Visually framing the Gaza War of 2014: The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Twitter

Abstract

Recent years have seen the migration of Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) to social media in a practice referred to as digital diplomacy. Social media enable MFAs to craft frames so as to influence audiences’ perception of foreign affairs. Such framing is especially relevant during times of war as states seek to legitimize their policies. Notably, given that social media are inherently visual platforms, MFAs are now visual narrators. Few studies to date have extended the reach of framing theory to that of digital diplomacy during conflict. This study addresses this gap by analysing 795 tweets published by the Israeli MFA during the 2014 Gaza War. The authors’ analysis demonstrates that the Israeli MFA crafted 14 linguistic frames that were used to legitimize Israel’s policies. Notably, the MFA used images to support these frames and it is through images that the linguistic frames were made to resonate with Israeli strategic narratives. The authors pay attention to how images published by the Israeli MFA constitute three visual tropes and highlight how images function to augment frames (which focus on the present) to broader narratives that involve the past, present and future. Here, they explore how images invoke the past to illuminate the present and future, and create a shared identity in the context of the Gaza War.

Mediated Public Diplomacy Redefined: Foreign Stakeholder Engagement via Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media

“…While the majority of previous studies on mediated public diplomacy focus on frame building in traditional news, which constitutes earned media, the current study examines government frame building on the Twitter platform that represents a form of owned and shared media. The current study uses an inductive framing analysis (Manor & Crilley, 2018) to examine the competitive nature of frame building competition between two international superpowers during an instance of international conflict. The study analyzed all Crimea-related tweets published by the U.S. State Department and the Russian MFA between December 4, 2013, and March 30, 2014.…”

“…These activities suggest that diplomats still aim to interact with journalists and shape journalists' reporting. As such, Entman's (2004) cascading activation model has only been partially disrupted by digital technologies (Manor & Crilley, 2018).…”

“…Following Manor and Crilley's (2018) example, all Russian and U.S. tweets were segmented into weekly clusters given the assumption that both governments would continuously create and disseminate new frames given the need to comment on rapidly changing circumstances. Identifying the frames disseminated by both governments was achieved using an inductive approach to framing analysis in which frames arise from the research corpus itself (De Vresse, 2005).…”

“…To date, few studies have investigated governmental use of social media for real-time framing during times of crises. One notable example is Manor and Crilley’s (2018) analysis of the Israeli MFA’s framing of the 2014 Gaza War. Their study found that the MFA used social media to frame Hamas as an extension of Daesh—thus, morally delegitimizing Hamas.…”

Social Media Posts on Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Explosion: A Comparative Analysis of Crisis Framing and Sentiments in Three Nations

“…While most Twitter studies use large samples, several framing studies have analyzed a sample size similar to the current study's. Framing studies on Twitter use relatively small samples out of many posts because aspects and valence are represented better by manual coding than with big data (e.g., García-Perdomo, 2017;Manor & Crilley, 2018;Pond & Lewis, 2019).…”