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The end of the Cold War brought with it a growing optimism about the new world order. It was believed that the political project of liberal modernity (democracy, rights and freedom, individuality and rationality) would at last become a broader reality. The "new wars" which erupted in the 1990's curtailed some of this optimism, but at the same time turned out to be a key moment to expand this liberal project. In fact, notwithstanding the destruction brought on by these violent conlicts, their treatment as deviant behavior that must be put right has reinforced (1) the political program of liberal modernity as a path to peace and (2) the international consensus around this image. Peace-building emerged as the key strategy to bring modernity to such scenarios. However, despite ideological and functional goals, in practice the ontological modernity rhetoric of empowerment was transformed into a technical, hierarchical tool, becoming part of a broader governance framework. This article aims to explore the cumulative discourse produced by the interaction between the ideological and functional components of the political peace-building project. Not only do we argue that the self-sustaining mechanisms of this project can be more widely applied to a growing number of settings, but also that they have captured the minds of those who engage in the project's critical assessment. As such, we will irst focus on the terms and context which have allowed for this political project to gain its unique status. Secondly, we will address both the theory and policy program that have been designed to respond to scenarios of violent conlict. Finally, we will address some critical inferences regarding the project and illuminate the double process of normalization it fosters: materialistic on the one hand, hermeneutical on the other. This study aims, therefore, to contribute to a self-relective critical research agenda.

The period 2015/2016 was marked by several hotspots of turmoil in the European Union. Events such as the euro crisis, the massive arrival of refugees, the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels, the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Cologne – to name just a few – were perceived as signs of a political crisis challenging the very ideal of Europe as a welcoming and inclusive "imagined community" (Anderson 1982). Several individual member states, often pushed by major advances in their anti-immigration parties, have been key actors in leading the reintroduction of European national border control, the monitoring of non-Europeans, the Othering of bodies according to gender, race, sexuality and religion, the construction of walls and fences, the development of systems of detention and securitization and the promotion of anti-immigration policies. Digital media has played a major role in creating subjectivities around the crisis and promoting processes of Othering. Within this new media ecosystem, online social media perform a key role. By opening the floor to new gatekeepers and blurring the traditional lines dividing audiences and media production, social media allow the generation and dissemination of narratives and frames in a ubiquitous, echo-chamber – that is, an environment or a sphere where people only listen and speak to like-minded peers, so that their own views reverberate and are, thus, reinforced (Sunstein 2007) – and "Facebook disclosure" logic (Wills and Reeves 2009), which stages social media participants as the "true voice of the people", particularly in a time of increasing distrust in traditional media. As such, the moral panic around refugees and Muslims, the gendering and racialization of threat and fear, intertwined with phobias framed by the dichotomy of "us versus them", cannot be understood without critically examining digital media. This essay is part of an on-going transdisciplinary project at the Center of Social Studies, University of Coimbra: (De)Othering: Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and "internal Others" in Portuguese and European mediascapes. This project sets out to critically examine media representations of migrants, refugees and "internal Others" in Portugal and across Europe, while mapping out their interconnections with particular narratives in the field of security and within the War on Terror. This essay examines the role of digital media in amplifying the "sexual moral panic" around migration. We argue that digital media strongly contributes to the dissemination and escalation of phobias of invasion and dangerous sexuality framed by constructions of race and gender, proceeding from widely shared orientalist and colonial archives of racializing rape. This archive sustains the representation of male Muslim and Black migrants and refugees as subverting the sexual order of the European "imagined community". Two European nations, Italy and Germany, will be at the core of our analysis. We will examine digital media circulation of images and videos regarding sexual crimes committed by migrants (namely the rape and murder of young woman in Macerata by a Nigerian migrant in January 2018, the the rape and murder of young woman in Rome by a Nigerian migrant in October the same year, the 2015 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Cologne and the rape-murder of a student in Freiburg in 2016 by an asylum seeker). The article argues that gender, sexuality, race and other categories of difference were crucial in the social media construction of these events as political crisis and threats to European identity.

Abstract This article focuses on media representations of 'the South in the North' crosscutting the European mediascape in 2015 and the beginning of 2016. Assuming that both identities and perceptions of in/security are socially constructed, particularly by means of discourse, that security is gendered and gender constructions are in turn built on dynamics of in/security, and that gendered power relations and representations are always entangled with other structures of inequality and domination such as racism, this article argues that gendered categories of othering in the media's representations have been critical to produce and justify 1) hegemonic narratives of securitisation that aim to protect an imagined European identity and 2) counter-narratives denouncing the racial and cultural discrimination tied to the 'North's' hegemonic representations of refugees. Theoretically, the article proposes a dialogue among critical, feminist, and postcolonial peace and security studies. Methodologically, it analyses through discourse analysis three highly mediatised cases by examining the social representations of the refugees, namely their gendered components put forward by representative European media outlets based in the UK. It explores their implications in terms of the consolidation of stereotypes and hierarchies of suffering according to criteria of credibility/suspicion and vulnerability/threat, and identifies some examples of media counter-narratives on refugee flows through specific gendered and racialised representations.

