Asian Conflicts and the Iraq War

Abstract

This study examines the news coverage of the Iraq War and Asian conflicts by eight newspapers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines to compare the framing of two different levels of conflicts – international and local. Based on Galtung's war/peace journalism framework, a content analysis of 1558 stories on the Iraq War and the Asian conflicts involving Pakistan and India's tussle over Kashmir, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippine province of Mindanao and the Aceh and Maluku civil wars in Indonesia showed that the Asian newspapers used a war journalism frame in covering local conflicts but deployed a peace journalism frame in covering the Iraq War. Hard news stories were dominated by war journalism framing, while features and opinion pieces were dominated by peace journalism framing. Foreign-sourced stories from wire services contained more war journalism frames and fewer peace journalism frames than locally produced stories written by the newspapers' own correspondents.