Online news media framing of the 2021 Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN

Sammanfattning: This thesis critically analyses the language and images used by international online news media to represent the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in May 2021. In total, 270 online news headlines and featured lead images, published on the English news websites of Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN, are analyzed. This study aims to identify the framing employed by the different international media outlets as well as analyze the scope of their coverage. The theories of agenda-setting, framing and media representation help guide the current research to identify the discursive practices employed by international news media. The framework employed to carry out this research combines Pan & Kosicki (1993) approach to textual framing analysis with Barthes’ (1972) method for analysing visual semiotics. The results indicate variations in the patterns of representing and framing the conflict across the three analysed media outlets. However, overall, the results reveal that the 2021 outbreak in the Israel-Palestine conflict is portrayed mainly through a frame of ‘’war’’. These distinctions broadly reflect and correspond to the journalists' practices and differences of each media outlet.