ABSTRACT
The fate of Northern Ireland’s (NI) political institutions, created by the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement remains susceptible to ongoing instability and recurring crises. The sustainability of NI’s power sharing government has depended largely upon the sensitive and balanced management of the legacy of NI’s violent and contentious past. The treatment and predicament of NI’s conflict victims who coexists uneasily alongside the ex-perpetrator community, is situated at the heart of such deliberations. This chapter explores the dynamics and contribution of the media to the “stabilisation” of such peace around which the new post-conflict society must establish itself. Examining the role and responsibility of the media in such a deeply divided society in transition, and the treatment of its most vulnerable – those substantially scarred by the conflict – is central. If and how the media have taken on a political, positive and/or productive agency with regards to the victims and survivors of the troubles is explored. Filling this gap in the literature of peace journalism within the NI context will serve to highlight the extent to which NI’s press perform a dynamic and influential role within the matrix of actors determining the sustainability and embedding of peace and political progress.
