scholarly journals Constructing the image of soldiers by using newspaper media during the final phase of war in Sri Lanka

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-97
Author(s):  
Ashawarie Karunanayake

Sri Lanka has experienced an ethnic conflict for nearly three decades (1983-2009). As of any conflict, military forces have played a key role by actively involving in the battlefield during this war. However, it was evident that during different phases of the war in Sri Lanka, the acceptance and the reputation of the armed forces by the civil society have subjected to a great extent of variation. Although protecting the country was their duty, criticisms directed against them because of their military actions. In this context, there was an active attempt to legitimize battle, and media was widely used as a platform for this process. Although a considerable number of literature and researches have been conducted to study the war in Sri Lanka, the lack of studies and literature regarding the soldiers is recognizable. Hence this study tried to fill that study gap by focusing on how print media was used to construct the image of the soldiers in the final phase of the war in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the objective of this study was to critically investigate the role of newspapers in terms of constructing the identity of soldiers during the final phase, from 2006 to 2009. This was based on a discourse analysis of the weekend Sinhala and English newspapers. This study revealed that, different identities have existed towards the soldiers. Furthermore, as another observed fact, the newspapers have widely highlighted and brought forward the humanitarian facet of these soldiers. However, this study was conducted based on the newspapers of only two official languages. This may lead to miss the perspectives from the Tamil newspapers which may have conveyed other opinions about the soldiers and their actions, during these periods.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Gisa Jähnichen

The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work “People of Sri Lanka” in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people’s groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qasim Ali Shah ◽  
Bahadar Nawab ◽  
Tahir Mehmood

Peacebuilding is a continuous process to transform conflicts into development opportunities for and by the stakeholders. This article explores the role of stakeholders in post-conflict peacebuilding in Swat. Applying Constructivist paradigm and Discourse Analysis, 80 semi-structured interviews were conducted by incorporating local community, civil society and the government. Study finds out that cultural, political, social and economic tiers of peacebuilding measures in Swat hardly achieved its purpose. The lack of institutional coordination and gaps in peacebuilding measures are important hurdles, which needs to be minimized for sustainable development processes in Swat.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Amal Bakry ◽  
Mariam F Alkazemi

The current study examines the print and social media coverage of the “Maspero” massacre in Egypt, in which military forces attacked Coptic Christians in a predominantly Muslim country. By employing a qualitative content analysis, the authors examine the role of media in inducing a state of social cohesion. Data were collected from a state-owned newspaper, Al-Ahram, and an independent newspaper, Al-Masry Al-Youm. Data were also collected from a blog that compiles testimonies of witnesses to the “Maspero” massacre as well as three of Egypt’s best-known online activists: Alaa Abd El Fattah (@alaa), Salma Said (@salmasaid), and Rasha Azab (@RashaPress). The results reveal the themes of print and social media coverage of the events, with the suggestion that social media was much more effective in inducing social cohesion than the print media.


2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ιωάννης Σακιώτης

The target of this thesis was the investigation of the role of the Greek intellectuals, who having adopted the man ideas of the ecological (or green) theory, critisized the Greek post - war model of development. Regarding the methodology we used the approach of discourse analysis of the texts that had been selected from a wide bibliography as well as the comparative analysis approach of the ideas which rise up in this work. In addition to this the biographical method was used.As a conclusion greek intellectuals built up a public discussion of high quality, through which they presented a strong criticism on the Greek development model and they supported as an alternative the sustainable development model, for which they suggested the implementation of certain environmental policies.At last, they suceeded in influencing the opinion makers, the wider public opinion and the civil society whose pressure on the Greek state resulted in the adoption of sustainable policies


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 414
Author(s):  
Fatima Zafar Baig ◽  
Muhammad Zammad Aslam ◽  
Nadia Akram ◽  
Kashaf Fatima ◽  
Alisha Malik ◽  
...  

The researchers have explored the role of print media and social media to present the social, cultural and political ideologies through the support of liberal feminist women in Aurat March 2019–2020. Moreover, the researchers have identified the connection/s between the language and power in the construction of ideologies, specifically through the media (print and social media). Print media, specifically print social media, has a negative impact due to its lesser amount of validity and a positive keeping wide coverage. For this study, researchers took three articles from three different local newspapers about the specific topic “Aurat March”. These articles along with the posters (which were present in the specific articles) of Aurat March have been analyzed. The researchers collected the data through a qualitative approach and purposive sampling. The research is exploratory and multi-directional. Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis is used for the analysis. The findings of the study have suggested that media discourse is intentionally crafted to create specific ideologies. As media has created and represented different socio-cultural ideologies in Aurat March. Media can play a positive and negative role in language and power. However, the impact of the media’s ideologies is depending on the feedback of the concerned society.


Refuge ◽  
1993 ◽  
pp. 9-14
Author(s):  
Sujata Ramachandran

This article examines the role of culture in the ethnic conflict and strife in Sri Lanka. The general aim is to achieve an understanding of the nationalist process, the force of nationalist ideas and traditions in motivating action-action that is often violent and intolerant-and to demonstrate the value of a cultural approach to the understanding of modern societies. Culture has been examined in two ways here, namely, the dramaturgic approach to culture which emphasizes the expressive dimensions of culture, and the politics of culture or the political culture approach, whereby cultural manifestations are utilized effectively to maintain power between groups. The article concludes that the SinhaleseTamil conflict is a product of modem politics, and culture has been used effectively to legitimate rival nationalisms in Sri Lanka.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
M. A. M. Fowsar

Regional and international mediation by third parties in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict have had diverse impacts on the country’s political scene at various times. India spearheaded a significant regional mediation following the July 1983 pogrom against minority Tamils. An international mediation effort by a third party was initiated in 2000, with Norway playing the role of facilitator. Both of these attempts to resolve Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, which were taken to bring an end to the intense and continued violence, have had mixed outcomes. In particular, Norway’s initiative to bring an end to the conflict with international facilitation was taken in the backdrop of the changed world order that prevailed after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. It is against this backdrop; this article attempts to examine the contributions made by Norway towards the resolution of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. The major finding shows that Norwegian initiative fell into fail after a period and the armed insurgency did not come to an end until 2009. In May 2009, the government forces defeated the LTTE militarily and declared the war victory.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-74
Author(s):  
Anna Mattfeldt

Abstract In a globalised world, national discourses are also perceived and commented on in other countries and languages. This paper focuses on newspaper coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum in both Scotland and Germany, comparing two print media corpora in two languages. The linguistic depiction of the arguments and conflicts in Scottish newspapers is compared to the discussion of Scottish independence in German newspapers. In order to find conflictive ‘hotspots’ in both corpora, adversative and concessive connectors of both languages are taken as a starting point for a comparative conflict-oriented discourse analysis in seven steps. Differences and similarities of the most important conflicting concepts as well as the role of stereotypes and language difference are then compared and discussed.


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