Media Coverage of Israel-Induced Palestinian Starvation Crisis: A Visual Semiotic Analysis

Author(s) : Taila Jawad , Musarrat Azher and Nida Zehra

Abstract:

The Palestine–Israel conflict is one of the longest and most difficult conflicts in modern history and the world has paid a considerable attention to it. Likewise, media has remained a constantly powerful tool in portraying the lengthy and complicated Palestine-Israel conflict. This study explores the way Pakistani and US leading newspapers namely: The Dawn and The Express Tribune and The Guardian visually portray the starvation crises of Palestinian people during July 2025. By employing the lens of visual semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006) supported with Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory (2005), this study particularly focuses on compositional markers (information value, salience, and framing) and the emotional strategies of affect, judgment, appreciation. The results reveal that Pakistani newspapers highlights shared struggle with weak framing and disordered imagery of crowds with joint victimization and focuses on the aid distribution and symbolic struggle of people whereas The Guardian often uses personal misery through strong framed images and close-ups of individual undernourished children. The findings demonstrate how multi-modal and appraisal resources are deliberately used to conjure concern, trigger belief, and strengthen ideological positions. The study highlights the way print media is playing its role in shaping the ideology and triggering the emotions of the readers on Israel-Palestine conflict through visual portrayal of victim hood, endurance, and humanitarian disasters.
Key words: Palestine–Israel conflict, Multimodal discourse analysis, Compositional markers, Appraisal theory, Starvation crisis