Racism and manipulation in non-standard narratives : a CDA-based study of the Jerusalem post’s letters to the editor

Abstract EN

Much of the current research on letters to the editor within media literature centers on how well letters mirror the ideal of public involvement in discussions about current issues and the potential of this debate for a more deliberative sort of democracy (Young, 2011).

This being the case, this CDA-based study attempted to find out how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Palestinians were discursively depicted in the letters to the editor published between December 6, 2017, and April 9, 2018, in The Jerusalem Post newspaper—an English and French Israeli newspaper.

For this purpose, a systematic random sample of 25 letters to the editor were selected from the newspaper‘s website.

For answering the two questions developed for the purpose of this research paper, the following CDA analytical tools were utilized: presupposition, generalization, passivization, and structural oppositions.

Based on the findings obtained from the study at hand, the texts analyzed were found on one hand ideological, biased, and manipulative in terms of depicting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as an identity-based conflict; and contained covert racial prejudice against Palestinians on the other.