Framing War, Silencing Peace: A Comparative Analysis of Indian Print and Digital Media Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Abstract

The study examines how selected Indian news media outlets framed the Oct 7, 2023 attacks and subsequent conflict between Israel and Palestine using a war and peace journalism lens. Galtung’s peace journalism model and Lee and Maslog’s (2005) indicators, which have been used as the analytical framework for the study. Through content analysis of news stories and photographs, the study identified dominant textual and visual frames, highlighting how peace and war frames compared across both print and digital media. The findings demonstrate the dominance of war journalism across textual and visual formats through the presence of indicators like ‘visual effects of war,’ ‘difference-oriented framing,’ and ‘two-party orientation.’ The analysis of print and digital news outlets gave a limited view as reflected in ‘peace-oriented’ and ‘cause and consequences’ indicators. This paper argues that, despite the theoretical potential of digital platforms to provide alternative narratives due to their endless space, interactivity, and ability to accommodate diverse perspectives, they largely mirror the war-centric framework of legacy media. Further, the paper contributes through a systematic comparative analysis of Indian legacy and digital media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, integrating the textual and visual framing indicators. By inspecting how war and peace frames operate in different media formats in global south contexts, the study situates itself in comparative conflict reporting research.