"This MeCoDEM working paper presents an overview of the main findings from a quantitative content analysis covering different types of democratisation conflicts (i.e., conflicts over citizenship, elections, transitional justice and distribution of power) in four countries: Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and S ... outh Africa. The sample involves 5162 newspaper articles and news stories in the four countries selected on the basis of two main criteria: the degree of independence of media outlets from government and political parties, and their relevance. The key findings from the content analysis are organised around several themes: causes of democratisation conflicts, portrayal of conflict parties, preferred solutions to conflicts, perceptions of democracy, role of the media, authoritarian past, and tone of reporting and polarisation. Although this paper focuses principally on description, we also speculate about the main factors that shape similarities and differences in media coverage of democratisation conflicts. The main finding from the content analysis is that cross-national variations that we found in media reporting of democratisation conflicts appear to depend on several factors." (Executive summary) more

"This paper provides a critical overview of the literature on media and conflict by focusing on the ways in which contemporary media frame different types of political conflict. It reveals a fractured field. There is an extensive literature on how media report on wars, on election campaigns and popu ... lar protest and social movements in western democracies, as well as some research on media coverage of violent conflicts in non-democratic regimes and democratising states, but there are only limited attempts to draw parallels between the media coverage of different kinds of conflicts and little cross-fertilisation of findings from the disparate literatures." (Executive summary) more