ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we argue that communication and media studies are central to PE and explain why. We elaborate on their centrality to intergroup relations and the PE processes that try to alter those relations. These PE processes include but are not limited to changing how individuals construct their group identity, reconciliation, mutual understanding, teaching tolerance, inducing compromise in intergroup political beliefs, encouraging groups to view their partners in con ict narratives as legitimate, reducing aggressive and violent intergroup behaviors, improving hope or optimism toward achieving peace, and fostering new media technology use on the grounds that its increased use will build democracy or increase the economic ef ciency of ethnopolitical groups who are economically disadvantaged to build peace. Parenthetically, these last two goals-working for either democracy or socioeconomic development to build peace-stretch the boundaries of PE, as de ned by Salomon and Nevo (2002).
