CDA analysis of Jerusalem Conflict in BBC and AJE

Abstract: This research aims at finding how BBC and AJE media represented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The study examines the news website, which reported the recent escalation of Jerusalem conflict in December 2017, where US President Trump have recognized Jerusalem as Israeli capital, and declared to move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. The study uses qualitative research, where it investigated the impact of ideology on media discourse by means of critical discourse analysis (DHA, Topoi, and Social actor’s representation). CDA was carried out for a sample of 8 news articles published on the websites of two networks: the British Broadcasting Corporation World news "BBCWN" and the Middle Eastern Qatari owned "Al Jazeera English". The articles were chosen within the month of December 2017. Articles were analyzed by means of the two-level analysis method, including the thematic and in-depth analysis. On the first, entry-level analysis, I focus on contents of texts and outline the discourse topics. While in the second phase I analyze the means of discursive strategies and the representation of social actors utilized throughout the text. The thematic analysis revealed that, both BBC and AJE have covered the incident similarly in general look. However, in-depth analysis showed that each network had portrayed the images of Israelis and Palestinians differently. On contrast of AJE, BBC tends to perceive Palestinians as a threat and the Israeli one as victims of the Palestinian violation. Moreover, the analysis revealed that each network had different ideologies and aims. The study concludes that AJE articles was biased pro-Palestinians, while BBC articles was biased pro-Israelis.