A RESEARCH ON PEACE JOURNALISM CONCEPT PERCEPTION OF JOURNALISTS IN TURKEY

Peace journalism is a journalism approach that became conceptualized in the 1990s and started to be recognized as a journalism practice in the early 2000s. Peace journalism has also been a topic of academician's studies in Turkey since 2000. The number of academics and researchers who are working on the subject of peace journalism in Turkey is increasing day by day. This study aims to investigate the perception of this concept in professional journalists, rather than reviewing published academic sources on peace journalism. This study, where the in-depth interviewing method is preferred, includes a brief summary on the meaning of the concept of peace journalism, followed by methods, research, identifying and interpreting the findings. Another objective of this study, which is expected to give clues about the journalists' awareness of peace journalism in Turkey, is to contribute to the existing literature on peace journalism in Turkey. As a result of the interviews, although there are many studies in the field of peace journalism, it is seen that the majority of journalists in the field are unaware of the concept. The fact that the journalists who participated in the interviews consisted people graduated from communication faculties formed the perception that the curriculum taught at the undergraduate level in the communication faculties did not contain enough of the concept of peace journalism. During the interviews, the participants were asked whether peace journalism was possible in practice. The majority of the participants expressed the view that it is not possible to adopt peace journalism as a journalistic attitude in practice. Considering all the interviews, the participants did not have many objections to the universal definitions of the peace journalism concept. It was understood that existing sources' handling of the concept and their oppositional stance was quite effective in the perception of peace journalism among participants.

Keywords

Peace Journalism, Journalism practices, Journalism and violence, War journalism