Abstract Book of the 6th World Conference on Media and Communication
Year: 2025
[PDF]
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) In Cross-Cultural Media Reports: How Al-Jazeera English and CNN Reported The Gaza-Israel Conflicts, 2023-2024
Ruiyue Zhang
ABSTRACT:
The conflicts between Gaza and Israel have intensified since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October, 2023. A series of mutual attacks have since been triggered. The conflicts not only revealed the entrenched disputes between the two regions since the establishment of the State of Israel, but also reflected a rather complex global geopolitical landscape, particularly between the Middle East and the West. The study will conduct mixed-methods research, mainly by applying van Dijk’s structure of news (see van Dijk, 2020; Erjavec, 2001) to analyse headlines, subjects and topics, as well as models of reports from both media outlets. The keyword ‘Gaza-Israel conflicts’ was input into the search engine of the two outlets. The study chose the first 60 reports from each outlet to conduct headline analysis, and amongst them, 6 articles were selected as sample texts for CDA. According to the coding in headline analysis, the study has found that neither news outlet stayed neutral. For example, when ‘Israel’ is the subject, 18 headlines are about ‘politics’, whereas only 2 are about ‘military operation’ in CNN, whereas in AJE, only 3 headlines are under ‘politics’, while 15 are about ‘military operation (killing)’. Meanwhile, the sample texts analysed by CDA demonstrated a stark contrast. In AJE’s reports, Israel is mostly associated with negative and violent descriptions, while CNN uses various reporting strategies to legitimise Israel’s attack on Palestine in terms of military missions and civilian casualties. Future studies should research more on how ideologies, such as ‘Zionism’, ‘antisemitism’ and ‘islamophobia’ have been inserted into reports to identify different stances in the conflicts, and how the media might uphold journalistic professionalism in such a complicated ideological and physical battle.
Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, Al-Jazeera, CNN, news headlines, Israel-Gaza conflicts