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ABSTRACT
An analysis of Zimbabwean journalists' framing of the country's 2008 and 2013 elections points to interesting insights on electoral and conflict reporting. Qualitative content analysis of articles from three Zimbabwean weekly newspapers that covered these elections showed the press as tacitly and overtly willing agents in fanning political violence by perpetuating social and political polarisation through acts of omission and commission. Private and public media journalists took “positioned” reporting styles and propagated hate speech, name-calling and propaganda, which mirrored key aspects of “war-like journalism”. While five years later, in 2013, the elections were less politically charged, the weekly press continued to publish hate speech, name-calling and counter-accusations against the “other”. We argue that “peace journalism” practices can help neutralise political violence and socio-political polarisation, while depolarisation of political and economic forces behind Zimbabwean mainstream press cannot be overemphasised.
Acknowledgements
The authors have been African Peacebuilding Network (APN) alumni since 2013. While their support is gratefully acknowledged, the views reflected in this study are those of the authors and not the funding organisations. We also would like to thank all the anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism of earlier versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 ANZ was closed down by the government after failing to register with the media regulatory body, the then Media and Information Commission, which has now been renamed the Zimbabwe Media Commission.