Explaining Media Frames of Contested Foreign Conflicts: Irish National ‘Opinion Leader’ Newspapers’ Frames of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (July 2000 to July 2004)

Abstract

This paper discusses the key findings of PhD research that analysed how four Irish national ‘opinion leader’ newspapers – The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune – framed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from July 2000 to July 2004 (O’Regan, 2007). 
 
 Two sets of significant findings emerged from this research. Firstly, this research’s qualitative frame analysis found that the sampled newspapers acted as contested sites that variously displayed competing frames of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than exclusively transmitting hegemonic, or elitist frames. Secondly, it was concluded that the politics and dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself influenced newspaper coverage trends, as did the politico-cultural context supplied by Ireland’s ‘small state’ and post-colonial status and its consequent lack of ‘hard’ foreign policies towards the Middle East. A range of media factors, such as resource constraints, editorial judgments and news values, also had important constructivist implications for newspaper outcomes. 
 
 Taken together, these findings strongly critique the propaganda, hegemonic and political control perspectives that have characterised research to date. Instead, this research concluded that competing conflict protagonists’ level of media access is best viewed as an achieved outcome, which changes in line with developments in the wider political and media environments and in the operation of news factors.