Spinning Peace Negotiations: Pakistan-Taliban Peace Deals in the International Media

Abstract

The international politics is to a great extent defined and shaped by conflicts or war events in different parts of the world. These include escalations of violence, human causalities and hurdles in peace negotiations. It is imperative to analyze the conflict event itself as well as how the conflict event is defined/ framed by someone with sufficient power and legitimacy to make such an event an issue to be seen as a crisis. The term ‘spin’ generally refers to the “highly professional selling of the political message that involves maximum management and manipulation of the media” (Grattan 1998, p. 34). Media plays a significant role in developing perceptions about conflicts and peace negotiations and those perceptions affect the entire process and the outcome. Therefore, there is a need to make an in-depth analysis of media reporting conflict and peace negotiations. This study aims to explore international media’s coverage and role towards Pakistan-Taliban peace deals after 9/11 i.e. 2006 to 2014. Three international newspapers; daily Telegraph, New York Times, and Gulf Daily News of UK, US, and Middle East respectively, are selected for this study