Deescalation-oriented conflict coverage? The Northern Ireland and Israeli-Palestinian peace processes in the German press

Various scholars and media researchers have adopted the view, that due to the Cold War, war discourse has become the dominant discourse in Western media and popular culture. We live in a deeply militarized culture in which for instance many ordinary metaphors have their roots in war and popular culture is full of war material. Consuming war as a natural part of everyday entertainment, the "war logic" has become a naturalized way of outlining social reality and international life (Luostarinen, 2000a). As the previous "classical" war with clear phases like preparations, fight and demilitarization was replaced with continious arms race and low intensity warfare during the Cold War, both, the military and the civilian population had to be maintained in military preparedness for decades, and a permanent atmosphere of crisis was created (Luostarinen & Ottosen, 2000). The boundaries between war and peace became unclear and vague, and penetration of militarized logic into journalism was one of the consequences. Almost every single piece of news could be used for the purposes of the Cold War, and even innocent looking entertainment had potential ideological background (Whitfield, 1996). As a consequence of the Cold War culture the media and national defence organisations integrated in a way which compromised journalistic independence, and the dominance of military thinking distorted cultural and political perspectives in the media content (Luostarinen & Ottosen, 2000). While the governmental rhetoric of power and violence was adopted by the media as the official discourse, "peace talk" was tagged Communist, and got low entry into the general audience media. According to Dov Shinar (1998), this preference of war discourses resulted in a far reaching absence of a peace discourse in the media professional repertoire, and Dov Shinar, finally, comes to the conclusion that the invention of a media peace discourse should be included in the current research agenda.