https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291126006145
DOWNLOAD: Kiely et al 2026 Framing Conflict.pdf (633.4 KB)
"National media coverage of conflicts is powerfully shaped by context and historical memory, yet the underlying mechanisms remain under-explored. This study conducts a critical discourse analysis of 300 articles from British (BBC, Sky News) and Irish (RTÉ, The Journal) outlets covering Israel’s 2024 Rafah offensive.
"Systematic contrasts emerge: UK outlets predominantly used passive voice for Palestinian casualties and foregrounded Israeli agency, with minimal Palestinian sourcing. Irish media, in contrast, attributed agency to Israeli actions 86-91% of the time, balanced source-representation, and frequently deployed explicit moral terminology.
“Notably, media framing in Ireland temporally aligned with government support for the ICJ genocide case and Palestinian statehood recognition. These findings suggest that national historical memory actively shapes conflict discourse and legitimises divergent policy strategies.”
Author’s note: I’ve spent quite some time trying to locate any academic studies of how Irish media have handled reporting of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people over the past three years — yes, three years of contemplating a genocide live on TV and seeing the so-called international community stand by and watch — but I couldn’t find any. I asked an AI to search — no results from any Irish academic institution or school of journalism. NONE!
I asked an academic colleague, a retired lecturer in journalism. No trace of any Irish publications on Gaza/Palestine/genocide in the media, but he did find this paper comparing Irish and British media coverage of Israel’s 2024 assault on Rafah.
Irish media do better than the British, it seems. But what has happened since? When it comes to the genocide, we still have no study after three years of this. And one thing I’m sure of: the coverage here in Ireland has converged with that of the BiBiC and the likes of Sky News, with Zionist lines predominating and the Palestinians relegated once more to the margins. But maybe some Irish academic, or even some post-grad students, will come up with a deep analysis that proves me wrong?
Don’t hold your breath.
When the BBC described Israeli operations in Rafah as “precision strikes” and RTÉ termed them “assaults on civilians,” these lexical choices expose the ideological divergences at the heart of contemporary conflict reporting. While the literature documents media bias in conflict coverage extensively, the mechanisms driving systematic variation between similar democratic media systems remain under-explored (Entman, 2004). What explains why outlets operating within comparable institutional frameworks develop fundamentally different narratives of identical events, especially regarding asymmetric conflicts where professional standards should yield similarity?
Prevailing comparative analyses often frame Western versus non-Western systems, conflating institutional structures and ideological positioning, and overlooking how historical memory shapes discourse even within shared democratic frameworks (Kotisova & Deuze, 2022). The Israel-Palestine conflict, and especially Israel’s 2024 Rafah offensive, illuminates these dynamics and foregrounds key divergences as European states reposition diplomatically (Cleary, 2002).
This study contends that national historical memory mediates the relationship between media institutions and discursive output, producing distinct patterns of conflict framing across otherwise similar contexts (Gramsci, 1971). We assess how Ireland’s post-colonial memory enables counter-hegemonic discourse in contrast to UK outlets’ reproduction of dominant narratives, showing how colonial trauma provides interpretive resources that contest hegemonic readings of asymmetric conflict.
The core research question is: How does historical memory shape media framing of asymmetric conflict, and what are the implications for reproducing or resisting hegemonic discourse?
The analysis draws on critical discourse analysis of 300 articles from four major outlets during the Rafah offensive, tracing systematic patterns in agency attribution, lexicalisation, and source selection relative to national policy positions. Irish media’s use of colonial analogies and explicit moral terminology is contrasted with UK outlets’ euphemistic framing and marginalisation of Palestinian voices, manifesting in quantifiable differences: Irish outlets attribute 35–42% representation to Palestinian sources (versus UK’s overall 16-17%) and deploy active voice for Israeli actions in 86–91% of articles (UK outlets demonstrated 96-97% on the same metric).
Conclusion
This analysis demonstrates how national historical memory mediates media discourse production within democratic institutions, generating systematic differences in conflict coverage despite similar professional frameworks. Irish outlets’ deployment of post-colonial memory enables counter-hegemonic positioning that challenges dominant Western narratives through apparently neutral journalistic practices, while British outlets function as “traditional intellectuals” maintaining existing power structures through claims of professional objectivity.
The systematic quantification of discourse patterns provides empirical validation of Gramscian theoretical concepts while revealing specific mechanisms linking collective memory to contemporary political action. The temporal alignment between Irish media framing and policy formation suggests media discourse functions as constitutive rather than merely reflective political practice, providing legitimatory scaffolding for counter-hegemonic state action within Western democratic frameworks.
These findings have broader implications for understanding democratic journalism’s relationship to state power and possibilities for alternative media practices. The documentation of UK media’s elite-public dissonance versus Irish alignment between discourse, policy, and popular sentiment reveals different models of media’s democratic function. The analysis challenges liberal assumptions about media independence while demonstrating concrete possibilities for counter-hegemonic journalism within mainstream institutional contexts.
The methodological innovations developed here provide replicable tools for systematic analysis of ideology and power in media discourse, addressing persistent critiques of critical discourse analysis while maintaining its critical theoretical foundations.