How the International Public View Palestinians:
Does the Visual Frame Matter?
Ruba Mimi 10583750
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s Program Communication Science: Political Communication Supervisor: Dr. Linda Bos
“Photography is a system of visual editing. At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one’s cone of vision. Like chess, or writing, it is a matter of choosing from
among given possibilities, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite”
Abstract
Due to the rising use of visuals in media, visual framing studies are gaining a greater
importance nowadays. In response to the calls for more empirical research on visual frames, this study was conducted with a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and specifically photographs of Palestinians. This experimental study aims to investigate the effect of two visual frames on the emotions and opinions of the international public. Using two
photographs from Gaza war 2014, the Human-interest frame and the Militant frame were examined. A total of 216 respondents from 36 different countries participated in the
experiment. The Human-interest frame resulted in stronger influence on individual’s positive emotions toward Palestinians, while the Militant frame resulted in negative opinions about the Palestinian in the photograph. However, no effect was found on opinions about
Palestinians in general.
"Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world," AP photojournalist Eddie Adams said. Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for his best- known photograph “General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon” (see appendix A) taken during his coverage of the Vietnam War. The photograph shows the South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a prisoner with a single shot to the head. This photo was one of the most influential photos taken during the Vietnam War, Adams commented on the
photograph:“The general killed the Vietcong; I killed the general with my camera” (Rare Historical Photos, 2014, para. 4). The anti-war movement adopted the photo as a symbol of war’s brutality, and it was to change the public’s perception of the war by showing the ruthless picture of the South Vietnamese (Reed, 2004). However, what this photograph does not tell is the whole truth. That prisoner in the picture had just murdered a South Vietnamese colonel, his wife and their six children, which is what led Gen Loan to carry out the execution (Pozgar, MBA, & Pozgar, 2012). Adams said: “Photographs are half truths. You have to put yourself in the situation, it is a war” (Pozgar et al., 2012, p.52). In this photo the general is framed violently, but what if he was framed differently? Would it have changed what the public thought about the war?
According to Abraham and Appiah (2006), visuals are effective in shaping ideological messages, and can change the way people think about the events. Despite the importance of visuals in the field of political communication, empirical evidence about their effect remains scarce (Fahmy & Eakin, 2014). They are the least studied in comparison with the verbal focus (Schill, 2012). A study found that 5 out of 600 studies in political
communication focus on visuals (Johnston, 1990).
There are historical events that have received attention in framing studies; one of these events is the American war on Iraq (e.g., Fahmy & Kim, 2008; Schwalbe, 2006; Schwalbe, Silcock, & Keith, 2008). But surprisingly one of the most important ongoing
events of the 20th century that hasn’t received enough attention is the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict (Fahmy & Eakin, 2014). The only available studies that have tackled the conflict were content analysis studies, which focused on the representation of Palestinians and Israelis in foreign newspapers (Deprez & Raeymaeckers, 2010; Fahmy & Eakin, 2014; Ross, 2003).
Despite the importance of this conflict to people from different countries who feel connected to it more than any other dramatic events in the world (Smith, 2009), almost none of the empirical studies have investigated the effects of using different frames on
international’s emotions judgments, or opinions. Quite recently Brantner, Lobinger, & Wetzstein (2011) conducted an experimental study related to this topic that will be reviewed in the next section, in which they focus on a comparative approach between perceiving Palestinians and Israelis in different events. However, going back to the question attached to the Vietnam example above, this study has another dimension and aims to investigating the effect of presenting the same side of the conflict, focusing on Gaza war in 2014, using two photographs with two opposite frames, in order to answer the following research question:
Which of the two visual frames (Human-interest and Militant) is stronger in influencing the opinions and emotions toward Palestinians internationally?
Theoretical framework
This part of the paper will be divided into four different sections; it will start with an overview of the foreign news effect, followed by the theory of framing where I will go in depth into the concept of visual framing. After that, I will examine visual framing effects on public opinion in times of conflict. Finally, I will define the two frames that are going to be used in the experimental study.
Foreign News
(Besova & Cooley, 2009). However, for national news other channels can possibly be used such as interpersonal communication (Robinson & Levy, 1986). This is much less the case with foreign news, where the only way for people to know about conflicts that happen overseas is through the media (Wu, 2003). McNelly and Izcaray (1986) found a strong relationship between the way the country is exposed to foreign news and the public opinion formed about it. This finding is not surprising and has been supported by many theorists and scholars (e.g., Semetko, Brzinski, Weaver, & Willnat, 1992; Wanta, Golan, & Lee, 2004). In other words, what gives people an opinion about a place they do not live in is the “mental images” they create out from the media (Lippmann, 1922). This leads us to the obtrusiveness of the issue (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006), which can give an explanation of how foreign news can be influential. When the topic in the news is related to a distant event from the public and does not directly affect them, it is called an unobtrusive issue (Yagade & Dozier, 1990). Research suggests that media coverage of such issues, can have greater influence on public opinion than the coverage of obtrusive issues, which people have direct personal experience with (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006; Yagade & Dozier, 1990).
