War or peace journalism: how international news agencies framed the initial stages of the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Abstract

This study applied the war and peace journalism framework to examine how four international news agencies framed their news coverage of the initial stages of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. A content analysis of 1,062 headlines (N = 1,062) from AP, Reuters, Xinhua, and TASS suggested that the four international news agencies were statistically different in employing the war and peace journalism framework in their coverage, especially when comparing Western to non-Western agencies. Moreover, international news agencies tilted towards peace journalism rather than war journalism during the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Xinhua being the news organization with the strongest peace journalism framing. In contrast, the agency that employed the strongest war journalism framing was TASS. The most salient indicators of the peace journalism frame were language-based indicators, including avoiding victimizing language, avoiding demonizing language, and avoiding emotive words. Meanwhile, reporting the here and now, reactive reporting, and focusing on elite sources were the three most prominent indicators of the war journalism frame. Moreover, the study found that the dominant tone toward Ukraine and Russia, the two main actors involved in the conflict, was neutral. Western agencies tended to employ a negative tone toward Russia and a positive tone toward Ukraine.