We could have begun with a question mark: “Communication in the Service of Peace?” Or an exclamation mark:  “Communication in the Service of Peace!” For some, the former would perhaps cast doubt on the possibility of transformation and change and highlight the current contours of power and privilege that monopolize human communication channels and harness their potential to the demands of the marketplace or the machinations of the few, while the latter would point toward those fissures, nooks and crannies that provide spaces for courageous voices and daring ideas long relegated to the margins of the mainstream and rarely heard abroad. Increasingly, and unfortunately, there are those for whom the question mark would merely signify a “playful” interest in teasing the very notion of peace – peace as a “text” and the life and death issues of real human beings in real life situations seen only as narratives vying for their position on a horizontally strung rope of signifiers that never meet their targets as bombs and bullets do.

The authors in this issue of the Mediterranean Edition are in no doubt that communication ultimately signifies and that real actions and real consequences are extracted both from those who insist on demonizing and dehumanizing others and from the performances of intellectuals, activists, scholars and citizens of societies in conflict: that it does ultimately matter how and why we communicate and that we can dare to hope that active participation in critiquing too often taken-for-granted assumptions about a world that privileges the few and undermines the many, may open further spaces to those for whom access to the means of communicating their voices, hopes and dreams is still far from reach.

When we consider communication in the 21^st Century, out attention is almost habitually turned to the media: those institutions that have co-opted the promise of technologies of communication and imprisoned them within sets of professional practices and institutional routines that simultaneously act to keep “amateurs” out while producing a seemingly ready and predictable crop of ideas and world-views that circulate globally, reassuring us that “we” are always right and that the problem always resides with “them”.  However, and as the authors in the first issue in this volume reminds us, these institutions are not independent of human agency: that while we are engaging the media we are always and already engaging with the ideas and the imaginings of other human beings.

Harry Anastasiou provides a painstaking overview of conflict resolution methods that accentuate the need for conscious engagement with, and a concomitant willingness to transcend, habitual ways of seeing and understanding ourselves and the world. In his article, Anastasiou underscores the commitment necessary for achieving a resolution to conflict and the challenge that such a commitment brings with it in the form of developing self-knowledge and re-thinking the world as it has been interpreted, shaped, and presented by others. Anastasiou sees an important role for the media generally and the journalist specifically but always in the context of reflexivity where those who engage in communication on behalf of others have an explicit obligation to examine themselves, their histories, and their relationship with the imagined other – and to challenge us to do likewise.

Dov Shinar is similarly concerned with the role of the journalist in societies in conflict and in the function of the media in democratic society generally. Shinar draws attention to the crucial role that communication plays in the social construction of reality and the role that journalists sometimes unwittingly play in the maintenance of realities that ultimately do a disservice to the possibility of peace. Shinar sees the journalist’s role as being limited by numerous factors moving from powerful institutional controls to mundane institutionalized routines and practices that habituate journalists to war and conflict oriented performances. Shinar offers no “quick fix” for these historically entrenched relations but rather a set of strategic steps that broaden the scope of civic engagement beyond the journalist and take account of institutional, professional, legal, regulatory and political constraints that might be challenged and transformed with a view to opening wider spaces within which journalists act.

Robert Hackett underscores the value of the journalist to the promotion of peace while stressing the formidable obstacles that journalists in general have to overcome. Hackett argues that while a journalism accenting the possibilities of peace and peaceful resolution to human conflicts is plausible, it is still far from reach and would require much more than restructuring journalism education or re-educating journalists to increase their awareness of alternative ways of seeing and reporting: it would require a fundamental shift in the way that media institutions operate in society. Hackett raises critical and decisive questions concerning the role that journalists in democratic societies might play in the 21st Century as he sketches an agenda for future communication and peace research.

Carmen Sammut explores the complex and contradictory roles that journalists perform as both citizens of and watchdogs for society: socialized into and yet potential critics of social reality. Sammut’s study centers on Maltese journalists in their role as public intellectuals through a scrutinizing of their responses to the influx of migrants in Malta. Sammut employs what is a highly charged cultural, social, political and economic issue in Maltese society to examine the ways in which media either mitigate xenophobia in Maltese society or to the contrary, reproduce social and cultural stereotypes of “them” and “us”. Sammut’s argument calls for a more reflexive journalism – one that might be encouraged through alternative forms of journalism training and a re-examination of media “professionalism”.

Karmen Erjavec and Zala Volcic take a discourse analytical approach toward a deeper understanding of the role that the Croatian media played in justifying war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. While their research is based on interviews with Croatian journalists speaking specifically about Bosnia-Herzegovina, their conclusions will be of interest and value to all those who live within cultures in conflict.

Taking a content analysis approach to the study of the national media, Ioanna Kostarella questions the role that the Greek press play in the construction of Turkey as Greece’ national “Other” and in the production and reproduction of Greek national identity. Kostarella finds that “national identity becomes a unifying thread both for political actors who seek to legitimize their decisions and for journalists who want to do their work effectively.” While the analysis suggests a set of entrenched institutional routines and professional practices among journalists of the Greek press, Kostarella argues that transcending these barriers, while difficult, is not an impossible goal.

Finally, using an historical and comparative approach, Stephanie Dornschneider explores the performance of both the New York Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung during the 2003 Gulf War. Dornschneider argues that we have to see the press as an active agent in domestic politics – a role that should not be overlooked or underestimated.

Together, the articles in this issue offer multiple avenues into deeper consideration of the role of media in the construction of social identity while offering fresh insights and entry points into the study of communication for peace.