Strategies to Inform and Reform

82 Pages·2008·1.27 MB·English

by  Sara Lindberg

Strategies to Inform
and Reform
UNMIL�s Engagement in Media and Information
Management in Post-Conflict Liberia

SARA LINDBERG

Master�s Thesis
Minor Field Study (MFS) sponsored by
the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

Academic Supervisor: Mats Hammarström

Department of Peace and Conflict Research
Uppsala University
May 2008
Strategies to Inform
and Reform
UNMIL(cid:2)s Engagement in Media and Information
Management in Post-Conflict Liberia

SARA LINDBERG

Master(cid:2)s Thesis
Minor Field Study (MFS) sponsored by
the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

Academic Supervisor: Mats Hammarström

Department of Peace and Conflict Research
Uppsala University
May 2008
© Sara Lindberg 2008

Printed in Sweden by Universitetstryckeriet, Uppsala
Contents
Acknowledgements iv
1. Introduction 1
2. The emergence of the media–peacebuilding debate 7
Media in the conflict cycle 7
Media intervention: a four-level approach to strategies and objectives 11
Media and communication strategies in UN peacekeeping 19
3. The Liberian context 23
The enlightened suppression of dissent 23
The Liberian media and extant challenges 33
4. UNMIL(cid:2)s range of efforts 45
UN media management in Liberia: capabilities and Press and
Information components 45
Efforts to inform: bridging the information gap and gaining consent 48
Efforts to reform: strengthening the local media sector and shaping
output 57
UNMIL(cid:2)s range of efforts: impacts and sustainability 66
5. Conclusions 71
List of interviewees 75
Acknowledgements
This Master’s thesis is the result of fieldwork carried out in Liberia in the autumn
of 2006. The project was made possible through a Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) Minor Field Study (MFS) grant. I wish
to thank SIDA for the opportunity to conduct the study, and the Department of
Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University for choosing to support this
project. The two months of fieldwork were carried out together with Kajsa
Eriksson. Together we have authored an abbreviated policy version of this paper,
placing particular emphasis on the need for peacekeeping operations to establish
relevant exit strategies for the media.
The fieldwork was made both possible and fruitful thanks to the cooperation and
kindness of several individuals. I would like to mention a few in particular. First of
all, I wish to express my thanks to UNMIL’s Mr. James Wolo, who shared his
expertise in the field, including personal accounts of the Liberian history and
conflicts, provided important contacts, and commented on sections of the draft. Mr.
Malcolm Joseph of CEMESP helped greatly by introducing the topic and the work
that was being conducted in Liberia in the field. Mr. Ezekiel Pajibo of CEDE
provided support and initial contacts.
I am deeply grateful to the many interviewees who generously shared their time,
knowledge and insights. Their kindness and cooperation have been vital during the
fieldwork. I would also like to express my thanks to the staff and leadership of
UNMIL who made possible the access to UN facilities and transportation. Within
UNMIL, MPIO Anders Johansson, PIO Philip Smucker and Spokesperson Ben
Malor generously shared their time and observations. To gain insight into the
workings of a UN peacekeeping operation from the inside was invaluable. I am
also grateful for the friendship and hospitality of many others.
In Sweden, several individuals have contributed to the completion of this project. I
am grateful for the comments on drafts from Mark Bromley, Kajsa Eriksson, Joan
Lindberg and Camilla Riesenfeld. Finally I wish to thank my academic advisor for
this project, Associate Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research
at Uppsala University, Mats Hammarström.
Sara Lindberg
Stockholm, May 2008
1. Introduction
The link between media and conflict studies has long been widely recognized.
However, prior to the events in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, the research focus was
largely limited to questions relating to the international media. These included how
the media selected and covered international news items and how these choices
impacted upon the level of international attention afforded to areas of the world of
limited strategic or economic interest. Concepts such as the ‘CNN effect’ sought to
explain how the media’s choice of focus determined international involvement in
conflicts and humanitarian emergencies around the world, and have been central to
shaping the understanding of media’s centrality to political processes.1 In more
recent years, the importance of media outlets local to a conflict setting has begun to
be recognised. In particular, it is now widely accepted that domestic media outlets
can aggravate armed conflict by inflaming or entrenching the positions of
conflicting parties through the dissemination of misinformation or propaganda.
This was particularly apparent in Rwanda in 1994, where the local media became a
tool for the promotion and coordination of genocide.
Accepting the media’s capacity to serve as a catalyst in the escalation of conflict,
as well as an instrument in its protraction, requires that any international force
seeking to uphold a peace and resolve underlying contributors to a conflict must
understand and effectively manage the flow of information and media-related
mechanisms at play. In addition, domestic media outlets are also being seen
increasingly as not just forces to be contained in a post-conflict setting, but also as
tools with the potential to help forge a lasting peace. Accepting the baseline
assumption that the information people have or do not have affects their
understanding of reality means recognising that while information can underpin
conflict, it can also be used as a tool with which to promote conflict resolution and
stability. Slowly a realisation is emerging—both at the academic and practitioner
level—that where modes of communication can be used to divide and destroy, they
can also be used to unite and restore.2
The importance of local news media in the area of conflict is increasingly being
recognised, and the focus is shifting to concern how international engagement can
affect local media content leading up to, during and after violent conflict. As a
consequence, effective media and information management is increasingly being
regarded as a fundamental component in any successful effort to resolve intra-state
conflict and foster a lasting peace. In the 2000 ‘Brahimi report’, the world’s main

