In the last decade, armed conflicts have been proliferating around the world. While most conflicts still get covered in the mass media, some have received more international attention than others. This disparity in attention can affect the resolution of conflicts and the support victims can get to rebuild their lives. This study seeks to answer the question of why some armed conflicts receive more media coverage than others. I hypothesize that journalists cover conflicts with clearer victims and villains more than conflicts with more vague victims and villains, because clear victims and villains provide stronger narrative frames and fewer actors to cover, easing the cognitive and logistical burdens on journalists. I derive this hypothesis from an interdisciplinary theory-building exercise that draws on communication studies, psychology, and literary criticism, in addition to the conflict studies canon. Combining expert interviews with war journalists and an original survey experiment randomizing narrative frames on journalism students, I find no significant treatment effect on conflict coverage. However, the results still point to the importance of human stories in bringing readers to empathize with conflict victims even when they seem distant. This study enriches the conflict studies literature by analyzing war coverage from a perspective not explored yet: the narrative forms that emerge from different conflict environments