One of the main reasons why foreign news is important nowadays is that the world is becoming more globalized (Besova & Cooley, 2009). Consequently, the average citizen is becoming more concerned about what happens in foreign countries. Many studies (e.g., McNelly & Izcaray, 1986; Wanta et al., 2004; Wu, 2003) have researched the coverage of foreign news and their impact on the audience. The findings of these studies demonstrate different effects on people’s attitudes towards other countries (Semetko et al., 1992), agenda setting effects (Wanta et al., 2004), effects on foreign policy (Strobel, 1997), and educational effects: educating the public about the world (Wanta et al., 2004; Wu, 2003).
Moreover, foreign audiences have a special interest in international news that relate to wars and conflicts, specifically when the event deals with matters of life and death in extreme
conflicts (Griffin, 2010). They capture the public’s attention due to the life-threatening element (Messaris & Abraham, 2001) and the high level of drama involved in it (Schill, 2012). This emotional identification attached to the events is essential in developing the public’s point of view towards those events (Rodriguez & Dimitrova, 2011). It makes them think about the conflict and the sides fighting in it, allowing them to make a decision on whom to sympathize with (Sheafer & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2010). As a result, through foreign news, audiences construct a reality of their own about the events (Lippmann, 1922). They translate the media messages they perceive, which eventually forms the public opinion (Besova & Cooley, 2009; Lippmann, 1922).
Furthermore, media make the choice of what to inform the audiences about, which is known as first level agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). However, Kiousis &
McComb (2004) argue that media do not reflect reality as is. Instead they shape the agenda and tell the audience how to think about it. This is what they called attribute agenda or second-level agenda setting, which some scholars argue has similarities with framing, in the sense that both are concerned with how issues or events are depicted in media (Weaver, 2007).
Framing and “Misframing” of News Photographs
The importance of foreign news in affecting the way audiences take sides in conflicts makes the close investigation of its effects vital. To do so, I am using the framing theory as the foundation of this study. It will help us to understand how visuals in foreign news affect the way the international audience perceive Palestinians.
Framing is about the construction and presentation of a fact from a particular aspect to promote a certain interpretation (Reese, 2001; Schwalbe, 2006). There are different
help journalists organize the information they have about certain events effectively for audiences. However, others see it as a process that includes making a side of the event more salient than the other (Scheufele, 1999). In this paper, I will use a more comprehensive definition of framing suggested by Entman (2003): “Framing is selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues, and making connections among them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution” (p. 417). Entman (1993) also argues that frames call the audience’s attention to a certain aspect of reality, which leads the audiences to have different reactions.
However, what the news reflects does not necessarily represent what the journalist intended to deliver. This happens when the media message is “misframed”. Misframing is a new concept that was introduced for the first time in communication literature in 2004 by the philosopher Nancer Fraser (Ginsburg, 2009). It is about the message being framed in a way that diverges from the creator’s intentions. According to Fraser (2004), this happens as a consequence of globalization, and other scientists explain this misinterpretation with the notion of cultural relativism: “that human perception is culturally influenced” (Segall, Campbell, & Herskovits, 1966, p. 1). For this reason, it is important to know what the photographer’s perception is about the photograph and its effects on a foreign audience. Visual Framing
News organizations use different tools to construct issues or events and present it to their audiences (Rodriguez & Dimitrova, 2011), through which they shape people’s reasoning about different issues (Nelson, Clawson, & Oxley, 1997).
The framing of a photograph can be more effective than verbal framing (Coleman, 2006; Entman, 1993; Scheufele, 1999). The accessibility theory, according to Gibson & Zillmann (2000), can best explain the effects of photos; when a decision needs to be made, the mind retrieves photos out of the memory more quickly than text (Entman, 1993; Nelson
et al., 1997; Rodriguez & Dimitrova, 2011). This happens because audiences process visuals faster than they do texts (Schill, 2012).
There are several explanations why visuals are more influential than any other format of news; presenting the information in photographs makes the events more realistic and touching (Graber, 1988). In addition to that, photographs are seen as credible evidences of the events (Pfau et al., 2006) especially because audiences believe in what they see more than in what they hear or read (Schweiger & Adami, 1999). They rely on the photograph’s content in forming short-term and long-term impressions (Zillmann, Gibson, & Sargent, 1999). Another reason why photographs are more influential is their closeness to reality and their power in creating strong emotional and instant cues (Rodriguez & Dimitrova, 2011). Fahmy & Wanta (2007) concluded in their study that media do not only report the events to their audiences, instead they report visuals that become an important part of the event itself. For these reasons, photographs should be used carefully to avoid the gross misperceptions of the issues it represents (Zillmann et al., 1999), especially since the readers highly depend on photographs to form impressions about what happens around them (Zillmann, Knobloch, & Yu, 2001).
