A Media War During the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict

• In Event: 172 - Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Peace and Peacebuilding
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Media and Perceptions in War and Conflict

Abstract

Contemporary warfare is hardly a ground or air “operation.” Alongside offensives and defenses, there is media warfare, in which warring parties seek to establish legitimate if not moral claims about their fights. To the extent that sociologists aim at understanding the historical role of warfare in state-making and political development, there seems to be a greater need to connect the battlefields and the rhetorical field in which legitimacy and consent are constructed and manufactured. This paper offers a content analysis to describe a media war in the Israel-Gaza conflict over the summer of 2014. The analysis hints to a “model” for mobilizing legitimation where consent takes place at the intersection between journalistic practice and media appearance of state actors in the mode of availability. This analysis may enrich a comparative-historical viewpoint that sees the entangling Israeli-Palestinian relations also as a process of mobilization—the availability of state actors to speak to the media and, in effect, produce a degree of legitimacy and consent in warfare.

Author

• King-To Yeung, California State University-San Bernardino