AbstractsPolitical Science

Throughout this project we have an interest in looking at how the Gaza Crisis of summer 2014 is being portrayed in the media. The media’s role according to the Fourth Estate Model claims that it should be independent and therefore, uninfluenced by organizations with invested interests. Impartial journalism is necessary to properly update the public so they can make informed decisions as outlined by Social Responsibility Theory. Due to our methodological choices we have chosen to work with one media source, the Danish newspaper Politiken. We will take from Politiken’s work with a total of 147 articles from the period of June 12th 2014 to August 16th 2014, which was the duration of the most recent outbreak of violence. We will with a social constructivist view perform a discourse analysis inspired by Jennifer Millikens work. We will look at binary opposites, predicates, and metaphors, and these three terms will give us a look into which discourses Politiken uses and creates throughout the coverage. The discourse analysis is used to see if Politiken is properly representing both sides of the conflict, and therefore employing good journalism. We will discuss how the media in general can conduct good journalism. We conclude that the newspaper Politiken has an objective discourse on their coverage of the Gaza conflict - the articles are both critical of Hamas and the Israeli government and views the faults from both sides.