“Worthy” and “unworthy” victims.

Reconciliation process and media

coverage of the conflict
Giovanna Leone, Tiziana Mastrovito e Francesca
D’Errico
Dept.of Sociology and Communication
Sapienza Università di Roma
Giovanna.leone@uniroma1.it
 Theoretical postulates

• In modern narratives of war, “victims have

taken the place of heroes” (Hyuse, 2003)
• Media are one of the major source of
narratives about our “imagined communities”
(Anderson, 1986)
 Aims of the present research on
media coverage of in-group and out-
group victims
• General aim: to detect and describe if and how
media can play a constructive role during
wartime
• Research question: Do media speaking to peace
movements (vs. to a general audience) provide
different narratives of a suicide attack against the
in-group?
• Methodology: quanti-qualitative analysis
exploring the different use of words (lexical
analysis)
 The research: media coverage of ingroup and
outgroup victims
• Episode: Nassiriya suicide bombing against Italian soldiers in
2003, when 9 Iraqi people and 19 Italian soldiers were killed

• Corpus selection: 3 different Italian magazines, speaking to

readers, either generalist (Panorama), or involved in peace
movements (Carta, Mosaico di Pace)

• Period: 2004-2005
 Method

• Quanti-qualitative computer assisted analysis performed with

TalTac2.5 a program for automatic lexico-textual treatment for
content analysis [Bolasco et al., 2000].

– Normalization and lemmatization: to standardize the text

(remove all “empty” words like articles) and to group
together all words having the same root
– specificities analysis of lemmas: a statistical coefficient
indicates when a specific lemma is over-utilized in a
specific sub-corpus compared with the others and with the
general jargon of media discourse. This analysis identifies
the words that could be indicated as “characteristic” (i.e.
typical) for a specific sub-text and those that are lacking
(or uncharacteristic)

– co-occurrence analysis: to return to the local context of

specific lemmas in order to verify their meaning and use
and thus contributes to the definition of their meaning in
the space of discourse.
– semantic categorization (semantic tagging) group words
with equivalent meaning under the same category.

– semantic or complex concordances: detect local contexts

(retrieved through a TFIDF index) where there is a high
frequencies of those semantic categories.
 Corpus vocabulary analysis

Lexical indicators value

Number of occurrences (corpus
dimension) N 84641
Number of graphical forms (corpus
width) V 12518
Lexical extension (V/N)*100 14,79
Hapax percent (V1/V)*100 57,24
general mean frequency N/V 6,76
G coefficient V/sqrN 43,02
Angolar coefficient a 1,203
magazine oriented towards generalist
readers (Panorama)
lemmas not used in other magazines or appearing
at a greater frequency than in other magazines
 Victimhood (generalist magazine)
lemma Masthead N occ. N sub-occ. type of s. p-value
Andrea_NM Panorama 10 10 spec_orig 0,00
Giuseppe_NM Panorama 16 16 spec_orig 0,00
mortuary chapel_N Panorama 12 12 spec_orig 0,00
Alessandro_NM Panorama 13 12 spec 0,00
Bruno_NM Panorama 28 23 spec 0,00
family_N Panorama 41 30 spec 0,00
brother_N Panorama 24 20 spec 0,00
husband_N Panorama 28 26 spec 0,00
wife_N Panorama 29 25 spec 0,00
memory_N Panorama 12 11 spec 0,00
widowed_N Panorama 20 18 spec 0,00
child_N Panorama 13 11 spec 0,01
flag_N Panorama 16 13 spec 0,01
mother_N Panorama 17 14 spec 0,01
to cry_V Panorama 11 10 spec 0,01
funeral_N Panorama 12 10 spec 0,02
«what remains, after one year, about that pain which made the
nation cry? […] There are children still suffering and women left
alone devoted to help others or to arrange exhibitions with pictures
released from their fellows during the mission. […] Filippa Andrea’s
family at the funeral: “he had to be there, in Nassiriya, it was his
destiny”. They met when they were at secondary school, they fallen
in love and then they got married. Andrea Filippa, soldier at the
13th battalion from Friuli Venezia Giulia, dead during the mission,
and Monica Cabiddu, teacher for disabled children, were very close-
knit, even if he had been involved in foreign mission for 8 years.
“Today my husband is considered a hero, but he has been always a
hero for me”, said Monica to Panorama.»
[Panorama, 12 November 2004]
 Terror descriptions

