https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0072-0676
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ABSTRACT
In this article I conduct a multimodal critical discourse analysis of news coverage of the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza by select British and South African print news outlets. The representation of the actors’ legitimacy is the theoretical framework used for the study. Interviews were also conducted with journalists who reported on the war for insights into aspects of news production that impacted their reporting. Textually and visually Israeli military personnel were accorded legitimacy. The Palestinian perspective was marginalised in addition to being de-legitimated. A key facet of the war’s coverage is the highly-structured reporting environment in Israel and Gaza. I argue that this continues to exert a significant impact on the work of journalists there. The article enhances current research on the analysis of multimodal texts using qualitative approaches. Important insights are provided about the manner in which textual and visual semiotic resources in news texts function in unison to convey or rescind legitimacy. The second contribution concerns the impact of the news production process in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The media’s role in legitimising Israeli violence is particularly pertinent.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for taking the time to review the article and for their helpful feedback. I would also like to thank the production staff at Taylor & Francis for preparing the article for publication.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The data analysed form part of a larger project comparing British and South African news coverage of the 2014 war. One of the project’s objectives was to determine whether the two media contexts presented different ideological positions with respect to the Israeli and Palestinian actors (seeTasseron Citation2019).
2 Also see (Tasseron and Lawson Citation2020).
3 The Tribune is the Sunday edition of the Mercury.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Tasseron
Michael Tasseron completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in 2019. The focus of his doctoral research was on the textual and visual coverage of the 2014 Gaza war by the British and South African media. His research interests include journalism, visual communication and International Relations, focusing, in particular, on the Middle East and Africa.