1 See for example Robinson, P., The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention
(Routledge: London, 2002).
2 Monroe, E. P. & Thompson, M. (eds.), Forging Peace: Intervention, Human Rights and the
Management of Media Space (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2002).
2 STRATEGIES TO INFORM AND REFORM
peacekeeping actor, the United Nations (UN), stated that communication and
public information ought to be included as a central component in each of its
deployed peacekeeping missions, that it should be regarded as an ‘operational
necessity’.3 Although not an entirely new notion—communication has always
served a function in peacekeeping—the narrow range of information-related tasks
was long limited mainly to maintaining the support of external actors, such as troop
contributing countries (TCCs), and to make clear the mandate of the mission to
local populations. UN peacekeeping missions’ media and information-related tasks
have gradually broadened to include a more diverse range of tasks. Increasingly, an
intervention force must now consider strategies both for their own media
management functions, in order to be able to communicate credibly with local
audiences, as well as it must oftentimes consider methods for strengthening local
actor capacity to do the same. Throughout the report, management of media and
information will refer to two broad areas of peacekeeping work: efforts to inform
(improving local populations’ access to balanced information and gaining consent
for mission objectives) and efforts to reform (strengthening local actor capacity to
do the same, as well as in some way shaping or impacting on local media content
to accommodate and support peaceful progress). It is clear that the UN increasingly
sees the management of media and information as not just a supportive tool or
simply a crosscutting issue, but as a strategic function in its own right and a central
component to the implementation of the mission mandate, including its security-
related tasks.
Nevertheless, little research has been done on how peacekeeping operations are
dealing with matters of media and information management or on how such
activities impact on post-conflict dynamics.4 This knowledge gap applies both to
theory and practice. As a result, the international community, spearheaded by the
UN, still lacks a consistent and mainstreamed agenda for information and media
management to implement in peacekeeping operations.5 If one accepts the

