Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt

“Where Is Jack Bauer When You Need Him?” The Uses of Television Drama in Mediated Political Discourse

This article explores the myriad uses of television drama in mediated political discourse using the case study of 24, Foxs counterterrorism drama. It examines references to 24 in articles and columns of nine major daily newspapers, magazines, and political Web sites from 2001 to 2007 and demonstrates how the show was invoked to support and express different political opinions, how political identity and media preferences were reconciled, and how different categories of use interacted with different political allegiances, as well as different assumptions about the ontological and epistemological status of the show. The study shows that while, at one level, fictional events and characters can function in political discourse in similar ways to nonfictional people and events, the “ontological openness” of politically relevant fictional texts serves as a resource for political discourse that is not readily available through nonfiction media texts. Finally, this article is an attempt to revisit and develop the concept of inter-textuality as a way to account for the complex interactions within the contemporary media environment, analyze media-related practices beyond direct viewing experiences, and bridge text-centered and audience-centered approaches to communication studies. Within this framework, journalists and political commentators are viewed as both mediators of other media texts for their audiences and as audiences in their own right who use these popular texts to negotiate and express their own identities and ideologies.

Beyond peace journalism

This article presents a general framework for deconstructing and classifying conflict news narratives. This framework, based on a nuanced and contextual approach to analyzing media representations of conflict actors and events, addresses some of the weaknesses of existing classification schemes, focusing in particular on the dualistic approach of the peace journalism model. Using quantitative content analysis, the proposed framework is then applied to the journalistic coverage in the Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war. The coverage is examined in three leading news outlets – Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Ynet – over a six-month period. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article identifies four characteristic types of narratives in the examined coverage. These include two journalistic narratives of violence: one inward-looking, ethnocentric narrative, and one outward-looking narrative focusing on outgroup actors and victims; and two political-diplomatic narratives: one interactional, and one outward-looking. In addition to highlighting different constellations of points of view and conflict measures in news stories, the identified clusters also challenge several assumptions underlying existing models, such as the postulated alignment between elite/official actors and violence framesThis article presents a general framework for deconstructing and classifying conflict news narratives. This framework, based on a nuanced and contextual approach to analyzing media representations of conflict actors and events, addresses some of the weaknesses of existing classification schemes, focusing in particular on the dualistic approach of the peace journalism model. Using quantitative content analysis, the proposed framework is then applied to the journalistic coverage in the Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Irans nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war. The coverage is examined in three leading news outlets – Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Ynet – over a six-month period. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article identifies four characteristic types of narratives in the examined coverage. These include two journalistic narratives of violence: one inward-looking, ethnocentric narrative, and one outward-looking narrative focusing on outgroup actors and victims; and two political-diplomatic narratives: one interactional, and one outward-looking. In addition to highlighting different constellations of points of view and conflict measures in news stories, the identified clusters also challenge several assumptions underlying existing models, such as the postulated alignment between elite/official actors and violence frames

Journalism’s Memory Work

Since Marcel Proust first noted that the remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were, the question of how memories form has produced multiple answers. So too with the positioning of the platforms by which memory takes shape. Though the recognition of collective memory clearly implicates some notion of institutional presence, which institutions are central has never been clear. And though one of the most productive take-away points of collective memory studies is that institutions with no direct connection to memory in their remit are engaging in memory work all the time, journalism is nowhere in these discussions.

Reclassifying conflict narratives in the Israeli news media

This article presents a general framework for deconstructing and classifying conflict news narratives. This framework, based on a nuanced and contextual approach to analyzing media representations of conflict actors and events, addresses some of the weaknesses of existing classification schemes, focusing in particular on the dualistic approach of the peace journalism model. Using quantitative content analysis, the proposed framework is then applied to the journalistic coverage in the Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war. The coverage is examined in three leading news outlets – Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Ynet – over a six-month period. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article identifies four characteristic types of narratives in the examined coverage. These include two journalistic narratives of violence: one inward-looking, ethnocentric narrative, and one outward-looking narrative focusing on outgroup actors and victims; and two political-diplomatic narratives: one interactional, and one outward-looking. In addition to highlighting different constellations of points of view and conflict measures in news stories, the identified clusters also challenge several assumptions underlying existing models, such as the postulated alignment between elite/official actors and violence framesThis article presents a general framework for deconstructing and classifying conflict news narratives. This framework, based on a nuanced and contextual approach to analyzing media representations of conflict actors and events, addresses some of the weaknesses of existing classification schemes, focusing in particular on the dualistic approach of the peace journalism model. Using quantitative content analysis, the proposed framework is then applied to the journalistic coverage in the Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Irans nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war. The coverage is examined in three leading news outlets – Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Ynet – over a six-month period. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article identifies four characteristic types of narratives in the examined coverage. These include two journalistic narratives of violence: one inward-looking, ethnocentric narrative, and one outward-looking narrative focusing on outgroup actors and victims; and two political-diplomatic narratives: one interactional, and one outward-looking. In addition to highlighting different constellations of points of view and conflict measures in news stories, the identified clusters also challenge several assumptions underlying existing models, such as the postulated alignment between elite/official actors and violence frames

