The IRA Apology of 2002 and Forgiveness in Northern Ireland's Troubles: A Cross-National Study of Printed Media

This study provides a cross-national exploration of the media and public responses to the 2002 Irish Republican Army (IRA) statement of apology for the hundreds of non-combatant deaths caused by them over the past 30 years. The study explored responses to the statement in national, regional, and loc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Peace and conflict 2007-03, Vol.13 (1), p.93-113
Main Authors: Ferguson, Neil, Binks, Eve, Roe, Mícheál D, Nee Brown, Jessica, Adams, Tiffany, Mary Cruise, Sharon, Alan Lewis, Christopher
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apology
Attitudes
Catholics
Cross-national analysis
Ethnicity
Forgiveness
Human
IRA
Media
Northern Ireland
Peace
Political Processes
Political violence
Press
Responses
United Kingdom
Violence
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Summary:This study provides a cross-national exploration of the media and public responses to the 2002 Irish Republican Army (IRA) statement of apology for the hundreds of non-combatant deaths caused by them over the past 30 years. The study explored responses to the statement in national, regional, and local newspapers across the United States, England, and Northern Ireland. It was hypothesized that relational closeness to victims of the IRA campaign would affect attitudes toward the IRA apology, as would geographical closeness to the political violence in Northern Ireland; also within Northern Ireland there would be differences in attitudes toward the statement due to the ethnopolitical orientation of the newspapers' intended readership. The results broadly supported these hypotheses, with the U.S. print media being generally more positive and the English print media more negative in attitude toward the statement of apology. Also, among responses in England, those areas that had suffered directly from IRA violence tended to have the most negative reactions of all. In Northern Ireland, newspapers with a predominately Catholic readership responded to the IRA apology generally positively, whereas newspapers with a predominately Protestant readership responded generally negatively. The results illustrate difficulties facing peace processes in settings of ethnic violence and the complexity of responses to apology and forgiveness of relevant publics within and outside actual conflict areas.
ISSN:1078-1919
1532-7949
DOI:10.1037/h0094026