Bottlenecks in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the coverage of the first and second intifada in the Flemish press (original) (raw)
Related papers
International Communication Gazette, 2010
Various authors on the media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict assert that it is biased and unbalanced. This study focuses on the representation of the First and Second Intifada in Flemish daily newspapers. It combines a content analysis with in-depth interviews with journalists to investigate any imbalance and bias in favour of the Israeli point of view. The results reveal a certain evolution and some divergence in the coverage of the two Intifadas. The study shows that while some variables are in favour of the Israeli point of view, others clearly reflect the Palestinian perspective. The study therefore does not support the hypothesis of a pro-Israeli bias in Flemish daily newspapers. They are found to cover the First and Second Intifada in a rather balanced way, in contrast to the conclusions reached by other international studies on the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
2010
/ Various authors on the media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict assert that it isbiased and unbalanced. This study focuses on the representation of the First and Second Intifadain Flemish daily newspapers. It combines a content analysis with in-depth interviews with journal-ists to investigate any imbalance and bias in favour of the Israeli point of view. The results reveal acertain evolution and some divergence in the coverage of the two Intifadas. The study shows thatwhile some variables are in favour of the Israeli point of view, others clearly reflect the Palestinianperspective. The study therefore does not support the hypothesis of a pro-Israeli bias in Flemishdaily newspapers. They are found to cover the First and Second Intifada in a rather balanced way,in contrast to the conclusions reached by other international studies on the coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Keywords / bias / content analysis / First and Second Intifada / in-depth interviews / represe...
The current study aims to investigate the role of the news media within the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is based on a total sample of 165 articles, covering three specific events, taken from a range of Israeli and Palestinian news publications. After reading all articles published on each event for each news outlet, the articles were categorized into different themes. The theme that appeared most prominent throughout the coverage was then chosen and posited as a lens through which to analyze the coverage from. In doing so, the analysis could be more focused on issues that proved to be the most salient across the news publications in question. Through qualitative analysis of headlines, content and other features, this investigation seeks to identify points of ideological focus and political orientation, embedded within the language and the plethora of editing choices journalists and editors make in the process of news production. From this, wider conclusions were drawn about the role of Israeli and Palestinian media in what has come to be known as one of the modern world’s most intractable conflicts.
On the Interaction Between Media Frames and Individual Frames of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
conflict & communication online, 2012
The present paper reports on a media effects research experiment in which six groups of participants were asked to read and evaluate differently framed news articles about two scenarios: a Palestinian attack on Israel and an Israeli military operation against Palestinians. The experimental results show that media peace frames of violent events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are generally regarded by the German public as more comprehensible, less biased, more balanced and less partisan than media war frames of the same events. The specific ways in which recipients respond to the frames, however, depend on their prior knowledge of the conflict, on their positioning to the conflict and on their sensitivity to the ambivalence of war and peace for both Israel and the Palestinians. This supports the hypothesis that neither news selection nor framing have uniform effects on public opinion.
2014
Abstract: Based on the assumption that acceptance and effects of media frames depend on the audience's a priori understanding of the respective issue, the present paper combines findings of the Anti-Semitism and the Criticism of Israel (ASCI) survey with a series of content-analytical and experimental studies on the media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the German press. The results of the studies indicate that the short time effects of media peace frames must not be overestimated. In the long run, however, peace journalism will strengthen the peace forces within society, and reduce the share of hard-liners on both sides.
The Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Western Media
The media coverage of certain international conflicts like that of Arab-Israeli conflict may intentionally or unintentionally be distorted and biased due to the journalists' ideology, national affiliation, or their attachment to anti-Semitism or anti-Arabism. Professor Richard Falk who worked as United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights in an interview stated that the journalists who report the conflict factually are accused of bias, whereas pro-Israel bias is perceived as a mainstream media coverage. Following Falk's statement, it can be said that the representation of Arab-Israeli conflict in Western media has never been far from partisan reporting and biased coverage. The selection of certain words and the use of loaded language display this biased coverage in Western media. The terms like "disputed territories" versus "occupied territories" reflect the different positions on the legal status of Gaza Strip and West Bank. This difference is also obvious in the usage of the terms such as "terrorist" versus "freedom fighter". According to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (2007) the American media covers the Arab-Israeli conflict strongly biased in Israel's favor. Following Mearsheimer and Waltz, this study argues that the "terminology bias" is a major feature of Western media's coverage of the conflict. Based on this argument, this study aims to examine the coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in two newspapers-the New York Times, the Guardian-through content analysis methodology. The loaded language in Western media often demonizes Arabs in several news stories.
Thiel On the interaction between media frames and individual frames of the Israeli-Palestinian con
2012
The present paper reports on a media effects research experiment in which six groups of participants were asked to read and evaluate differently framed news articles about two scenarios: a Palestinian attack on Israel and an Israeli military operation against Palestinians. The experimental results show that media peace frames of violent events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are generally regarded by the German public as more comprehensible, less biased, more balanced and less partisan than media war frames of the same events. The specific ways in which recipients respond to the frames, however, depend on their prior knowledge of the conflict, on their positioning to the conflict and on their sensitivity to the ambivalence of war and peace for both Israel and the Palestinians. This supports the hypothesis that neither news selection nor framing have uniform effects on public opinion.
Constructing Peace with Media: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Global News Trends
myjurnal.my
We juxtaposed war and peace journalism, based on Galtung's classification, to examine how leading providers of international news-the BBC World, CNN International, Al-Jazeera English and Press TV are responding to the call for a shift from war to peace agenda in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We coded for occurrences, approaches and language-use to determine the salient indicators of war and peace journalism. Overall, our finding shows a significant support for Galtung's description of war journalism compared to peace journalism. We concluded that peace journalism in global news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at present is more engendered by events of the peace process and we-arepeace-loving propaganda than conscious editorial drive towards peace. The notable presence of indicators of peace journalism offers a reason to believe that media are able to shape peace in Israel/Palestine through a more conscious application of peace journalism model, but also calls for concern on how bias might be represented in peace journalism.
This article presents a general framework for deconstructing and classifying conflict news narratives. This framework, based on a nuanced and contextual approach to analyzing media representations of conflict actors and events, addresses some of the weaknesses of existing classification schemes, focusing in particular on the dualistic approach of the peace journalism model. Using quantitative content analysis, the proposed framework is then applied to the journalistic coverage in the Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Iran's nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war. The coverage is examined in three leading news outlets – Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Ynet – over a six-month period. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article identifies four characteristic types of narratives in the examined coverage. These include two journalistic narratives of violence: one inward-looking, ethnocentric narrative, and one outward-looking narrative focusing on outgroup actors and victims; and two political-diplomatic narratives: one interactional, and one outward-looking. In addition to highlighting different constellations of points of view and conflict measures in news stories, the identified clusters also challenge several assumptions underlying existing models, such as the postulated alignment between elite/official actors and violence frames.
2016
This study is an attempt to comprehend how Palestinians and Israelis perceive the conflict and the peace process. It identifies the channels and dynamics related to the shaping of their perceptions on the individual, community, and political levels. The main objectives of this study are to probe the degree of homogeneity between these levels for both Palestinians and Israelis as well as the degree of discord between them on the same levels and to pinpoint intervening factors that contribute to carving out the ultimate perceptions that individuals hold. Unlike previous work, this study employs a multi-method approach to measure and benchmark of the topic at hand. To bridge further gaps, a developed matrix extends the analyses on temporalspatial dimensions of individuals’ cognitions, affections, and behaviors pertaining to the conflict. This study falls within the descriptive research that seeks probing the effect of macro-level factors (the media, and political parties/leaders) on mi...