A Critical Discourse Analysis of Media : The Israeli Palestinian Crisis in two American Mainstream Newspapers between October 2023 and September 2024

Abstract

This thesis studies the discourse on the Israeli Palestinian crisis for a year after the October 7th attacks by the Palestinian Hamas-organization on Israel in two major US online newspapers. The study was conducted by using Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis to see how the current conflict in Gaza is represented in American newspapers. The aim of the study is to find out what kind of bias is present in the news, how the liberal and conservative sources differ in this sense and if attitudes have shifted during the year following the start of the current conflict in Gaza. A total of 22 news articles were retrieved from the online versions The New York Times and The New York Post. The analysis was done by reading the articles and applying methods of Three-Dimensional Framework in accordance with the three dimensions of discourse introduced by Fairclough: texts, interaction and social context. Accordingly, the three stages of the analysis were description, interpretation and explanation. For the description stage, words used for Palestinians and Israelis and the actions taken by each side were analyzed. Modality was the grammatical point that was examined. In the interpretation stage, the intertextuality was analyzed to reveal what kind of news sources each newspaper used. In the final stage, explanation, the results of the first two were put in their larger social context to explain them. The analysis of wording and intertextuality revealed that The New York Post, a conservative- leaning newspaper, reported from a more Israel-positive point of than The New York Times, a liberal-leaning newspaper, which at times was more critical of Israel. No diachronic changes in the attitudes were found in the research. The study concludes that newspapers have the power to shape the public opinion on groups of people, which is why they should be mindful of how they represent especially oppressed groups.