Ideologies of Israeli and Palestinian Media in Covering Conflict

I investigated the media coverage of two Israeli and two Palestinian media sources through the escalation of violence in Gaza in the period 20-25 December, 2013. The main purpose behind this research was to reveal how ideologies affect media articles in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (IPC). This book compares the language use between the Israeli and Palestinian media. It also compares the language use between Israeli left wing and right wing media. In addition to the comparison in the language use between Palestinian Hamas owned media and independent media. The critical discourse analysis of the four news sources confirmed the theory of van Dijk (1998) that discourse is crucial in the creation and distribution of ideologies. The language use, text and communication are primarily used by group members to learn, persuade, and convey ideologies. Where ideologies are belief systems shared by social groups to construct core identity and determine the relations to other social groups (van Dijk, 2006). The analysis of the 31 articles, illustrates the different approaches of reporting by the four news sources throughout the latest escalation of violence in Gaza during December, 2013.