A CORPUS-BASED MULTIMODAL STUDY OF TRT WORLD’S INSTAGRAM POSTS ON THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT

As digital news platforms become central to news dissemination, Instagram, a visually driven platform, has emerged as a top site for shaping public perceptions. The transition of traditional news to online platforms affects the production of news discourse. Despite its importance in the modern news era, few studies have investigated the interplay between the textual and visual components of Instagram, particularly how these two modalities contribute to shaping public perception. The interplay is crucial when a media agency is covering the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hence, this study aims to explore how and what TRT World chooses to communicate to the public regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict on its Instagram. Using the corpus software AntConc, this study analysed 213 Instagram images with overlay text captions published between October 2023 and October 2024. Findings from transitivity analysis showed that TRT World often applied a material process when writing the overlay-text captions, emphasising Israel as the responsible entity for the mass destruction. However, TRT World paired these captions with images that framed the humanitarian crisis, with most pictures centred on Palestinians' suffering. These findings contribute to media discourse research by demonstrating how non-Western media agencies strategically framed the conflict to challenge Western narratives.