3 United Nations General Assembly, Security Council, Comprehensive review of the whole question
of peacekeeping operations in all their aspects, UN document A/55/3-5-S/2000/809, 21 Aug. 2000, p.
25, para. 146. The ‘Brahimi report’ spawned further institutional recognition of the importance of
media and information management strategies in UN peacekeeping operations. See chapter 2, pp. 19–
22 for a closer description.
4 A SIDA report describes the gap to apply to what is known of the effects and links between media
interventions and conflict management roles in the long-term (Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO), Assistance to Media in Tension Areas and Violent Conflict (2004), Seminar Report,
available from URL <http://sida.se/publications>, p. 10). Wolfsfeld (1998) asks: ‘Why is there so
much research about the role of news media in political conflict and war and so little concerning the
media and peace?’ (Wolfsfeld, G., ‘Promoting peace through the news media. Some initial lessons
from the Oslo peace process’, in Liebes, T. & Curran J. (eds.) Media, Ritual and Identity (Routledge:
London, 1998), p. 219).
5 Where effective management of information and public expectations have occurred on behalf of a
UN peacekeeping mission, Lehmann (1999) argues, it has in the past been accidental rather than
planned (Lehmann, I. A., Peacekeeping and Public Information: Caught in the Crossfire (Frank Cass
Publishers: London, 1999), p. 3).
INTRODUCTION 3
potentially destructive nature of information dissemination in a conflict setting, as
well as its positive potential in a conflict’s resolution, it follows that there is a need
for a thorough and common understanding of how information, in fact, should be
effectively employed as a strategy in a conflict setting. There is also a need to
develop a thorough and common framework for managing issues of media and
information in conflict.
This research report seeks to examine the growing engagement of UN
peacekeeping operations in media and information, using the United Nations
Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) as a case study. UN peacekeeping operations provide
an interesting case in which to explore the media’s role in and after conflict; as the
highest global authority in peacemaking and peacekeeping, the United Nations
Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) is at the forefront of international
developments with its far-reaching mandates, considerable resources, multilateral
backing and high levels of international legitimacy. Although the UN is clearly not
a media development actor, and the DPKO cannot alone be expected to address
matters pertaining to the media landscape of a post-conflict country—in this work
it must collaborate with other UN agencies, regional organisations, local and
international media NGOs, and other stakeholders—once deployed the mission
takes the lead in all security-related issues, as well as in preparing for development
actors to take over work on a more long-term basis once the mission has
withdrawn.
Liberia was chosen as the case study for a variety of reasons. The 14 years of
conflict were comprehensive and the destruction complete, demanding extensive
reconstruction in most sectors, resulting in a sort of ‘clean slate’ for multifunctional
peacekeeping. The broadened understanding of a peacekeeping mission’s expanded
media tasks has been realised in the case of UNMIL. As a front-runner in what
must still be regarded as a relatively new area of interest, UNMIL boasts
innovative and wide-ranging applications for Press and Information (PI) functions
that are employed in a variety of actor processes, operating in clear recognition of
their importance. UNMIL’s media and information-related efforts paint a mosaic of
the broad and creative range of applications for PI functions from which future
peacekeeping missions are able to learn. This, in addition to the mission’s sheer
size, far-reaching mandate, and considerable amount of resources, makes the
UNMIL case interesting for a study of this kind.
To better understand the information-related mechanisms at play directly following
conflict, the report describes several of the challenges currently facing the Liberian
media in reporting and disseminating the news and other information in an
effective manner and, where applicable, suggests ways the mission could improve
its response to these issues. One broad question guides and underpins the report:
Based on the lessons learned from UNMIL, is there room for improvement to the
planning and implementation of the UN’s media work for future missions? A
descriptive exercise such as this inevitably seeks to provide another step towards
formalising the UN’s media and information management efforts to promote
4 STRATEGIES TO INFORM AND REFORM
security and sustainable peace. The overarching aim of the report is therefore to
explore the manner in which UN peacekeeping operations can better use media and
information management strategies to positively impact on security conditions and
the creation of a sustainable peace in a post-conflict setting.
The report is based on a two month field study in West Africa in the autumn of
2006, mainly in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. The purpose of the field study was to
gain a comprehensive grasp of the Liberian context, media landscape, and UNMIL
activities via extensive participant observations and semi-structured interviews
with a broad range of stakeholders.6 To inform the Liberia-specific chapters,
interviews were conducted with numerous local media stakeholders, including
UNMIL PI staff and local journalists. The interview subjects were asked set
questions on fixed but broad themes, allowing them flexibility in the shape and
direction of their responses, in order to better reflect the professionals’ own
priorities. Restrictions posed by time and the, at times, difficult Liberian context
necessitated a prioritisation: local media outlets and professionals were chosen on
the basis either of being regarded as representative and/or playing a formative part
in the societal debate, due to their sizeable audiences, for their focus on peace
messaging, or on the basis of the perceived ‘seriousness’ of their programming.
Commercial radio stations mainly providing music and other sorts of entertainment
were excluded from the study on the basis on their content, but also due to the
frequently very limited geographical coverage of these stations. These stations
were deemed to have a very limited impact on the Liberian population as a whole.7
Thus, the report will not serve as an exhaustive survey of all the key Liberian
media outlets; rather the selection is formed by our research purposes and
restrictions ‘on-the-ground’, making it impossible to cover all outlets.
Launching the report, chapter 2: ‘The emergence of the media–peacebuilding
debate’, explores more thoroughly the notion that information matters by looking
to the theoretical underpinnings of the issues at hand, and covering some of the
earlier research in the field. The chapter shows why assistance to the domestic
media ought to be an integral part of international interventions and other
assistance in post-conflict settings, and how media, information and
communication strategies are increasingly being used in such a manner. But the
importance of an effective information capacity and strategy applies also to the
intervening force itself: the ability to communicate credibly with local audiences is

