In 2016, the Colombian government under President Juan Manuel Santos reached a peace agreement with the country’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC-EP. A big part of the negotiations, which lasted about four years (2012-2016), was the creation of a Transitional Justice mechanism to investigate and judge members of the FARC-EP as well as members of the Public Forces and third parties who participated in the armed conflict. The name of this jurisdiction is Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP). Since its entry into force in 2017, there has been much public discourse about this institution, including the debate in the Colombian media. The Colombian online and print media in particular can have an impact on the population and frame and shape certain discourses through their reporting. This, in turn, means that certain types of reporting can have an impact on the perception of certain issues – such as specific institutions – and can fuel and mitigate a conflict. This is why the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung created the concept of Peace Journalism, which journalists can use to contribute positively to the development of any conflict or war. Therefore, it will be determined in this thesis to what extent four of the most significant Colombian online newspapers manage to incorporate the concept of Peace Journalism into their reporting and thus contribute to peace in the country. Moreover, the aim of the research presented here is to answer how these newspapers represent and frame the JEP throughout the year of 2019. To answer these questions the qualitative oriented content analysis according to Philipp Mayring is used. 47 articles of the four newspapers El Colombiano, El Espectador, El País Cali and El Tiempo are analyzed in four different periods of the year 2019 with regard to the frames that were used in the specific media coverage. In addition, in a second step of the analysis, the characteristics of Peace Journalism established by Galtung were used as deductively formed categories within the investigation. Overall, it can be said that the newspapers with the more politically liberal background portray JEP more strongly as a peace-bringing institution that is impartial and follows the law. The rather conservative online media outlets utilize frames with negative connotations more often than their competitors, but they increasingly cite third parties, such as the ruling party Centro Democrático. Furthermore, with regard to the characteristics of Peace Journalism, it can be seen that the more liberal newspapers manage to incorporate this criteria more than the conservative ones, although it must be noted that they also only partially meet Galtung’s requirements.
