'Tricksters', 'victims' and 'saviours' in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict : a discourse-mythological analysis of Al Jazeera online and the Palestinian papers

Abstract

In 2011 the Palestine Papers were leaked by Al Jazeera. The release of over 1600 secret documents provided a new insight into the negotiation processes of recent Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. This thesis analyses Al Jazeera Arabic and English online coverage of the leaked papers from 23rd-31st January 2011. It examines how Al Jazeera used the leaks as a political tool in their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By scrutinising the complex ideological roles of space and myth in the moral storytelling of news media, the thesis develops an understanding of how a news organisation provides significant insight through its cultural and editorial values. A content analysis firstly provides a statistical overview of the news coverage in my sampled time period. A discourse-mythological (and multimodal) analysis then examines the ideological contexts of news stories by showing how the revelations of the leaked papers were constructed through archetypal conventions of mythology. The thesis argues that Al Jazeera challenged the Palestinian Authority’s political status by criticising their approach to the negotiations through discourses of nationalism, treachery, victimhood, and resistance. Jerusalem was also used as a symbolic marker to recontextualise the ideological (‘Self/Other’) space of the long-lasting conflict. Furthermore, Al Jazeera recontextualised key political actors into spaces of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ through archetypal forms of mythological storytelling, such as tricksters, victims, and saviours. The thesis argues that through these complex ideological constructions of the Middle-Eastern conflict, archetypal roles informed the agency of particular groups in Al Jazeera news content. Hence, Al Jazeera tailored its reporting to appropriate its target (Arabic/English) audience, e.g., in terms of multimodality and contextualisation. This thesis demonstrates the significance of Al Jazeera in the Israel-Palestine conflict and the importance of understanding the role of mythology in moral storytelling and news media.