Towards an efficacy model of Peace Journalism: Engaged audience responses to Sport media in Israeli divided society from 2023 to 2024

This study proposes and applies an analytical framework of peace journalism (PJ) versus war journalism (WJ) in Israeli sport media during the 2023–2024 judicial reforms crisis and Israel-Hamas war. The framework operationalizes discursive impact through audience engagement (comment volume) and dominant sentiment (positive/cohesive, neutral/negotiated, negative/divisive), yielding eight outcomes from cohesion-enhancing to division-amplifying. Analyzing 7875 reader comments beneath 207 Hebrew-language articles covering Beitar Jerusalem, emblematic of Jewish nationalism, and Bnei Sakhnin, a flagship Arab-Palestinian club, findings show WJ systematically generates higher engagement and more negative sentiment. PJ elicits varied responses: supportive pre-war or when individually focused, but frequently hostile and oppositionally decoded during wartime. The study underscores PJ’s contextual contingency on timing and symbolic targeting, advocating balanced framing to foster inclusive discourse without claiming direct causation.