lemma Masthead N occ. N sub-occ. type of s. p-value

Eta_NM Panorama 14 14 spec_orig 0,00
agent_N Panorama 25 22 spec 0,00
attack_N Panorama 93 66 spec 0,00
carabiniere_N Panorama 83 67 spec 0,00
contingent_N Panorama 43 32 spec 0,00
Madrid_NM Panorama 35 30 spec 0,00
target_N Panorama 32 25 spec 0,00
to kill_V Panorama 87 63 spec 0,00
bersagliere_N Panorama 13 11 spec 0,01
bulletin_N Panorama 11 10 spec 0,01
maresciallo_N Panorama 20 16 spec 0,01
hostage_N Panorama 56 38 spec 0,01
declaration_N Panorama 20 15 spec 0,02
to kidnap_V Panorama 15 12 spec 0,02
To claim_V Panorama 15 12 spec 0,02
« [...]Al-Zarqawi is suspected to be the strategist of most of
the suicidal attacks during the last time in Iraq, one of those is
the multiple slaughter in Shiite holy places the last 2 March
when 271 persons were killed. His name appeared even for
the investigation about the March 11 attack in Madrid and in
many other investigations about Islamic terrorism in
Europe.[...] He would be in the vanguard of an Al Qaeda cell in
Italy and he would be the director of the attack in Nassiriya
on the 12 November 2003 against the Italian contingent, of
the one against the UN headquarters on August in Baghdad,
and of the one against the hotel Jabal Lubnan, on 17 March,
in the capital city too. The organization linked to him, Tawhid
wal Jihad, has claimed some hostages’ decapitations, for
example those of the South Corean on 22 June and of the
Bulgarian truck driver killed on 13 July.»
[Panorama, 23 settembre 2004]
 Islamic Jihadis
lemma masthead N occ. N sub-occ. type of s. p-value
To fight_N Panorama 10 10 spec_orig 0,00
imam_N Panorama 12 12 spec_orig 0,00
Jihad_NM Panorama 25 25 spec_orig 0,00
Maroccan_A Panorama 11 11 spec_orig 0,00
musim_A Panorama 13 13 spec_orig 0,00
terroristic_A Panorama 30 30 spec_orig 0,00
Al-Qaeda_NM Panorama 58 44 spec 0,00
islamic_A Panorama 70 64 spec 0,00
mujaheddin_N Panorama 14 13 spec 0,00
religious_A Panorama 23 19 spec 0,00
terrorist_N Panorama 36 30 spec 0,00
arab_A Panorama 16 13 spec 0,01
Shiite_A Panorama 38 27 spec 0,01
Islam_NM Panorama 15 12 spec 0,02
holy_A Panorama 18 14 spec 0,02
«Sermons by the imam has been useful to recruit a new
generation of jihads, while contacts of ex mujaheddin in
Afghanistan with other groups of Islamic fundamentalist
galaxy have developed the terrorist net. The Maroccan
fighting group have made operations linked with the Algerian
Gia algerino and with its cell called salafita group for
preaching and fight. [...] The other rich soil for Maroccan
jihads was fund in Italy, where between Turin, Vercelli, Milan
an in Veneto many cells “in dream” have been organized,
some made by immigrants from the North Africa, others by
new converted. All are ready to be awake by the imam on
duty.»
[Panorama, 19 March 2004]
 Magazines oriented
towards readers
involved in peace movements
(Carta, Mosaico di Pace)
 Revealing horror of war
lemma masthead N occ. N sub-occ. type of s. p-value
war_N Carta 209 82 Spec 0,00
battle_N Carta 24 12 Spec 0,00
occupation_N Carta 22 14 Spec 0,00
state_N Carta 21 12 Spec 0,00
death_N Carta 51 22 Spec 0,00
boy_N Carta 21 13 Spec 0,00
people_N Mosaico 40 8 Spec 0,00
armed_A Carta 34 16 Spec 0,00
economic_A Carta 11 7 Spec 0,01
Iraqui_A Mosaico 116 17 Spec 0,00
to involve_V Carta 24 15 Spec 0,00
define_V Carta 14 10 Spec 0,00
to lose_V Carta 32 15 Spec 0,00
to suffer_V Carta 14 8 Spec 0,01
to demonstrate_V Carta 31 13 Spec 0,02
to think_V Mosaico 52 22 Spec 0,00
«Racism? How is it possible to define otherwise the fact that they
speak only about western dead and never about the Iraqi ones?
How is it possible to define otherwise the fact that three Italian
wounded during Nassiriya battle were cried for without thinking
about fifteen or maybe two thousand Iraqi killed?» [Mosaico di
Pace, June 2004].

