Social fields, journalism, and collective memory: Reporting on the Armenian genocide in legal, political, and commemorative field events.

This article examines how news media in the United States mediate and represent competing narratives about the Armenian genocide as produced in three distinct social fields: legal, political, and commemorative. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 259 English-language newspaper articles, it finds that legal coverage (e.g., the Massachusetts court case Griswold v. Driscoll) presents the genocide as a disputed issue framed by free speech debates, political coverage (notably French legislative struggles) emphasizes international diplomatic tensions between Turkey and France while sidelining Armenian voices, and commemorative event reporting foregrounds detailed accounts of the genocide and survivor perspectives. Journalistic norms of neutrality, objectivity, and newsworthiness shape how these field-specific narratives are filtered, resulting in differing public representations of the genocide depending on the social context covered. The study highlights the interplay between institutional logics of social fields and journalistic practices in shaping collective memory about genocides within a global media environment.