The Representation of Palestinian-Israeli conflict in BBC’s media discourseرسالة ماجستير

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine the BBC’s media discourse through coverage of the Israeli aggression on Gaza from 2008 to 2023 and the bias of the BBC towards Israel and against the Palestinian voice in the media. The thesis also studies critical discourse analysis and the most important theorists and their theories for a deeper understanding of the meaning of critical discourse analysis and linking discourse and its meanings to societal standards and the impact of discourse on people’s thinking and opinions about certain issues, by explaining and building on theories related to critical discourse analysis by theorists such as Foucault, Van Dijck, Norman Fairclough, and Ruth Wodak. Reference was also made to the importance of the Western media and its influence on people’s lives in shaping their ideas, the influence of the images that are represented and presented in the Western media about the Middle East, Arabs, and Muslims, and the impact of these images on these societies and the spread of stereotypes about them around the world. The idea of Orientalism by Edward Said was discussed to analyze the image of Arabs in the Western media. The BBC was also taken in this thesis as a main example of Western media. News headlines published by the BBC during the Israeli aggression on Gaza were analyzed. The linguistic manipulation in the discourse presented by the BBC in representing the Israeli side and the Palestinian side was discussed to study the bias on the part of the BBC towards Israel.