Framing the Israeli-Palestine conflict after October 7th, 2023

On October 7th, 2023, Hamas militants launched a violent operation against Israeli civilians resulting in unprecedented retaliatory force from the Israeli government against the Gaza Strip. This research aims to analyze how international news organizations framed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict post-October 7th by examining Instagram Reel content from four different news outlets over a span of 25 weeks. Using a mixed-methods explanatory design, this study measures the incidence of generic and issue-specific news frames through both quantitative and qualitative analyses of content from the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera English, and The Jerusalem Post. The results indicate a consistent usage of the "Conflict" and "Human Interest" generic frames across BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera English, with significant variations in the application of the "Responsibility" frame. The least commonly employed frames were “Economic Consequence” and “Morality.” A trend emerged where Western outlets, particularly CNN, displayed a shift towards pro-Palestinian framing, depicting the violence in Gaza as a humanitarian crisis. This shift marks a departure from CNN’s historical framing, suggesting a more nuanced approach in its coverage, which now includes more diverse voices and multiple perspectives. Using Entman’s four framing functions to derive issue-specific frames from the data, two main frames arose to describe the crux of the conflict: Humanitarian crisis and national security. Additionally, the study found that mainstream media has increasingly legitimized both Hamas and Israeli narratives, reflecting a broader spectrum of informational sources. Lastly, the dataset found evidence of legitimizing strategies trickling through to mainstream news outlets, as journalists relied on Hamas and Israeli information to build their narrative. In conclusion, this study provides a comprehensive investigation of how different international news outlets framed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and serves as a case study of the most recent phase of the conflict. The findings reveal significant variations in framing, generally reflecting each outlet’s editorial stance and regional biases, but not always in accordance with previous studies of these news outlets’ framing tendencies, as was the case with CNN. This research contributes to the broader understanding of media framing in conflict situations and underscores the critical role of social media platforms in shaping public perception. Future research should further explore the agenda-setting impact of these framing practices on audience perceptions and the reactions of political and state actors following mainstream news outlets.