Dehumanization and Media Framing: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Palestinians in Western Media

Abstract

In circumstances characterized by colonial histories and power disparities, narratives play a critical role in establishing legitimacy, authority, and legality. This study examines the effects of Western media narratives about Palestine that consistently go beyond bias to produce dehumanization of Palestinians based on colonialist epistemology and through lexicon, framing, and language use. The study uses qualitative critical discourse analysis to examine how Palestinians, especially Palestinian youngsters, are portrayed as either innate threats, victims, or anonymous crowds, while Israeli actions are justified as self-defense. This paper places current media coverage in the context of Palestine’s more than 75 years of settler-colonial rule, using discourse analysis, media theories, and post-colonial theory. It is easy to detect the existence of a hierarchy of humanization in which Palestinian suffering is rendered invisible, accepted as normal, or ethically questionable by examining the vocabulary used by the Western media in relation to casualty reports, resistance, terrorism, and childhood. According to the study, these depictions are not coincidental; rather, they are a reflection of Western media’s larger ideological role as a colonial continuity agent. In order to stop demeaning Palestinian lives and struggle, the article concludes by examining new challenges to these narratives via social media and advocating for the dismantling of prevailing media discourse.

Keywords: Palestinian representation, Western media, dehumanization, colonial discourse, critical discourse analysis, narrative power.