For the aforementioned reasons, this study will investigate the effects of photographs solely, especially that there is an empirical evidence that it is difficult for people to remember the verbal messages that are accompanied with the photos (Drew & Grimes, 1987).
Visual Framing in Times of Conflict: A Literature Review
Framing photographs during times of war can be even more influential. Shah, Watts, Domke & Fan (2002) argue that by selecting aspects of war and ignoring others, the media constrains the reader’s interpretation. Fahmy & Wanta (2007, p. 20) added: “At times of war, visuals become an effective tool for creating persuasion and gaining public support for government,
national security, and military actions.”
Many visual framing studies (e.g., Dimitrova & Strömbäck, 2005; Fahmy & Kim, 2008; Pfau et al., 2006; Schwalbe et al., 2008) took a content analysis approach, particularly those that studied the framing of American wars like the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and
Afghanistan. The findings of these studies overlap in the sense that the conflict frame (which is sometimes called the military frame) and the Human-interest frame were the most
dominant in the newspapers.
The literature of framing studies that were relevant to the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is scarce. Fahmy & Eakin (2014) mentioned in their study that there is a deficiency in
examining media frames within this conflict. Instead, some studies take the content analysis comparative approach to investigate the unbalanced representation of both sides: the Israeli and the Palestinian, in international newspapers (e.g., Deprez & Raeymaeckers, 2010). Quite recently, Brantner et al.,(2011) conducted a comparative study in which they used an
experiment to test the effects of two Palestinian and Israeli photographs on reader’s emotional response, evaluation of communicative quality, journalistic credibility and objectivity. The study used two frames; the Human-interest and the political frame, and concluded that visual Human-interest framing elicited stronger emotional responses, higher values concerning the communicative quality, and had an impact on the perceived actor representation. However, this study did not look at the directional effects of the frames, nor at what kind of feelings the Human-interest frame elects for instance. Instead, the comparison focused on two visuals vs. text with no visuals. Additionally Brantner et al. (2011) did not look at the effects of the frames on the respondents opinions, but rather on the journalistic values of the stimuli.
2011; Carpenter, 2007; Dimitrova & Strömbäck, 2005; Schwalbe et al., 2008), and taking into consideration that foreign news is often visually framed through photographs showing disaster and violence (Greenwood & Jenkins, 2013), this study will focus on two war frames: Human-interest frame and Militant frame. These two frames were chosen because they are both the most prominent in framing studies on wars (Carpenter, 2007; Schwalbe et al., 2008). This study will investigate the effects of the two frames in news photographs from Gaza war between Palestinians in Gaza and Israel. The war took place between the 7th of July and 26th of August 2014, resulting in the death of over 2,200 Palestinians and 72 Israelis.
Frames Definitions: Human-interest vs. Militant Frame
There are various definitions to the frames that were chosen. The Human-interest frame usually refers to personalizing, dramatizing or emotionalizing the news (Semetko &
Valkenburg, 2000). In this study, the definitions will be derived from the study of Schwalbe et al. (2008): in this frame, civilians are depicted as victims of war/conflict and focus on the emotional presentation of people. In their study, this frame is composed of photos of Iraqi citizens, journalists, or the reactions of U.S. citizens. In this study, the Human-interest frame reflects Palestinians as victims of the conflict. For example, a mother crying about the killing of her son, or a school student being arrested, etc. The other frame in this study is equal to what Schwalbe et al. (2008) called “the conflict frame”, in which war machines, troops, weapons, and soldiers are pictured. In this study, the frame is named “Militant frame”, and it depicts Palestinians as fighters. Examples for this frame are a Palestinian holding a machine gun, or civilian burning tires.
Visual Framing Effects
As mentioned earlier, visual frames do not only highlight a certain aspect of an event, but they play an important role in affecting the receiver’s emotions (Brantner et al., 2011),
behaviors (Chong and Drukman, 2007), beliefs and opinions (Slothuus, 2008). However, the effect depends on the type of frame and the receiver (Slothuus, 2008).
Empirical studies found stronger emotional effects of the Human-interest frame compared to the non-human interest frames (Brantner et al., 2011). Cho and Gower(2006) found that the Human-interest frame resulted in a strong impact on participants’ emotional response. According to Konstantinidou (2008) photographing victims with this frame, generally results in an emotional connection with the victim, evoking empathy for the
suffering. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence of the Human-interest effect on war photos. Therefore, I will build on the aforementioned studies to investigate the effect of the Human-interest frame on public emotions and opinions in comparison to the Militant frame. Therefore, the following hypothesis is formulated:
Hypothesis 1: The photograph with Human-interest frame will lead to more positive emotions about Palestinians than the Militant frame.
