CFOM is very pleased to have hosted a CFOM conference and a 2-day academic workshop on the role of the factual mass media in civil society building in post-conflict settings in June 2018.
Professor Jeffrey Alexander gave the keynote ‘Civil Sphere and Transitions to Peace: Cultural Trauma and Civil Repair’ (download the paper here: Jeffrey_Alexander_PCR_conf). His talk was followed by an exciting programme with presentations ranging from the building of civil norms, the visibility of UN peacekeeping operations in the international news media, the partnership between Fondation Hirondelle and UN peacekeeping to more specifically, the public information aspect of UN peacekeeping in DRC and the way in which radio can be used for women’s empowerment in Niger.
The conference was followed by a two-day academic workshop. During this workshop a group of international scholars worked on a common research agenda regarding an analysis of UN peacekeeping media in post, current and future peacekeeping operations. To coordinate the contribution of academic researchers on this topic, the international scholars created a Research Group on UN Media and Peace Processes (RUNMAPP) which is a joint project run by the Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM), Fondation Hirondelle (Geneva, Switzerland) and the MEDAS 21 – Global Media Assistance project at the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism, TU Dortmund University as well as Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, consultant for the USIP, USA and Visiting International Scholar at Dickinson College, USA.