Yael Warshel presents at TEDxPSU, ‘A Call for Evidence: Can Media Help Build, Make and Sustain Peace?’
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — “Do Media Have the Power to Make Peace?”
Drawing from her 25-year-long interest in this question, including from her vantage point as a media and conflict management practitioner and professor advancing the subdiscipline she has coined as, “Peace Communication,” Dr. Yael Warshel answers, “Not necessarily.” She discusses the evidence that led her to this conclusion. She emphasizes her assessment and evaluation research of Israeli and Palestinian versions of Sesame Street, which tried to manage conflict between Israeli and Palestinian children. She concludes by advocating for the creation of an organization that will partner practitioners and scholars to generate the evidence and evidence-based practice necessary to procure a more conclusive answer to this question. Ultimately that answer, Dr. Warshel says, will instruct us about whether peace media interventions are a waste of money; or alternatively, effective, and when, how, and for whom, their outcomes can be ethically improved.
