- Roskilde University Denmark
The subject of this research project is to perform a comparative analysis of a section of the Danish media coverage in three different newspapers of the Israel/Palestine conflict, aiming to highlight an evolution or change, in the discourses used in these papers. The comparative analysis is based upon empirical material of eighteen newspaper editorials, discussing three chosen historical events, during the Israel/Palestine conflict. The historical events which the articles will represent, are the six-day war, the first intifada, and the second intifada. The reasoning behind the selection of these historical events is a necessity, for a broad perspective of the conflict, to make discursive changes more apparent. Additionally the chosen events are all substantial and well documented, and it is through these events that the change of discourse will be presented. To answer the research question thoroughly, a combination of the two distinctive theories relating the study of discourse will be used. The theories are Norman Fairclough’s ‘Critical discourse analysis’ and the ‘Discourse theory’ of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Both offer an extensive look into the dynamic and complex structures of discourses, and will together provide a set of nuanced methods to complete the analysis. The overall scientific field in which these theories exist, is within the area of social constructivism which also relates to the theory of power by Michael Foucault. The analysis of the various discursive structures of the historical period in question, will focus on describing the more specific types of discourse of the different media outlets, separately and in unison, by shifting incorporations of the theories that have been presented. The precise method for this analytical procedure will be to locate and underline how certain phrases and specific usages of language are in a dynamic relationship with what they aim to represent, and how discourses in general seem to undergo striking, even insidious transformations through their use. Finally, the analysis of this paper attempts to answer the more difficult question, relating the causes behind these discursive transformations, and attributes them to the acknowledgement of discourses in general, as fundamentally transformative properties, where the use of language by its conception, is inevitably changing and dynamic in nature.