On July 28th the M&E Thursday Talk series was hosted by Beth Hallowell of American Friends Service Committee who led a discussion on Changing the Narrative on War & Violence.
M&E Thursday Talk – Changing the Narrative on War & Violence from DME for Peace on Vimeo.
The globalization of media presents special challenges for peace-building practitioners. Every day, people around the world are bombarded with stories about violence and conflict, with little coverage of peace or nonviolent social change. One troubling effect of this coverage is the growth of narratives about how peace does not work: A narrative that peace-building organizations need to counter in order to bring evidence of effective peace building to light.
In this Thursday Talk, Beth Hallowell, Communications Research Director at The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), discussed how AFSC has been leveraging media research to ‘change the narrative’ on war and violence. By bringing lessons from communications research done with international development organizations, economic rights organizations, and the movements for racial and reproductive justice in the U.S. to peace building, AFSC is designing new ways to evaluate the effectiveness of our communications about peace with the aim of ‘changing the narrative.’ Beth discussed how building a communications component into M&E plans can help to ensure that organizations and funders can not only get the word out about the effectiveness of their peace building programs, but in so doing can contribute to new public narratives that peace building itself is effective in the long run.
Check out the full report from AFSC here: “Mixed Messages: How the Media Covers Violent Extremism.”