Citation

Iwama Y. Boekifu Chubu Int. Rev. 2008; 3: 7-32.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Chūbu daigaku kokusai kankei gakubu "bōekihū" henshū iinkai)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper describes how Chechen News, a Japanese Citizens' media organization, creates an alternative media image of the Chechen War by recombining and reconstructing mass media and independent news reports in order to focus on the human rights abuses and historical context of the conflict. In this paper, I examine the contents and sources of the information that appeared in the Chechen News from 2001 to 2006 as well as the war situation then. To analyze the sources, I divided the Chechen News reports into news generated by the group itself and that quoted from other media; I further divided the latter into information from Chechen separatist groups, NGO and human rights groups and the mass media. The Chechen conflict is a struggle for Chechen independence from the Russian Federation. The first war was fought from 1994 to 1996, and the second from 1999 to 2002, but battles and violence remain until now. Chechen News was born in 2001 from within the Japanese citizens' peace movement. There was hardly any information about Chechens in Japan at that time, so the Chechen News founder sought to provide more news in Japanese to aid the peace movement. A lot of reports by Chechen News refer to the harming of Chechen citizens and the difficult situation of Chechen refugees, and others provide the necessary context for media consumers to understand sudden news like a "hostage crisis." And about half of the information in Chechen News was quoted from the mass media sources. The mass media itself has criticized Russian troops for human rights abuses but have not reported on the details so much. Instead the reports have been about sensational events, like a "hostage crisis" or "terror", which are said to be the work of Chechen "radical separatists." Therefore media consumers are apt to make an image of Chechens as extremist. So, Chechen News makes an effort to form an alternative media image of Chechens which is different from mass media reports. This image is one of "oppression and resistance" instead of "Russia against Chechnya" or "Russia versus terrorists." Ironically, this media image is made through the combination and reconstruction of reports in mass media in Japanese, Russian and English. Therefore, the role of Chechen News is to make a new image of the Chechen War by assembling scattered news reports according to a humanitarian standpoint.

Language: ja