Print Is Future, Online Is Past: Cross-Media Analysis of Temporal Orientations in the News

This article examines the representation of past, present, and future in print and online news, while establishing a link between the temporal orientation of news stories and the constraints of the news cycle. Based on a content analysis of top news stories in the Israeli media, the study shows that a future temporal orientation is more prevalent in print media, which assume the role of projecting upcoming events, analyzing potential outcomes, and shaping collective expectations. In contrast, online news tends to assume the more commonly recognized journalistic role of informing the public on recent-past events. The discussion introduces the notion of “temporal affordances,” referring to the temporal constraints and possibilities of media technologies, which in turn can lead to distinctive content characteristics. These affordances, which connect symbolic and material dimensions, contribute to the shaping and reshaping of the functions served by divergent communication outlets in changing media landscapes.

`We will get through this together': journalism, trauma and the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip

Using the case study if the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, this article explores the role of news images in moving collectives through contested and potentially traumatic events. It examines the coverage of the disengagement process in the three major Israeli daily newspapers, and argues that the Israeli press took upon itself the role of healing the potential collective trauma as the events themselves were unfolding

Understanding Journalism Through a Nuanced Deconstruction of Temporal Layers in News Narratives

This article proposes a nuanced analysis of the temporal spectrum in news narratives, beyond the three conventional temporal orientations (past-present-future), thus affording a more complex understanding of journalism and its varied storytelling patterns. Combining qualitative and quantitative content analysis of print and online news items in the United States and Israel, this framework is used to evaluate and compare different journalistic cultures and media technologies in relation to public time. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article offers a definition for “news” which associates between 5 clusters of temporal layers and different journalistic roles: updating (present and immediate past/future), reporting (recent past), contextualization and ritualistic functions (midrange to distant past), analysis (near future), and projection (far/conjectured future).

Producing Protest News An Inquiry into Journalists’ Narratives

This article examines journalists’ narratives of the constellations of factors that shaped the coverage of the 2011–2012 social protest in Israel, and how journalists used the protest to negotiate their roles, practices, and values against the backdrop of their own professional and economic struggles. Based on in-depth interviews with reporters and editors who were involved in the coverage of the protest movement, this article analyzes journalists’ interpretations and negotiations of the various influences on their work during the two major waves of the protest. An analysis of patterns of collision and concurrence between individual, organizational, and professional domains of influence in journalists’ narratives shows that while the norm of objectivity remains a key site of tension in relation to other factors, considerations of newsworthiness are constructed as complementing and justifying all other types of influence. An examination of diachronic patterns suggests that journalists’ individual conditions and positions play a greater role in journalists’ narratives in the first stage of the protest, giving way to professional values and organizational economic considerations in later stages. Although these findings further complicate the protest paradigm, they also show a dominant pattern of “paradigm repair” at the level of both journalists’ professional ideology and protest coverage.

Journalism as an Agent of Prospective Memory

In everyday language, we use the terms ‘remember’ and ‘forget’ to express two very different temporal meanings (Neisser, 1982) — we remember, or forget, what happened in the past, and we remember, or forget, what we need to do in the future, or what we promised ourselves or others we would do: pick up the dry cleaning, get a gift for mother’s day, finish a journal review, follow through on campaign promises, bring our kids home from school; or at the national level, and the example that I will use in this essay — bring our hostages home from captivity.

The management of visibility: media coverage of kidnapping and captivity cases around the world

This article examines the journalistic practices associated with the management of visibility of kidnapping and captivity stories, based on a comparative study of the media coverage of seven cases of Colombian, French, Israeli, and US citizens who were taken captive in the first decade of the 21st century. Differences in the general level of visibility given to these stories are identified and explained, followed by an analysis of three patterns of high visibility management across time, termed ‘sustained visibility’, ‘delayed visibility’ and ‘cyclical visibility’. Emerging from the analysis is the complex interplay between hyper-visibility and invisibility in journalistic practices, as well as the notion of “elastic newsworthiness”, according to which news criteria are not only shaping patterns of visibility but are also being shaped by them.