Ethnicities and Conflict: A Survey Experiment on the Effect of Narrative Framing on Perceptions in Jos, Nigeria

Abstract

Where ethnic violence divides groups by both religious and tribal affiliation, how does the 'ethnic' characterization of conflict affect perceptions of the crises? From a survey experiment in Jos, Nigeria, we find that priming respondents with religious versus tribal conflict frames leads respondents to differently interpret the causes of violence, with religious issues viewed as the most salient cause of violence and religion the most important solution. The findings emphasize that where more than one ethnic identity is salient to conflict, the causes of violence take on different meaning depending on how individuals interpret the ethnic dimension of local violence.

Surveys in Communities Divided by Ethnicity and Conflict: Challenges, Possible Solutions, and Lessons Learned from a Survey in Jos, Nigeria

“…We suspected that Muslims and Christians might respond differently, as their identity and position within the community would lead to different ways of thinking about the treatments, and this turned out to be the case. Although the treatments did lead to interesting differences, these differences were not consistent between the Muslim and Christian subsamples (Vinson and Rudloff, forthcoming). These important differences highlight the importance of understanding the context in a community in order to anticipate how the intersection of conflict and identity may influence how individuals interpret conflict treatments that will potentially interact with these identities and experiences.…”