Israel in the Italian Media Before 7 October

Abstract

Images broadcast on television, radio analyses, and long articles printed in newspapers and, today, the content of digital platforms have become an overwhelming part of our daily lives. The history of the State of Israel, which has been debated since its foundation, is very complex and not exempt from the reverberations that the policies of the opposing blocs have had over time on the conflicts that followed. Given the attention of the European public to international events concerning Israel and the role of the media in conveying information about them, the aim of this research was to investigate how Israel is talked about in the current media environment in Italy, particularly the digital one, within the Facebook platform between the years 2019 and 2021. This is the period before the outbreak of the war on 7 October 2023; this is to try to understand whether Israel has always been narrated according to specific media frames in Italy, such as those we see emerging with the current conflict against Hamas, or is it possible to highlight different aspects in previous years within the same context of crisis, but a global health crisis: before and after COVID-19.

Keywords

• Italy
• media
• Israel
• framing
• journalism
• crisis