La guerre dans les médias, les médias dans la guerre en Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on a particular type of informative
media discourse: opinion journalism, which has been very prominent in
Côte d’Ivoire since the war on September 2002 which split the country
into two parts. The paper, therefore, uses a constructivist approach
based on the obvious fact that journalisitic information is the product
of a created entity. The issue of “the media in the war, the war in the
media” is a major issue for public debate, for it is established as a new
public space in the formation and expression of opinions. In the Ivorian
context, information is the dominant paradigm and the informant is the
activist-journalist whose relationship to his/her audience is built on a
mode mostly based on membership, in the ideological meaning of the
term. The journalistic discourse adds to its traditional function, which
is to inform, new conditioning and mobilization functions that make it
fully an ideological space of full membership.