conflict
& communication online, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2009
www.cco.regener-online.de
ISSN 1618-0747
Nancy K. Rivenburgh
Seeking discursive spaces for peace in media-sport narratives
Peace scholars have
emphasized the importance of locating peace education outside of formal
education or mainstream political rhetoric and into our daily interactions
with media, religion, art, music, or sport. This essay argues that the
context of international media-sport, despite its emphasis on confrontation
and national competition, may offer what Bruck (1989; 1993) calls ‘discursive
opportunities’ or ‘spaces’ for peace. After reviewing the
relationships among sport, media, and peace, the author identifies five
attributes, or facilitative conditions, that are known to foster cooperative
and non-violent intergroup relations and are compatible with media narratives
of sport. The attributes, derived from the literatures of intercultural
communication, social psychology, and peace studies, include: cooperative
framing, humanizing the other, conferring status on international relationships,
equalization, and positive expectations through ritualization. Examples
of how these attributes may appear as story elements are presented in
order to demonstrate that subtle, yet persistent, messages for peace might
be located within the dominant media narratives of sport.
On the author:
Nancy K. Rivenburgh, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Her research focuses on the media in international relations, including topics such as the Olympic Games as political and cultural communication and the relationship between the media and peace.
Department of Communication, Box 353740, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
eMail: nkriv@u.washington.edu
Website: http://faculty.washington.edu/nkriv/