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JOS07
News Narratives on the 'Other'
PP 142
The Hatred of the Others: The Cultural Contingency of News Narratives About Jewish Terrorism in Israel
C. Baden
1
, Y. David
1
1
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Communication and Journalism, Jerusalem, Israel
Disruptive news events challenge journalists not only in their role as reporters, but also as cultural narrators: Tasked to relay events to their audience com‑
munities, they need to position events relative to the beliefs and values of their cultural group and enable an interpretation that is meaningful and relevant
to the group. Covering the same events for different audiences taking different cultural perspectives, they may construct quite different accounts as news. By
tracing how the same events get narrated as news toward different cultural communities, we can therefore uncover some of the mechanisms of the cultural
sense-making role of journalism. In this paper, we investigate how different cultural communities within the fragmented Israeli society discussed the news
of two murderous terror attacks on 30 July 2015, both by Jewish perpetrators. In the first attack, an ultraorthodox Jew stabbed six participants of the Jeru‑
salem gay parade, murdering a teenage girl. Only hours later in the night, settler extremists torched two Palestinian homes in theWest Bank village Duma,
murdering a family with a baby in the flames. Both events disrupted the Israeli hegemonic cultural narrative of terrorism as a threat exerted by outsiders.
Together with Israeli president’s controversial condemnation that “my people have chosen the way of terror,” the events triggered a heated debate on
collective responsibility and identity: Settlers (as often) and Ultraorthodox communities (newly) found themselves widely identified with the perpetrators,
but also Israeli mainstream society struggled to define its relations to the atrocious events. Inversely, the (usual) victimized communities - Palestinians
and Gays - found themselves engulfed in a wide wave of solidarity and support, debating their alignment within Israeli society. Within each group, their
respective, rather separate media systems quickly developed a set of very different news narratives, formulating the significance of events from a culturally
immersed perspective. For our analysis, we rely on news debates led by opinion leading media catering to each of these different audiences.We depart from
the frames provided in the mainstream news debate, covering left- (Haaretz), center (Yedioth Ahronoth/Ynet) and rightwing perspectives (Israel Hayom).
Subsequently, we contrast against these the simultaneous debates among the ultraorthodox (Kikar Hashabat) and settler (Arutz 7) communities, among
Israeli Arabs (Kul Arab) and Israel's gay community (relying on blogs/facebook). Analyzing specifically which available interpretations resonate or fail to
resonate within each cultural context, we trace journalistic strategies for tying the news to the group’s beliefs and values. Specifically, we show how existing
news narratives are mobilized to historicize and contextualize the reported events, resulting in a systematically selective appraisal of available information.
Likewise, from the collision of community values and the appraisal of covered events, we show implications for the depression or amplification of common
values and demands (e.g., widespread homophobia). The paper concludes by sketching some contours of a theory of cultural resonance of the news, which
can inform further study of the domestication of journalistic narratives.
PP 143
Towards the Europeanization of News? An Analysis of the Diversity of the News Coverage of Immigration Within and Across Four
European Countries
A. Masini
1
1
University of Antwerp, Political Science, Antwerp, Belgium
In recent years, an increasing number of studies in the journalism field have investigated news content diversity. From a normative point of view, while high
levels of content diversity within a certain media system are key in promoting a democratic debate in society (see Baker, 2002; McQuail, 1992; Van Cuilen‑
burg & McQuail, 2003), a certain degree of concentration is also desirable, as it contributes to the creation of a common public agenda, thereby enhancing
public consensus (see Atwater, 1986; Noelle-Neumann, 1973).The latter point is particularly important when we look at the formation of a European public
sphere. If news media across European countries cover the same actors, follow the same agenda and express common viewpoints, this will enhance the de‑
velopment of a public sphere among European citizens. By means of a quantitative content analysis of immigration-related news in Belgium, Germany, Italy
and the UK (2013–2014), we study news content diversity within and across these four European countries. We focus on three dimensions of diversity: di‑
versity of actors, diversity of agenda and diversity of viewpoints. Each dimension of diversity is analysed at three levels: intra-newspaper level, country level
and across-countries level. By using Simpson’s standardized diversity index, we gauge and compare the levels of actor, issue and viewpoint diversity that are
provided by each newspaper when covering immigration. Using the same measure, we calculate the aggregate distribution of actors, issues and viewpoints
across the newspapers in each country, in order to have an indication of the inter-country differences in the levels of diversity. At the across-countries level,
we measure the extent to which newspapers in the countries of the sample share the same agenda, quote the same actors, and express common view‑
points about immigration. Consonance of the agenda is examined by looking at the overlap of news stories across countries, while consonance of actors is
measured as the proportion of international actors that are covered across countries, included national actors of one country of the sample that are covered
in another country. Finally, in order to test whether newspapers in different countries cover immigration from different angles, we focus on articles about
the Lampedusa tragedy in October 2013, a dramatic key event that was extensively covered in every country, and we measure the viewpoints and the tone
that are used to cover this event, pinpointing differences and similarities across countries. First results show that content diversity within countries is rela‑
tively high, although actor diversity scores lower, due to the massive presence of political actors in the news. However, moving to the across-countries level,
we find almost no traces of a process of‘Europeanization’of immigration news: newspapers in each country follow their own national agenda and give voice
almost exclusively to national actors. Nonetheless, newspapers in every country mostly use victimization viewpoints to cover the Lampedusa shipwreck.