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The MacBride Report - 25 Years Later, Vol. 12 - 2005, No. 3
Web-Watching for Peace-Building in the New Communication Order
UNESCO’s MacBride report attributes to communication a substantial role in matters of democratisation and peace and, thus, provides a firm foundation on which to build toward a better understanding of media as a resource for enriching democratic culture to resist war. Accordingly, this paper works at the intersection of media and messages to advance the argument that democratic peace-building communication is usefully thought of as a tactic, or set of re-humanizing tactics, of dissent exercised by citizens operating in media saturated settings to resist the dehumanizing caricatures propagated by war propaganda. The notion of web-watching as a creative use of alternative media to locate incipient peace-building metaphors is examined and briefly illustrated with reference to an emergent image of secular bomber as homeland defender.