Disputed Land, Disputed Lives : Transnational and regional coverage of the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 2020 war

Abstract: This study examines the media coverage of the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh during a war in the region in 2020. Drawing on the theoretical framework of humanitarian journalism, it first looks at the attention given to the issue within the daily coverage of the war, then turns to explore patterns in the narration of the past events and present situation in feature stories. Two transnational and two regional news outlets are analysed (The Guardian and Al Jazeera, Sputnik and Hürriyet), which all address a global audience through English, but represent different journalistic traditions, are based in countries with diverse involvement in the conflict and proximity to its parties, and have received different amount of attention in the research of humanitarian journalism. The results suggest that the humanitarian crisis in the region received little attention in general within the daily coverage of the war. People of the region were cited rarely in the reports on their condition and were largely absent from the news photographs too. They were depicted in feature articles mostly through their experience of fighting, limiting the diverse contexts of their lives. Although geographical, political and cultural proximity is argued to have affected the reporting by regional outlets, similarities and differences across the two groups were observed too.