Description:

This speech aims to discuss the possibilities of peace journalism that may contribute to the depolarization and peace within the society and on a global level. Peace journalism as a theory/practice, questions the basic principles and codes of conventional journalism by arguing that it's "us" versus "others" kind of news reporting ends up with a war journalism. Following the post-colonial feminist theory the feminist news criticism approaches to the conventional news as "a masculine form" within which hegeMANic discourse against all the others is reconstructed. By drawing on feminist news criticism, post-colonial feminist theory and peace journalism theory, I argue that we require an alternative journalism grounded on a feminist epistemology/ethics for "others-based" journalism against "us"("white", heterosexual, wealthy male)-based" conventional journalism. While elaborating my critique of  ma(i)nstream journalism, I will use examples from several media news outlets and draw the attention to the resemblance between representation of the women and the others. In the end, my emphasis will be on the need for a new "epistemic regime" and ethics on which codes/principles of malestream journalism are redefined and archetypical otherization of woman is displaced. I will sum up by underlining the importance of changing the way how we teach journalism in the universities.

Sevda Alankuş is a Professor of Communications at the Department of New Media, Kadir Has University, Istanbul and a visiting scholar in the Keyman Program. Her previous research focused on Turkish serials in the global media market, discourse analysis of Turkish Cypriot media from a peace journalism point of view and textual analysis of nationalist Turkish Cypriot narrations. Her recent research cover issues of feminist media criticism, alternative media and news reporting. She published the Peace Journalism Handbook (2017) and was the editor of a journalism handbook series that included the Human, Women, Children's Right-based Journalism (2007, 2012). Her article "Rethinking Peace Journalism Theory with Feminist Criticism and Ethics"