Legitimizing military action through statistics and discourse in the 2014 IDF assault on Gaza

Tasseron, Michael; Lawson, Brendan

doi:10.1177/1750635220917692

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…The first strategy aims to legitimize the aggression (Tasseron & Lawson, 2022) as it is targeting only terrorist organizations (Levitt, 2004), as claimed. Both media described the militants in Gaza as 'territory's militant'.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology in Portraying the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in August 2022: A Transitivity Analysis of The Hindu and the Washington Post Reports

Abunahel

2023

sajssh

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This critical discourse analysis (CDA) investigates how The Hindu and the Washington Post (WP) construct their online news in depicting the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in August 2022. Halliday’s transitivity system was adopted to explore the hidden ideologies and analyze the textual choice or words' features in the clauses of thirteen (13) news articles from The Hindu and nine (9) from WP. The study's findings indicate that the most dominant processes in both news media were the verbal and material processes. Within the verbal process, it was divided into three sides: Palestinian, Israel and neutral. The findings reveal that both media have common strategies to represent the Israeli and neutral verbal process, while the selected media share similarities and differences in representing the Palestinian verbal process. The findings through the material process suggest that both media show Israel as an actor more than as a goal. They tend to use processes ‘verbs’ that are associated with extreme violence and less violence with Israel, whereas Palestinian are associated with less violence process, but the process is supported with adjectives, adverbs and numbers to place it in extreme violence. The analysis is then followed by the revealed methods and techniques used by the selected media. Overall, both news media have hidden ideologies to construct their news articles. Based on these empirical evidences, (CDA) appears to play an essential part in understanding the language that is employed in media discourses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology in Portraying the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in August 2022: A Transitivity Analysis of The Hindu and the Washington Post Reports

Abunahel

2023

sajssh

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“…These press conferences were important sites of political communication during this period. All 109 press releases were coded in a focused content analysis (such an approach has been used by Tasseron and Lawson ( 2022 ) and Ortega-Chavez and Lawson ( 2022 )).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political communication, press coverage and public interpretation of public health statistics during the coronavirus pandemic in the UK

Lawson

Lugo‐Ocando

2022

European Journal of Communication

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This article examines the way numbers, often concerning risk, were communicated by politicians, covered by the news media and interpreted by the public during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis in the United Kingdom. To explore this topic, we adopted a mixed-methods approach that included content analysis, comparative thematic analysis and a series of focus groups. Whilst coherency and consistency are touted as essentials in public health messaging, our textual analysis highlighted the disconnect between political communication and news media coverage. Whereas the UK government relied on vague references to curves and peaks to underpin a narrative of consistency and certainty in public health policy, the UK news media referred to specific numbers from within and outside the UK to criticise the government's approach as haphazard and lacking. This disconnect gained even more significance during our focus groups. When discussing numbers, participants referred to news media coverage rather than political messaging, using these figures to challenge the timing and nature of the UK lockdown. These findings present a significant critique of the UK government's communication during this health crisis. Instead of putting forward a coherent, homogenous and clear message to the public, the discourse around numbers and risk was diffracted, disconnected and opaque. This was largely due to the competing narratives presented by the news media.

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“…This type of quantitative content analysis that focuses on specific instances of statistics has been used to good effect elsewhere (Tasseron and Lawson, 2020). The findings from this examination were complemented by a thematic analysis conducted to the entire corpus as this is a suitable method to identify, analyse and report patterns (themes) within data (Braun and Clarke, 2006).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How journalists do memory work with numbers: The case of the 220,000 deaths during the Colombian conflict (1958–2012)

Ortega

Lawson

2022

Journalism

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This paper explores the relationship between memory, journalism and numbers. It does so through a case study that examines how the Colombian news media reported on a particular figure during a peace negotiation: the 220,000 people who died because of the armed conflict in Colombia. The number was produced by the National Centre for Historical Memory in 2013 in a comprehensive report about the ravages of the Colombian conflict (1958–2012). Following a mix-method approach – a quantitative content analysis and a thematic analysis of the news articles – we find that the way in which journalists reported on the figure contradicts two key aspects of the report. While the report rejects an ‘official memory’ of the conflict for one that is more open to political and social debate, one characterised less by ‘closed truths’, the news reports treated the number as a fact and very rarely provided a form of contestation to it. Moreover, while the report emphasises the need for clarification over distortion and concealment when constructing memory, the news articles misrepresented those accountable for the casualties: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) was consistently positioned as the main illegal armed organisation responsible for the death toll. This representation ran counter to the findings from the report that emphasised the way paramilitary groups, rather than guerrilla groups (e.g. FARC), were more responsible for the killings. Considering our findings, we argue that an adherence to accuracy by journalists is more desirable than a practice of vagueness in the contribution to memory formation in post-conflict contexts.

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Legitimizing military action through statistics and discourse in the 2014 IDF assault on Gaza

Cited by 13 publications

References 60 publications

Ideology in Portraying the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in August 2022: A Transitivity Analysis of The Hindu and the Washington Post Reports

Ideology in Portraying the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in August 2022: A Transitivity Analysis of The Hindu and the Washington Post Reports

Political communication, press coverage and public interpretation of public health statistics during the coronavirus pandemic in the UK

How journalists do memory work with numbers: The case of the 220,000 deaths during the Colombian conflict (1958–2012)

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