Analysis of Balochistan Conflict through the War and Peace Journalism Theory

Asmat Ullah1

Abstract
This study investigates the conflict in Balochistan through the war and peace
journalism. Using content analysis as a data collection technique, the researcher
collected all the conflict related news stories in the daily Dawn from January 2013
till the end of December 2017. The investigation found that the daily Dawn
primarily applied war journalism approach in its coverage of Balochistan conflict.
In terms of topics, war journalism was more prominent in violent events as
compared to peace events. In terms of intensity of war and peace events, more
active war journalism was applied by the newspaper while some passive peace
journalism frames were also present. The findings of the study support the
literature on war-media nexus that media usually do conflict escalatory reporting
due to structural and agential pressures.

Keywords: Balochistan conflict; peace journalism; war journalism; daily Dawn;
violence; political dialogue; propaganda; Baloch insurgents; content
analysis; structure-agency tension