Conflict Reporting in the Digital Age

Sophie Hatte (), Etienne Madinier and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya ()
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Sophie Hatte: CERGIC - Center for Economic Research on Governance, Inequality and Conflict - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

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Abstract: The digital age has fundamentally reshaped international traditional news reporting of foreign conflicts. Online posts by first-hand witnesses influence the volume, slant, content, informativeness, and tone of international media conflict coverage. Exploiting exogenous variation from local internet outages in the conflict zone, we show that U.S. TV networks air more stories about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when ordinary users caught in the conflict have internet access. These stories differ in both slant and focus: in the absence of internet disruptions, news coverage is more sympathetic toward the conflict side experiencing higher casualties, places greater emphasis on civilian suffering, and devotes less attention to foreign policy and electoral considerations. This coverage is also more emotional, includes more local detail, references social media platforms more frequently, and is more homogeneous across ideologically diverse networks. Importantly, these conflict stories generate greater viewer engagement.

Keywords: Twitter; Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; Conflicts; Traditionnal media; Social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07-24
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05184425

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3845739

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