—the media. (Chapter 9 examines schools, the other acculturating institution discussed in this volume.) The inclusion of these topics reflects a profound understanding that any realistic theory of peace must comprehend these powerful institutions and address their influence on the prejudices and predi- Media Discourses of Peace 127 lections of the people. In this chapter, empirical case studies of Western media are offered as terra firma upon which to clear a pathway toward peacebuilding. The necessarily local and contingent knowledge built here suggests that whether peace is crafted from the top down or the bottom up, the media must play a role. Indeed, it is arguable that Western media function as the critical locus of the ongoing, tensionfilled interplay among the major components of peace, security, and kyosei—that is, the goal of global peace, a nationally situated concept of security, and an individual disinclination to seek tolerant kyosei that has been repeatedly instilled through a recurrent U.S. message of competitive capitalism, self-sufficiency, and independence. The prominence of the media in the acculturation of pro-peace citizens derives from the media’s powerful role in the ongoing process of the social construction of reality. That is to say, the media are significant to peace, security, and kyosei because media texts—be they Hollywood films, personal blogs, political cartoons, or mainstream news stories —offer culturally situated depictions of events, peoples, and strategies , which seem both natural and obvious to the audience.2 Given our increasingly mediated experience with and of the world, the Western media play a prominent role in how we view ourselves and the rest of the world, how we define problems, identify causes, and conceive solutions.3 Media texts help construct a taken-for-granted understanding of reality that is socially resonant. The images and information transmitted through the media are neither objectively “true” nor neutral; they are deeply informed by and interconnected with the interests and priorities of media owners and practitioners, who are themselves embedded in their societies’ power hierarchy. The power of the media to shape the commonsense understanding of the world is particularly significant when texts transmit knowledge of events, places, or peoples of which media consumers have little or no direct experience. Thus, international affairs and global security offer a particularly rich environment for media influence in ways that generally align with national policies and nationalist prerogatives. Much theorizing about the freedoms of speech and press assumes that an open marketplace for the unfettered exchange of information is both ideal and essential for fruitful exploration of alternative policy choices and for the functioning of a true democracy (conceived of as a public sphere—a literal or figurative space—in which global citizens with political agency and freedom of voice and association share insights and form 128 susan dente ross ideas).4 In such theories, argument (which is viewed as the exchange of reasons intended to achieve understanding and to reach consensus, but ever open to changed conclusions in response to new reasons) is conceptualized as the core activity within the public sphere and the essence of the democratic process.5 The Habermasian public sphere encompasses both the...