Communication may not build peace but it can certainly contribute to war

I wish to criticise the common assumptions that undergird most studies and debates on peace and communications, such as more communication leads to more peace; more information leads to more peace; better information leads to more peace and peace-building messages lead to more peace. I suggest that such assumptions are often based upon an attractive but seriously flawed cause-effect model. Communication is then conceived as the key variable and, depending upon how it is manipulated, peace or war are the outcome.

Basic to conventional thinking about peace and communication is an essential notion in the Constitution of UNESCO: war begins in the minds of men. The implied suggestion is obviously that if the mass media can influence the minds of men in negative ways, the media can also through positive message develop a culture of peace.

Thirdly, we find in much work on peace and communication the suggestion of a linear and progressive evolution from war mongering towards a state of world peace. Peace represents a utopian vision to the realisation of which communication could and should contribute.

The role of the media
Although communication is not the key variable in conditions of peace and war, communication can certainly make the human condition a lot worse as the role of media has demonstrated in recent genocidal conflicts. This justifies the establishment of an international media alert system.

In 1994, in just a few months, some 500,000 to one million Tutsis were killed by Hutus. Radio Télévision Mille Collines (the RTML Hutu extremist radio and TV station) played an essential role in the massacre by repeatedly broadcasting messages in which Tutsis were slandered and ridiculed and depicted as despicable. The Hutu militia was informed by RTML where Tutsis - who were referred to as ‘cockroaches’ - were hiding so that they could be murdered.

The Hutus were made to believe that the Tutsis deserved to be eliminated and this ended up in a horrifying bloodbath. The hate propaganda was so effective that neighbours who had been living in peace together for many years, got killed by people they considered to be friends. Ordinary people turned into crazed killing machines - because they were made to believe that it was a dangerous and hideous enemy that lived next door.

One of the world’s most critical problems is the alarming and world-wide increase of ethnic conflicts. With almost certainty it can be predicted that several violent ethnic conflicts are still to break out in the near future.

At the dramatic core of ethnic conflicts is the grand scale perpetration of crimes against humanity. As the term suggests these are criminal acts that render their perpetrators enemies of the human species. Crimes against humanity transgress taboos that apply In most cultures, such as the murder or torture of defenceless men and women, and the killing of children.

Among the crimes against humanity - as defined by international law - are murder and extermination of civilian populations, genocide and apartheid. Although crimes can be committed without apparent motivation, the exercise of gross violence at a grand scale - as in crimes against humanity - need motivating beliefs. In order to get people to commit such crimes, they need to believe that the violent acts are right. In situations where crimes against humanity are committed one usually finds a systematic distribution of hate propaganda and disinformation.

The purpose of this is the promotion and justification of the social and/or physical elimination of certain social groups. Members of such groups are often first targeted as ‘socially undesirable’; they are publicly ridiculed, insulted and provoked (often in the media), and when the harassments become physical the victims are indeed beaten up and killed.

The elimination beliefs that motivate people to kill each other are not part of the human genetic constitution. They are social constructs, which need social institutions for their dissemination. Such institutions include religious communities, schools, families, and the mass media. Because crimes against humanity are unthinkable without elimination beliefs, the institutional carrier of such beliefs should be seen as enemies of the human species. This implies that all those who propagate beliefs in support of genocide, through whatever media, have to be treated as perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

Media alert system
Once the perpetrators of crimes against humanity are brought to justice, it usually is too late for the victims. It is therefore of utmost importance that public expressions of elimination beliefs are spotted - and subsequently exposed! - as early as possible. An International Media Alert System is needed that monitors media contents in areas of conflict. This system would provide an ‘early warning’ where and when media set the climate for crimes against humanity and begin to motivate people to kill others.

Rather than standing accused of complicity through silence, it should be seen as an essential moral responsibility for every community of media researchers and practitioners proactively to intervene when human integrity is at stake.

Cees I. Hamelink, a speaker at WACC’s Congress 2001, is professor of international communication at the University of Amsterdam and professor of media, religion and culture at the Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Click here to see comments made on this article by Ross Howard, Media Programs of IMPACS