The Battle of Narratives in the Middle East; Examining the role of media in 12-day Iran-Israel War

Background and Objective: In recent 12-day Iran-Israel war, along with military engagement of the belligerents, media played a significant role as well. During the war, various media delivered different and sometimes contradicting narratives and constructed an extensive discursive dispute. These media approaches laid this question ahead of analysists that how media and with the help of what linguistic and discursive instruments represented this conflict and why such a stance was taken by media? Method: The current research with qualitative approach and on the basis of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Fairclough and Van Dijk will analyze the representation ways of this conflict in Iranian, Israeli and selected international media outlets. In the light of theoretical framework of research and relying on Fairclough and Van Dijk cognitive models, predominant discourses, Language techniques and media narrative construction in news coverage of this war will be examined in 6 selected news or stories. Findings/ Result: Findings of the research indicate that every medium with exploiting ideological language, contrastive framing, highlighting and magnifying, dualization of self and others and selective elimination of information, played a significant role in reproducing the narratives aligned with national and regional interests of the ward sides. Conclusion: In this war, media not only as mere informing instruments played a role but also as active and effective actors operated to legitimize the actions of two sides of the war and to lead world public opinions.