The Israel/Palestine conflict is among the most contentious foreign policy issues in Norwegian public discourse, and opinions on media coverage are equally divided. Research suggests that national opinion on the conflict may have real consequences for minority groups, e.g. negative opinion on Israel has been found to correlate with increased antisemitic harassment and violence. Previous Norwegian studies have pointed to bias in coverage in both directions, but no systematic and comprehensive analysis of reporting after 7 October 2023 exists.
The project has two aims: to map how news coverage frames the conflict's main actors and key events, and to contribute to an informed public conversation about journalistic practice and diversity of perspectives in the coverage of polarising topics.
The project analyses approximately 5,000 news articles from NRK, VG, Aftenposten, Klassekampen, and Vårt Land using a combination of manual content analysis and AI-assisted coding. The coding scheme covers three main dimensions: contextualisation (the overarching frames within which actors and events are presented), topic selection (which aspects of the conflict receive attention), and source use and weighting (which sources are drawn upon, and how credibility is signaled linguistically). Findings will be published as an ISF report and a public-facing opinion piece.
