Mediating Suffering in the Gaza War

Building on Devictor and Boëx analysis of a new way of mediating images in the Middle East, and on Bourdon's understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an "impossible narrative", this article aims at questioning the way the Gaza war and its sufferings has been portrayed in the new media, particularly when it comes to the political communication of both Israel and the Hamas, in an context of very tense and deeply rooted transnational mobilizations.

Rather than just focusing on news agencies and TV channels, I aim to question the use of social medias and video platforms, as well and the transformation of images in a context marked by news steps in the use of violence. This study aims to question what relationship these new images have with more ancient and established narratives, as seen by Amossy or Khalili, and the part they play through their framing, their narrative choices, and inner violence when it comes to the portrayal of the enemy of the mobilization of support. Together, these images, in a situation that has been for long deeply marked by the presence of extreme violence, including in the media ( through Al-Jazeera, particularly), and for propaganda uses, are a way to question the limits of what can be shown, and how, given that some images are deemed to be too unbearable to be seen.

Through this study, I intend to develop the issue of circulating narratives when it comes to portraying and mobilizing an audience in the face of humanitarian crisis, as well as question the renewal of their narratives in the case of a particularly symbolic conflict, with its own narrative history, virality, and the processes of gazing at suffering.