Resurfacing Relevant Research: Coverage of Gaza

The Israel-Hamas conflict is still ongoing, nearly one year after the October 7, 2023 attacks. In December 2023, Media Cloud researcher Ryan McGrady undertook an analysis of news coverage of the conflict in its initial weeks.He used Media Cloud’s news database and tools to analyze both media attention to the conflict and the language used to describe it. Such analysis is critical for monitoring emerging frames in public discourse.

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Key takeaways included:

• Publications in the farthest right quintile of Media Cloud’s partisan media collections paid more attention to the conflict than the other partisan quintiles, often by a factor of two or more.
• “Israel-Hamas” was the most frequently appearing name for the conflict.
• “Genocide” was not among the 1,000 most frequently used words at first, but had increased to being present in 13% of stories within one month. The term was used almost equally by the right and left partisan quintiles, and much less frequently by the center.

Read more of Ryan’s insights, along with how he conducted the research, in the full write up here: https://www.mediacloud.org/research/how-the-news-talked-about-the-israel-hamas-conflict-in-its-first-month. We welcome you to contact Media Cloud if you would like support in using our tooling to run similar analyses. To inquire about commissioning research, please contact info@mediaecosystems.org.