Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, and the Department of Language, Culture and Communication at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, are organising an academic conference titled “International Media and the War on Gaza: Modalities of Discourse and the Clash of Narratives” on 29 November to 01 December 2025 in Doha. The conference aims to explore the functional semantic mechanisms that reveal the implicit meanings in international media coverage of the war on Gaza. It will examine the markers that demonstrate the perspective of the discourse producers regarding the Palestinian and Israeli identities, as well as their vision and stance toward the war’s developments and its turn toward genocide.
Moreover, the conference also seeks to examine the patterns and characteristics of news models in war coverage, monitor forms of propaganda and falsification of facts aimed at manipulating international public opinion, and analyse the role of Israeli media, international media institutions and networks in fuelling genocide.
This conference takes place within the context of symbolic conflict and the construction of major popular and cultural narratives to win the battle of storytelling before the battle on the ground, aiming to dominate public discourse and then shape international public opinion. Narratives produced by Israeli media and a large part of Western media have been coloured by the dimensions of the conflict and influenced by the positions of media institutions, networks and their owners regarding the actors involved in the war. These positions are usually produced via subtle ways of transediting and journaling where distant realities are produced to suite different audiences. A report produced, i.e. transedited or journaled in English may differ from a report produced in Arabic while both portray the same reality or event. Consequently, much of Western media – and even some Arab media, especially in the early months of the war – promoted the claims of the Israeli narrative and false news such as “children being burned” and “Israeli women being raped” during 7 October 2023 operation on Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope, justifying “Israel’s right to self-defence” and legitimising the war against what it calls “Hamas’s terrorism”.
In this context, the propaganda dimension and disinformation in media discourse stand out, competing with the Palestinian narrative, pointing to the “power of narrative” in constructing meaning, shaping reality and guiding public opinion according to the strength of the medium and its political and ideological orientations. Thus, different news models have emerged in the coverage of the war on Gaza, shaped by specific frameworks and parameters in their representations of both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as in their understanding of the conflict, its roots and historical contexts. Social media platforms have been part of a polarised international media landscape, with major tech companies enabling the militarisation of these digital spaces and enforcing content moderation policies that digitally discriminate against Palestinian content and attempt to erase its digital traces. However, these policies have had limited impact on the effectiveness of journalists and citizen journalists in documenting the war and exposing the violations committed by the Israeli army. This, in turn, contributed to a surge in traditional media coverage and a shift in international public opinion toward the war, reigniting the question of the media’s relevance and role in fostering peace.
These issues and others will be the focus of discussion and research sessions at the conference, held in Minaretein lecture hall at Education City in Doha.
Conference Themes:
- Modality of Discourse and the Clash of Narratives
- The process of news framing of the war on Gaza in Western media discourse
- Narrative construction and the battle of storytelling during the war on Gaza: Methods and objectives
- Decolonising communication and media studies
- Transediting and journaling and their role in reinforcing or obscuring narratives
- The lexical and semantic structure of discourse in foreign Arabic-language news sites covering the war
- News Models in the Coverage of the War on Gaza
- Influencing factors in war coverage in international journalism and media networks (Case study: Western media)
- Constructing concepts and meaning in the grand narratives of the media (Comparative study of international media)
- The impact of the political environment on media approaches to the war on Gaza (Case study: Israeli media)
- Patterns of news models in covering the genocide in Gaza (Comparative study of international media)
- Propaganda Discourse and Its Impact on Global Public Opinion
- Patterns of propaganda in Israeli and Western media during the war on Gaza
- The influence of propaganda discourse on shaping international public opinion
- Fake news and media misinformation in the war on Gaza
- The media discourse of the Palestinian resistance and its impact on international public opinion
- Social Networks and Content Production Strategies During the War
- The role of social networks in documenting the trajectory of the war on Gaza
- Social networks and the impact of spatial (grand) narratives on public opinion
- Methods of militarising social media platforms during the war
- Social media policies and the digital erasure of Palestinian content
- The Role of Media in Genocide: Strategies of Discourse and Its Theses
- The structure of hate speech in Israeli and international media
- Genocidal media discourse in the Gaza war: Operational mechanisms and propositions
- The role of media in institutionalising genocide in public discourse and journalistic practice
- Comparison of genocidal media in contemporary cases (Rwanda, Cambodia) with genocidal media in the Gaza war
- The methods of militarising social media networks and their role in the digital genocide of Palestinian content
- The Social Responsibility of Media during Wars and Crises
- Professional ethics in war and conflict coverage
- The role of media in documenting war crimes and its influence on the enforcement of international law
- The role of media in protecting human rights, realising justice and building peace
- Media and conflict resolution: Methodological and theoretical approaches
Submission Guidelines:
- Researchers must submit a research proposal within the conference topics, around 500 words, including the research topic, problem statement, objectives, significance, methodology and structure.
- The research must be original, prepared specifically for the conference, not AI-generated, not excerpted from theses, not previously published partially or fully in any print or electronic media, nor presented at any other conferences or submitted to journals.
- The scientific committee will notify authors of accepted proposals to proceed with full paper preparation. Conference participation is only for authors of papers approved by the peer review committee.
- Citations must be Chicago style.
- Click here for a list of suggested references.
- Conference languages: Arabic and English
Important Dates:
- Deadline for receiving abstracts and research proposals (approximately 500 words, accompanied by the researcher's CV): 1 July 2025
- Notification of accepted proposals: 10 July 2025
- Deadline for submitting preliminary final papers (6000 to 8000 words including references and footnotes): 1 October 2025.
- Final acceptance notification: 20 October 2025
- Conference dates: 29 November-1 December 2025
* Please send proposals and all related correspondence, including the researcher’s CV, to mediaconference@aljazeera.net