Research that undertakes longitudinal analysis of presidential discourse inevitably wrestles with a difficult issue: which presidential speeches should be analyzed? Surprisingly, there has been essentially no interrogation of this issue. Studies vary in the speeches they analyze: some focus on inaugural addresses, others on State of the Union addresses, yet others focus on some broader body of speeches, often with limited discussion of the criteria used for selection. The result is that when scholars set out to study broad trends in the rhetoric of America's most important political figure, they have little guidance in determining what speeches they should analyze. This article offers a detailed conception of major presidential addresses, argues that such addresses provide an ideal corpus of texts for longitudinal content analysis of modern presidential speeches, and briefly describes the contours of a data set consisting of 406 such speeches. This data set serves as a resource for scholars to rely upon when studying presidential discourse, one that might standardize future analyses so that more meaningful generalizations can be made and more precise replications can be undertaken.

According to Galtung, a peace journalism frame is one that highlights peace initiatives and tones down differences by promoting conflict resolution. A war journalism frame, in his view, is one that highlights differences between opposing parties, urging violence as means to a resolution. Thus, based on the above classification of these two competing frames of war coverage, this is one of the first studies to empirically test the model via a visual quantitative analysis. Using news photographs, this study analyzes the extent to which the Gaza War (2008-2009) was represented as war versus peace journalism in the three leading Western newswires (Associated Press, Reuters, and AFP/Getty Images). Findings indicate that all three wires combined provided a variety of visual frames to communicate a comprehensive coverage of the event. This observed pattern therefore highlights the role of gatekeeping in providing a broad-based understanding of conflicts. In other words, it becomes crucial to note that photo selections in terms of war versus peace journalism ultimately has an impact in shaping public opinion and influencing perceptions of news events. Furthermore, from a theoretical standpoint, this work expands the classification of war versus peace journalism by operationalizing these frames into concrete pictorial patterns from a visual communication perspective.

Based on Galtung's concept of peace/war journalism, this exploratory work attempts to advance an empirical method to develop a survey instrument for a reliable and valid assessment of journalists' attitudes toward peace/war performance. The authors propose a measurement index of conflict reporting which combines several practices linked to peace/war journalism. The usefulness of the approach is then demonstrated by quantitative and qualitative evidence from a pilot study based on a survey of worldwide members of The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Benefits of the approach and implications for future peace/war survey research are discussed.Over the past decades, Johan Galtung's revolutionary concept of peace journalism (see Galtung, 1986) has received a surplus of attention. Having evolved as an alternative to challenge traditional war coverage, it has since encouraged a focus on proactive coverage and nonviolent approaches for journalists covering conflict zones. Galtung-considered the pioneer of this concept that lays out criteria and practices for reporters covering conflict zones-viewed peace journalism and war