Digitalization of Conflicts: An Analysis of Social Media Coverage of Palestine-Israel Conflict by Traditional News Organizations

Abstract

The advent of social networking platforms has revolutionized the communication. These platforms are instantaneous and have global outreach. The conflicts have also digitalized with the introduction of new technologies. This inquiry finds out a serious gap in the existing literature related to the coverage of Palestine-Israel conflict. The availableliterature on media coverage of the Palestine-Israel conflict is mainly focused on traditional news organizations. There are separate studies on social media coverageof the conflict and citizen journalism. This study is unique as it contends that the traditional news organizations have adopted social media as a business model and using social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to cover Palestine-Israel conflict. The social media coverage poses serious implications for the conflict dynamics. These implications range from polarization to escalation in hostilities, humanitarian crisis, andinitiation of peace process. This study suggests that the future research on Palestine-Israel conflict related to media coverage and impact should focus the use of social media platforms by the traditional news organizations both for news gathering and dissemination.