Abstract:

The last twenty years have seen a fundamental reconstitution of the existing reporting of conflict by journalists, the ways audiences consume it, and the way it is understood by scholars. This paper provides a critical synthesis of modern approaches to news analysis with specific reference to the integration of classical media theory with computational methodology. The review, relying on an assortment of peer-reviewed literature released between 2010 and 2024, reflects on the kinds of agenda-setting and framing theory in digital media spaces, positions peace journalism as normative remedial to war-focused coverage, and assesses the growing involvement of natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and machine learning in mass media research. The main conclusion is that neither qualitative nor computational methodologies alone can explain the complexity of conflict stories. Qualitative methods preserve interpretive richness and theoretical foundation; computational methods have scalability and a comparative perspective. An intermediate analytic scheme that rides productively on both traditions is not only desirable, but indeed just in case media scholars are to write in ways that would be commensurate with the complexity of the modern conflict communication. The paper ends with the mapping of the theoretical, methodological and practical implications of this combined approach with direct concerns in doctoral research in the field of computational media studies and global communication.