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Research on genocide has provided a rich background of common structural, ideological and psychological antecedents that culminate in the attempted annihilation of a specific ethnic or religious group. Integrating the literature on framing, genocide, emotions and social psychology, this article first presents the concept of a master 'genocidal frame' and preliminary evidence from two modern-day genocides, Rwanda and Nazi Germany, where it located common themes in genocidal communication. Secondly, it suggests that the genocidal frame's five themes together are used as an effort to persuade the countries' 'own' people that annihilating 'the others' is necessary for the 'greater good'. Finally, the author embeds this framing into three bodies of literature to preliminarily theorize how a genocidal frame, whether communicated interpersonally or institutionally, may interact with other conditions to help shape the psychological antecedents of genocide – negative emotions, cognitions and group psychology.

To assist researchers studying the relationships between mass media messages and escalating conflict or peace-building, this article introduces two new datasets generated from Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the critical period before the Belfast Peace Agreement's ratification. The first, the Northern Ireland Media Dataset (NIMD), contains coded data from a stratified, systematic random sample of articles from the three daily newspapers plus available articles from two paramilitary-related publications. The second, the Northern Ireland Community Relations Dataset (NICRD), resulted from merging one existing database – the Northern Ireland section of the Global Terrorism Database from the University of Maryland (College Park) – with the University of Ulster's Chronology of the Conflict and coding the combined data for new variables that signify degrees of antagonism, non-antagonism, or peace-building. The latter set contains significant events, such as acts of violence, demonstrations, ceasefires, elections and peace rallies. Together and with other datasets, the NIMD and NICRD help researchers analyze and measure different aspects of mass media messages in either the escalation of violence or building peace in one conflict region. As a small showcase of the data, the research tests one hypothesis of newsworthiness in times of conflict and peacemaking, demonstrating that news norms of drama, conflict and events favor coverage of political parties like Sinn Fein, which used these norms to become the most covered political party during this time.

Psychologists and scholars of politics and political communication suggest that portrayals of "the others" impact emotions and behaviors toward them, particularly during conflict. When extremely negative, these portrayals can be used to justify harmful behaviors. Other scholars have found that the norms and structures of professional journalism can moderate extreme portrayals. This paper examines two factors that help construct "the others"—one that polarizes and one that tempers portrayals. By comparing three variables related to portraying foes in five Northern Ireland publications, the research shows two important variations: The first, variation across the partisan divide, suggests the role of identity and ideology in perpetuating "us versus them" and "good versus bad" framing. The second, variation between the professional newspapers and nonprofessional, more partisan publications, suggests that professional journalism may moderate extreme portrayals. These findings may have implications for journalism and for conflict management.

Why do conservation policies fail to prevent species extinctions and die-offs in contravention of stated intentions and goals? Bringing together a range of literature, including political ecology, political theory, conservation science, communication theory, environmental communication, with original data, this article explores this question, then addresses these failures within Aotearoa New Zealand's context. Using the New Zealand case, it offers a systems-level view of these failures, focusing on the influences and limitations that arise from the political-economic structures, fractured governance, interest group influence, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in representative democracies. Secondly, in these settings, we argue that communication and framing by the interested parties—politicians, government officials, interest groups and NGOs—buttress this system, partly by normalizing it, obscuring scientific realities, shifting focus away from deeper issues, and thus limiting the possibility of substantive solutions in what might be called a colonization of consciousness. Together, this economic-political-communication complex has failed to prevent—and in some ways aided—mass die-offs of native animal species. The article then suggests exploring alternative models, such as deliberative democracy, to this seemingly intractable problem, to strengthen the influence of scientific expertise, better inform decision-makers, advance public understandings of science, and improve democracy by engaging members of the public in decision-making processes. While this study focuses on New Zealand, the issues related to political ecology, the political-economic systems, and the framing of issues, apply to many democratic countries.