«For the Iraqi population pain is still not ended but they are
increased for some aspects. In some way it is not true that the war
is ended. The war still continues in different and terrible ways. […]
Iraq of the so-called “post-war” has become the main battlefield
for the war. Not a war between many other wars, but “the” war of
wars: the one of the United States against terrorism, the one
against American occupation, the one of fundamentalists against
America and West, the national one for acquiring power.» [Carta,
March 2004]
 Rights

N sub-
lemma masthead N occ. type of s.
occ. p-value

compensation_N Carta 12 12 Spec_orig 0,00

recognition_N Carta 10 9 Spec 0,00

committee_N Carta 11 8 Spec 0,00
Ministry_N Carta 30 15 Spec 0,00
right_N Mosaico 36 7 Spec 0,00
human_A Mosaico 25 5 Spec 0,01
law_N Mosaico 14 4 Spec 0,01
institution_N Mosaico 16 4 Spec 0,01
to obtain_V Carta 13 7 Spec 0,02
to justify_V Mosaico 10 3 Spec 0,02

Red_Cross_SR Carta 29 20 Spec 0,00

UN_NM Mosaico 56 15 Spec 0,00
«Some people have been already seriously wounded, others have
been ridden over. Some received compensations, especially
“moral”, but everybody is waiting for compensations from the
State. How long are they going to wait for and what kind of
compensation do they have the right to? After honor guards, fame,
tears, Italian flags, interviews, pats on the back, things have been
soon forgotten» [Carta, December 2004].

«A strong initiative to give centrality, credibility and support back to

the UN. The UN is not and doesn’t have a wand to solve disasters
caused by war. Nevertheless the UN represents the high road to
stop violence, to prevent the risk of a civil war, to reduce space and
support to terrorists, to promote and defend Iraqi human rights.
Just the dispatch of a UN mission to discuss with all Iraq about how
to realize free elections contributed to open new important
perspectives based on dialogue and consensus.» [Carta, March
2004].
 Social movements empowerment

lemma masthead N occ. N sub-occ. type of s. p-value

pull out_V Carta 21 13 Spec 0,00
society_N Carta 14 10 Spec 0,00
peace_N Carta 72 30 Spec 0,00
truth_N Carta 23 11 Spec 0,01
support_N Carta 13 7 Spec 0,02
community_N Carta 18 4 Spec 0,02
public_A Carta 35 14 Spec 0,02
national_A Mosaico 31 9 Spec 0,00
democratic_A Mosaico 24 7 Spec 0,00
political_A Mosaico 63 8 Spec 0,02
to seek for_V Carta 56 26 Spec 0,00
to help_V Mosaico 10 4 Spec 0,00
to loose_V Carta 32 15 Spec 0,00
«If thousands of citizens that every year see the parade would
stay at home, or would go to protest for peace and for troops
to pull out, than It will be a feast. A change starting from the
first lines of Constitution: Italians repudiate the war.» [Carta,
17 May 2004].

«Another intervention is possible! The national protest on 20

March 2004 will support this. Many people will say that
another intervention is possible in Iraq. It is not true that to
continue the Italian mission in Nassiriya is “the best” or “the
only” thing that Italy can do to help Iraqi population to come
out from bog where they are because of the war.» [Mosaico di
Pace, March 2004]
• «The democratic option requires: […] to promote a rapid
political transition in order to let “Iraqi people to determine
on their own and freely their political future and to control
their natural resources”; to support “national dialogue and
consensus” for a new constitution and democratic elections;
to facilitate the effort for construing local and national
democratic and representative institutions; to defend human
rights in all the country; to promote the development of
independent media; to support the development of the Iraqi
civil society and of its independent organizations, etc... »
[Carta, Marzo 2004]
 Concluding remarks
• Media addressing different segments of the peace
movement (Christian and left-wing) use the same
range of words

Social minorities may act, during wartime, to produce

and diffuse a narrative of “their” victims and “our”
victims that not only de-escalate conflict, but try to
empower social movements against war
Media play an essential role by providing an alternative
lexicon for describing the war, that could mobilize
these social actions
Thanks to the interdisciplinary group of
Economics of Rome Sapienza

Thanks for your attention