Why do some intrastate armed conflicts receive sustained media attention, while others disappear from the news despite being equally intense? In her master’s thesis, Deborah Feldeisen explored this question. She wrote the thesis as part of the International Studies/Peace and Conflict Research master’s program at Goethe University Frankfurt. The idea for the topic emerged as a result of the TraCe dialogue panel “Darstellungen exzessiver Gewalt – zwischen Verstörung und Attraktion,” (Depictions of Excessive Violence – Between Disturbance and Attraction) which opened the third annual TraCe conference on October 30, 2024, in cooperation with the KUNSTHALLE GIESSEN. During the dialogue panel, a member of the audience expressed a desire to stay fully informed about world events through media coverage.. However, topics compete for limited media space. Drawing on this tension, Deborah Feldeisen developed her master’s thesis on the unequal media visibility of conflicts.
Under the title “Unsichtbare Kriege, laute Schlagzeilen. Mediale Vernachlässigung von Konfliktissues,” (Invisible Wars, Loud Headlines. Media Neglect of Conflict Issues) she investigated whether the goals publicly articulated by rebel groups are related to the extent of media coverage of intra-state armed conflicts. Using quantitative data analysis, she analyzed coverage in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung from 2013 to 2017. Her analysis revealed that demands for changes to state structures and for political rights are associated with a higher expected level of coverage. In contrast, territorial and resource-related issues correlate with lower levels of coverage.
The thesis discusses the varying journalistic accessiblity of these topics as possible explanations. Demands for regime change or for political rights can often be more easily linked to well-known actors, clear lines of conflict, and normative questions. Local territorial claims or complex distributional issues, on the other, often require more explanation and are harder to visualize. The thesis wars supervised by Constantin Ruhe and Stefan Kroll, and received the highest grade.