Center Dialogues and Reflections

Troubled Pasts

News and conflict frames of pasts in the present

GjC Team

GjC Team

If the saying is true that ‘journalism is the first rough draft of history’, then certainly the news story is an aspect of an interpretation and a lens whose plausibility rests on the depths of factual accounts as well as the ethos of the storyteller. How do we tell stories of nationhood, of ethnic origin, of the multiplex that is modern society – where origin stories cross into each other, merge, blend and reflect multitudes of origins? History abounds with stories of globalizing encounters – some peaceful and others not. How do we configure the role of journalism in that spectrum?

Nowhere is that more evident than in news covering deep conflicts and ‘troubled pasts’.

Among the pillar themes that we have outlined for GjC, the idea of ‘troubled pasts’ suggests a focus on how the narratives and discursive frameworks of everyday journalism both enable and impede peaceful social change. “Troubled pasts” refer to both individual and collective memory; to the realities of passing through a present to a future – with the echo of our individual and collective pasts.

“Collective memory” as a sociological concept bears particular relevance to the works of Maurice Halbwachs. In more recent years, the sociology of collective memory has been connected with journalism studies through – among others – Barbie Zelizer.