Narratives, the Media and Operation Cast Lead

Abstract

The objective of this Master thesis was to conduct a narrative analysis of the news coverage of the Gaza War in 2008/9 between Israel and Hamas. More specifically, this work discusses the application of Israeli and Palestinian historical-national narratives in English language online (version) newspapers from the U.S., Israel as well as the Palestinians and the Arab world. The purpose is to improve the reader’s understanding of narratives and their media applicability in a conflict context and especially in light of Israeli-Palestinian issues. For this qualitative research, numerous articles published in different newspapers on several days during the start, middle and end phase of the war were analyzed. Results show amongst others that in terms of Israeli narratives there are certain recurrent themes and historical references (e.g. the Six Day War) frequently applied in the media. With respect to Palestinian narratives, the picture is less clear and one comes rather across what you may call a counter-Israel narrative than a clear Palestinian one.