Representation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict of 2023 in the Russian and American media

This master's thesis is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the representation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict of 2023 in the Russian and American mass media. The main attention is paid to the analysis of keywords and their combinations, which are used in news headlines and texts of posts on Reddit and Pikabu forums. The study is based on theoretical concepts such as agenda setting theory and framing theory. The paper examines the historical roots and stages of development of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well as the role of language and images in shaping public perceptions of the conflict. Considerable attention is paid to the influence of the media on public opinion and the interaction between the media and online forums. Methodologically, the study relies on network analysis and random graph modeling (ERGM) to identify and interpret keyword networks. Tokenization, lemmatization and sentiment analysis methods were used in the analysis process, which provided detailed data on lexical features of conflict representation. The results of the study show that Russian and American media differ in their approaches to covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Russian media more often emphasize humanitarian aspects and support for Palestine, while American media are more inclined to present the conflict through the prism of military actions and political aspects. Both sides actively use emotionally charged terms and images, which has a significant impact on the audience's perception of the conflict. The findings may be useful for further research on the media's information impact on public opinion and for developing recommendations on how to improve information coverage of international conflicts.