This article seeks to explore the role Russian and Ukrainian conventional media played as agenda-setters and producers of subjective framings within the context of the Crimean crisis, exploring at the same time the relationship between state and media and the impact of media representations on national public opinions. The analysis shows that agenda-setting and framing at the level of states' policies have a fundamental role in decision-shaping and perception-building, highlighting that the manipulation of information through narrativeconstruction is a powerful tool at the service of politics. This study contributes to validate the idea that media can be perceived as key influencers of the public agenda as they emerge as the most relevant agents in mediatising politics, becoming hence a functional gatekeeper that might either facilitate the official discourse or instead obstruct it.

This article seeks to explore the role Russian and Ukrainian conventional media played as agenda-setters and producers of subjective framings within the context of the Crimean crisis, exploring at the same time the relationship between state and media and the impact of media representations on national public opinions. The analysis shows that agenda-setting and framing at the level of states' policies have a fundamental role in decision-shaping and perception-building, highlighting that the manipulation of information through narrativeconstruction is a powerful tool at the service of politics. This study contributes to validate the idea that media can be perceived as key influencers of the public agenda as they emerge as the most relevant agents in mediatising politics, becoming hence a functional gatekeeper that might either facilitate the official discourse or instead obstruct it.

Over the past two decades, international intervention in post-war settings has strictly followed liberal assumptions and practices. Efforts to build and shape the media in the aftermath of armed conflict are no exception. In setting the foundations for the rule of law, liberal democracy and free market, external actors have (re)defined what constitutes the mediascape – that is, the various spheres of communication within public discourse – and how to (re)construct it. Imprinted with modernity's tenets and western assumptions about the public space, this approach has understood the mediascape narrowly as limited to traditional, established, liberal media, serving to validate particular actors and processes whilst obscuring, neglecting and shutting off global diversity. Law and technology, this paper argues, are the two main axes through which legitimation and exclusion are effected. A myopic focus on legal and technological aspects of the media reduces a rich space of local discourses, norms and practices to western-like media legislation, training and outlets, narrowing in turn the sites for addressing violence and building peace. ; Durante las últimas dos décadas, la intervención internacional en contextos posguerra ha seguido estrictamente los supuestos y prácticas liberales. Los esfuerzos para construir y dar forma a los medios de comunicación después de los conflictos armados no son una excepción. Al sentar las bases del estado de derecho, de la democracia liberal y del libre mercado, los actores externos han definido lo que constituye el paisaje mediático, es decir, las diversas esferas de la comunicación en el discurso público y cómo reconstruirlo. Imbuido con los principios de la modernidad y los supuestos occidentales sobre el espacio público, este enfoque ha entendido el panorama mediático estrechamente como limitado a los medios tradicionales, establecidos y liberales, sirviendo para validar actores y procesos particulares mientras oscurece, descuida y cierra la diversidad global. El derecho y la tecnología, sostiene este documento, son los dos ejes principales a través de los cuales se efectúan la legitimación y la exclusión. Un enfoque miope en los aspectos legales y tecnológicos de los medios de comunicación que reduce un rico espacio de discursos, normas y prácticas locales a la legislación, la formación y los medios de comunicación de los medios occidentales, reduciendo a su vez los sitios para abordar la violencia y construir la paz.

Once considered almost solely a site of poverty and conflict, sub-Saharan Africa and perceptions of it have gradually been changing. Today, African states have become important actors in international affairs, with a number considered as emerging powers. The subcontinent's most assertive players have been capitalising on their natural wealth and recent economic growth and have implemented policies pursuant to a change of status from developing countries to emerging powers. This report looks at four such subSaharan countries – South Africa, Nigeria, Angola and Kenya – and explores the reasons for both optimism and pessimism regarding their considerable potential, as well as their governments' initiatives to fulfl it.

Mass media mediate different publics, thus being crucial in constructing political reality. By selecting which topics are covered (agenda), which voices are heard, or how social and political issues/actors/dynamics are represented (priming and framing), mass media impacts how political conversations and processes unfold. Acknowledging the increasing mediatisation of politics, this article zooms into media texts of the Portuguese media during a complex political period that included national elections to explore how populism as a term, label, or topic was used and/or co-opted to create and negotiate political EU representations. Building on a historical perspective and using critical thematic analysis, this article argues that populism was used in the media and by the media as a discursive mechanism of political positionality and/or delegitimisation or criticism of political actors, agendas, or moves, thus making populism and the EU co-constitutively used as embodying political antipodes and making the EU work as a discursive buffer concerning populism in the country.