International media coverage of the 2023 Gaza War: A hybrid methodological approach to cross-cultural visual analysis

Death portrayals can not only influence memories, identify enemies, and prompt moralistic judgments, but can also fuel conflict. Whereas non-Western media are more likely to disseminate death photographs, Western outlets tend to utilize impending death photographs as alternatives to graphic imagery of corpses. Using a hybrid methodological approach, this study cross-culturally compares death and impending death depictions in seven global news outlets’ reporting on the 2023 Israel–Gaza War. More specifically, it examines all such photographs and captions in almost 2,000 articles by the US’s Voice of America, UK’s BBC, France’s France 24, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, Qatar’s Al Jazeera English, Turkey’s TRT, and China’s CGTN on the war. The findings reveal a visual competition, with non-Western media putting the horrific and graphic scenes of death resulting from Israeli military actions in Gaza on full display, while Western media shied away from this, opting instead to amplify Israel’s narrative of the fight against Hamas.