ABSTRACT
The media landscape world over has been instrumental in creating and increasing conflicts thereby disrupting the smooth running of different political organisations. In Zimbabwe media discourses have become a locus of nuanced economic and political battle. The polarisation resulted in crippling political conflict from 2000 to the Mnangagwa era in Zimbabwe. This has been necessitated by lack of strategic communication and professionalism in information dissemination to the public by politicians and media houses. This research in informed by insights from critical discourse analysis to interrogate the semantics and tropes of power found in print and electronic media in Zimbabwe as different media houses propagate messages that precipitate conflict and political violence in each case for political mileage. There is need to rethink the media role and provoke a more robust academic debate that encourages accurate and professional strategic communication in order to enhance peace, unity and development in Zimbabwe. It was observed that when reporting information, political ideological interests of the press take centre stage at the expense of the valuable educational mandate of the press as demonstration of strategic communication and professional interests of the media houses.
