What is happening?

Current Mondial geopolitical affairs have seen an increase in public and governmental involvement with military conflicts within western societies. This thesis is concerned with two military conflicts: the Russian-Ukrainian conflict of 2022, and the Israel-Gaza conflict of 2023. Within this thesis, these two conflicts are researched through the concept of participatory journalism, and framing narratives. As social media are a significant part of individuals’ lives in western Europe, and the Netherlands specifically, this thesis is concerned with how these individuals disseminate news on the social media platform Instagram with a focus on the account ‘NOSStories’ which is curated by the public broadcaster NOS. This thesis aims to explore the forms in which participatory journalism is manifested in the comment sections of posts related to the two military conflicts especially from a point of interaction and deliberation in discussions. This was done through a thematic content analysis of these comment sections. The themes were based on four dimensions: Universalism, Inclusivity, Rationalism, and Agreement. Key findings of the analysis are that the comment sections show low levels of deliberation and a high level of negatively loaded comments. These behaviours were determined to be linked to a low level of emotional moderation, and general deliberation and civility by NOSStories. Additionally, the results from the posts about the Israel-Gaza conflict showed higher levels of engagement and interaction than the posts about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This difference was only observed within this thesis, but an explanation may be researched in future research. The conclusions of this thesis further inform academics on the workings of participatory journalism on online social media platforms, and helps gain insight into how online news posts are disseminated by an audience. Furthermore, the thesis provides news organisations with insights into potential inadequacies in their own behaviours regarding moderation of comment sections in the context of deliberate discussions by audience members, to which they can choose to accept or reject adjustments.