Our blessed homeland, their barbarous wastes : Analyzing ideologies in news reporting of the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023

Abstract

Language in news media has long been and continues to be researched as a powerful proponent of ideas and ideologies. In this thesis I examine the ideological language that is present in the news reporting of two news outlets, The Times and the Irish Times, during and after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023. The purpose of this thesis is to highlight that despite the perception of news outlets often being that they report as neutrally as possible, some ideological bias still exists in that reporting. My research questions home in on the lexical choices in the articles and how they function to represent ideologies, and whether there are any differences between the reporting of the two outlets. My analysis is qualitative in nature and draws from Critical Discourse Analysis, with a focus on Marxist tradition and van Dijk’s theories on ideology. In my research I found that all examined article datasets exhibit some ideological biases towards both Israeli and Palestinian entities. Israeli entities initially get described with more positively connoted lexical choices than Palestinian entities, but this changes as the timeframe under examination moves further from the October 7 attack. The Times increase positive representation of Palestinian entities, whereas the Irish Times increases negative representation of Israeli entities. These results may indicate that existing power structures and the ideologies within them in both the UK and Ireland manifest through the news outlets of these two states.