Part 1: Study examines language in Ukraine war coverage
I recently conducted a small study that examines language usage in coverage of the Ukraine-Russia war. The details and results are below. It’s not surprising that traditional/war language outnumbered peace/peace journalism language 5 to 1. --Ed

This study examines language used in reporting about the Russia-Ukraine war, and discusses whether the language used in this reporting reflects traditional/war framing or peace journalism framing.

Research question R1: Regarding Russia-Ukraine war news coverage, does the language used reflect a traditional/war orientation, or a peace journalism orientation?

Research question R2: Within stories discussing a possible settlement to the war, is language used that would indicate a framing that dismisses, marginalizes, and criticizes a potential settlement?

Both questions are researched the Nexis Uni (formerly Lexis-Nexis) database. It analyzes the prevalence of violent, emotive, inflammatory language, and peace language, in news content, specifically newspapers, magazines/journalists, newswires/press releases, and broadcast transcripts for the month of March, 2023. For example, a search was done for “Russia Ukraine War,” then a second search done within the “Russia Ukraine War”  results for a word or term like “battle.”

The content analysis used was based on a revised version of a widely published chart comparing peace journalism and war (traditional) journalism approaches. A version of this chart was first published by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick in Peace Journalism in 2005, and can be seen in the Lynch/Freear Afghanistan study paper (2023), Table 1.

The traditional/war journalism terms searched for (R1) all highlight (and in some cases sensationalize) violence, and are emotive and inflammatory. The peace journalism terms all highlight peace and peace initiatives.

Findings: R1-War vs Peace Language
The study’s findings are contained in the chart below.

Chart 1: Traditional vs. Peace Journalism terms

Traditional/war journalism language	Number	Peace/peace journalism language	Number
Battle	4428	Negotiations	647
Weapons	6927	Peace Talks	889
Attack.	8111	Cease Fire	329
Offensive	2695	Peace	6275
War Crimes	4193	Treaty	1566
Tank	3989	Mediation	763
Prisoner	9393	Reconciliation	336
Killing	19312	Justice	3074
Refugee	6868	Reparations	116
Missile	8443	Compromise	926
TOTAL	74,359	TOTAL	14,923

NOTES:
a. Total number of articles on Nexis Uni in March, 2023 for “Russia Ukraine War”—355,979. 309,724 articles were from newspapers, 30,451 from broadcast transcripts, and 15,804 from magazines and journals.
b. Total number of hits for the 20 traditional/war terms and the peace/peace journalism terms  combined-89,282

NOTE: DETAILS AND FINDINGS ABOUT RESEARCH QUESTION 2, AND A DISCUSSION OF THESE FINDINGS, WILL BE GIVEN IN MY NEXT BLOG POST. STAY TUNED.