Approach to the Representation of Palestinians and Israelis in the Spanish Online Newspapers

Spanish stereotypes towards Palestinians and Israelis are based, among other aspects, on the information that media broadcast of these two groups. A discourse analysis was performed in order to check how the representation of Palestinians and Israelis in the Spanish media is and what are the stereotypes that both representations come up to. The analyzed corpus consisted of all the news related to Palestinians and/or Israelis published in the digital edition of two of the most widely read newspapers in Spain: “El País” and “ABC”, from February 1^st, 2015 to July 31^st, 2015. On one hand, the critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used to study the linguistic representation of Palestinians and Israelis and, on the other hand, the analysis of contingency tables to detect anomalies in the representation of both groups in newspapers. The following variables were analyzed: month, newspaper, amount of content, topic, and discursive representation of the actors. The analysis showed that the representation of the Palestinians and the Israelis had the following characteristics: greater representation of Israelis and a more passive and refusal one of the Palestinians. Regarding to the differences in the newspapers, the number of news and topics about them is similar in both newspapers but there are many differences in the representation of both groups. These representations contribute to create a simplistic stereotype about Palestinians and Israelis that make misunderstand the real relationship between the both groups. At the end, what is discussed is the role representation of Palestinians and Israelis into their conflictive relationships, which are widely different in media representation and reality.