A Middle Eastern style of mediatization of politics and conflicts: Were regional-domestic intersections considered?

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which mediatization, as a western-centric metatheory central to an understanding of how the media logic comes to influence the political logic, applies to the study of non-western case studies. Considering the case of the 2006 Palestinian internal conflict (the split), the article examines the role of pan-Arab transnational satellite TV (PTSTV) journalism in covering the conflict’s trajectories. Building on primary qualitative data, gathered via semi-structured interviews with prominent stakeholders/insiders in the two parties and relevant sectors of news media and politics, the article explores the interplay between regional and Palestinian politics, evident in PTSTV’s coverage, and shows how available western-centred theoretical paradigms that draw on mediatization – in examining mediatized conflicts – fell short in examining such interplay for contextual, structural and sociocultural challenges in PTSTV’s operating milieu. Alternatively, the study inductively explored this interplay, overcoming the aforesaid contextual challenges, and provided evidence on how, with the lack of democratic principles in PTSTV’s operational milieu, structural/internal characteristics in these channels interacted with peripheral/external dimensions in their milieu and adversely affected their cultural dimension (coverage). PTSTV produced escalatory journalism that disseminated inflammatory content within a politically fractured culture, exacerbating the conflict and expanding the gap between the two rivals. This inductive approach in tracing the interplay – and its concurrent bargaining process – revealed five pivotal characteristics in PTSTV performance that are unique to those postulated in mediatization. They stand in this article as an authentic theoretical contribution that facilitated the handling of analytical challenges in the case study.