Media Coverage of Israeli Air Strikes and Aftermaths in Palestine: A Visual Semiotic Analysis

Abstract

This study compares the way Pakistani and American print media visually portray the aftermaths of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza during the months of June and July 2024, the time characterized by the intense bombardment by the Israeli air force. By employing Kress and Leeuwen’s (2006) framework of visual semiotics and Martin & White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory of Emotions, this study particularly focuses on the interactional markers exploited in the images to highlight their emotional appeal and impact on the audience in shaping their ideological stance. The data comprise 100 images from Dawn and The Guardian as representative print media of Pakistan and the United States of America as respective allies and anti-groups of the Israel-Palestine War. The images are categorized as portrayals of deaths/ mourning, destruction of infrastructure, displacement, starvation, and military actions in Gaza. The frequency of visual portrayal of these categories and the use of interactional (gaze, distance, modality, and camera angle) and emotional strategies (affect, judgement, and appreciation) by these newspapers reveal that Dawn newspaper covers more about displacement, deaths, and diseases, mainly showing humans as victims of violence and crises, triggering more emotional engagement of the audience. The Guardian highlights scale and damage through landscapes of ruin, stressing the materialistic damage mixed with humanitarian crises, and also highlighting some military actions. The study contributes to multimodal discourse analysis and highlights the hidden ideologies and political agendas in the visual portrayal of the Israel-Palestine war.