Hanan Badr in APROPOS: How Language Makes Peace

Who speaks, who stays silent – and who decides what counts as “objective”: Hanan Badr talks about the entanglement of the media in conflict and peace.

Words can create peace. In an interview for Salzburg-based magazine APROPOS Hanan Badr explains why peace communication demands far more than goodwill: it is about framing, about the invisible voices in the public discourse – and about whose perspective gets heard at all.

In conversation with Konstantia Url-Praher, Badr draws a clear line between what journalism can achieve and what structurally stands in its way: political interests, commercial platform logics, and the seductive pull of escalation in an algorithmic-driven attention machine.

Badr’s perspective is shaped by her research across international institutions – from Cairo University, Freie Universität Berlin, to Gulf University for Science and Technology and Orient-Institut Beirut. That global lens makes her APROPOS interview particularly sharp: this is not media optimism, but a clear account of the conditions under which peace journalism can actually develop.

Badr works at the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Salzburg, where she heads the Division Public Spheres and Inequalities, and has expertise on peace communication, media power, and coverage of conflicts.

The full interview is available in the current issue of APROPOS (No. 272, May 2026).