6 For a full list of interviewees and their functions, see p. . Unless otherwise indicated, the
interviews were conducted in Liberia.
7 Disregarded were also TV outlets due to the fact that audiences reached by TV programming in
Liberia are negligible. The intermittent, for many unavailable, electricity supply and the impossibility
for most Liberians to be able to afford a TV set means that TV plays a minimal role in the societal
debate. Televised media is definitely on the rise in Liberia, but its impact among ordinary Liberians
remains of limited significance. Also, the few TV stations that do exist only have coverage in
Monrovia.
INTRODUCTION 5
critical to gaining their support and fulfilling the mission mandate.8 A four-level
inform/reform model illustrates the range of media and information management
tasks available to an intervening actor that may be necessary in a post-conflict
setting. The chapter concludes by addressing the shifting role of media and
information management strategies in UN peacekeeping operations.
Chapter 3: ‘The Liberian context’ looks at the history of Liberia through the
evolving practices and experiences of its press corps. The chapter describes the
manner in which the Liberian context—its history, the origins of violence and its
nature and scale, the circumstances ultimately leading to UN intervention—in
many ways is intimately connected with the history, development and condition of
its media sector. Parts of Liberia’s past, particularly perhaps its more recent
history, reveal the intimate interrelationship between the emergence or expansion
of conflict and the restriction of media freedoms. The chapter’s second section
briefly describes the current Liberian media landscape and the challenge-ridden
context in which it functions.
Chapter 4: ‘UNMIL’s range of efforts’ begins by introducing UNMIL’s PI
capabilities and components. In order to improve our understanding of how
research findings are being translated into action on the ground, the chapter then
charts the broad range of media and information management efforts being
undertaken by the mission, by using the previously outlined inform/reform model.
Two broad questions emerge and will inform discussions in the chapter’s final
section: Are there any indirect or unanticipated effects of the UNMIL’s media
work on the Liberian context? What will happen to the Liberian media when
UNMIL withdraws? The discussion points to areas in need of sustained
engagement on behalf of international, regional and local actors.
Having described some of the progress in the field of the Liberian media sector, as
well as several of the challenges remaining to its capacity to inform the Liberian
society in a responsible and sustainable manner, the concluding chapter 5 narrows
the focus further. The chapter considers the report’s guiding question: Based on the
lessons learned from UNMIL, is there room for improvement to the planning and
implementation of the UN’s media work? Although each conflict context is clearly
unique, and it is not possible to make generalisations on the basis of one case, the
case of UNMIL can certainly offer valuable lessons for future peacekeeping
operations.
This study finds that although the much expanded and often creative use of media
and information work on behalf of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL)
has yielded positive results and had a significant impact on the Liberian media
landscape, work remains to ensure the effective, mainstreamed, and systematic

8 Hunt, C. T., Public Information as a Mission Critical Component of West African Peace
Operations, Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center (KAIPTC), Monograph No. 5,
Aug. 2006, available from URL <http://www.kaiptc.org>.