Scholars have found evidence of framing effects on people’s judgments/opinions and attitudes (e.g., Brantner et al., 2011; Sheafer & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2010). According to Griffin (2010) the photographs of the Vietnam War, which can be categorized as a conflict frame, affected the American people’s opinions about the war negatively. I expect the same effect when using similar photographs from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, hence, the second hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 2: The photograph with a Militant frame will lead to more negative opinions about Palestinians than the Human-interest frame.
According to Geise & Baden (2014), to decode a photograph, the recipients use their intuitive interpretation and their knowledge. But scholars’ opinions about the knowledge effect on people’s opinion vary. For example, Krosnick and Brannon (1993) argue that the
more knowledge the recipients have about politics, the more quickly they can act on what they receive and accordingly form opinions. This argument was also confirmed by Lecheler & de Vreese (2012), who tested political knowledge as a moderator between frames and opinions. On the other hand, Kinder and Sanders (1990) found that media frames generally have greater effect on people with less knowledge about the topic. The explanation of this finding might be that people with less knowledge lack counter-arguments, hence they believe in what they see or read. For this reason, this study will also try to answer the following research question:
RQ1: In which way does the level of knowledge about the conflict moderate the relationship between the type of frame and the opinions?
H1
H2
RQ +/-
Figure 1. This conceptual model shows the frames effects on international’s opinions and
emotions.
Method
In this section, I will introduce the data employed in the study, as well as how data was collected, followed by a description of how the independent, dependent and control variables were measured.
Sample
In December 2014, 216 people were recruited to participate in this study within 14 days. The
Type of frame Human-interest Militant Opinions Knowledge about IP conflict Emotions
recruitment process focused on international organizations, aiming for a diverse sample from different countries and beliefs. For this reason, the participants were recruited from: 1) International media organization in Hilversum: Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 2)
International computer company in Amsterdam: AerData, 3) Facebook groups (See appendix B), 4) Networks of my international friends. To avoid biased responses, the recruitment on social media was done through non-Palestinian or Israeli people, who forwarded the experiment link with the poster (see appendix C) to their network and posted it in different Facebook groups. From the recruited population, 70 percent (n=151) fully completed the experiment, which made the drop rate 30 percent, 22 percent of the total respondents (n=47) were excluded from the study for the following reasons: 1) respondents who dropped out before getting assigned to an experimental condition (24 respondents) 2) those who were assigned but did not fully answer the questions related to the experiment manipulation (21 respondents). 3) Respondents who are from Palestine or Israel (2 respondents). Therefore, the sample consisted of 169 respondents (37 percent men and 63 percent women), with an
average age of 31 years of age (SD= 9.46). The respondents were from 36 different countries from the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe, with various educational levels between “high school and lower (n=7) to post-graduate university degrees (n=77)”, 71 percent of the respondents have university degrees. Remarkably, 59 percent of the respondents indicated having no religion, while 29.5 percent were from different Christian religious groups and 8 percent were Hindus. The sample included very few Muslims 3 percent and no Jews.
Design and Procedure
The study used a quantitative research design and administered an online survey experiment, to measure the effect of two visual frames on the emotions and opinions of international public about Palestinians. Using a between-subjects experimental design, participants were randomly exposed to one of the three different conditions: (1) Human-interest condition, (2)
Militant condition, (3) Control group (no photograph). Less people were assigned to the control group as shown in table 1, because the study aimed at comparing the effects of the two photographs. The control group was created to look for further differences between those who received a photograph and those who did not. The gender distribution among the three groups was nearly equal (see table 1). A randomization check of the sample showed that it was successfully done: the participants’ mean age, gender and religion do not significantly differ between the groups.
Table 1
The Respondents Gender Distribution on the Three Groups in Percentages and Counts (N= 169)
Note. 7.2% (n=12) of the respondents did not indicate their gender.
At the beginning of the experiment, participants completed a (pre-test) questionnaire asking them about their foreign news interest, news habits, and interest in the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict (see appendix D for the full questionnaire). In order to make sure that respondents do not reveal the topic of the experiment, they were also asked about other foreign news: Ebola, Ukraine conflict, and Global warming. After that, the respondents were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. In the experimental conditions, one
photograph was shown on the screen for at least 5 seconds. After that, they were asked to answer a manipulation question to make sure they saw the photograph. An example of the
Condition Participants Gender
Female (n= 99) Male (n=58) Experimental condition 1: Human-interest frame 36.7% (n = 62) 59.6% (n= 37) 37% (n= 23) Experimental condition 2: Militant frame 36.1% (n= 61) 59% (n= 36) 27.8% (n=17) Control group 27.2% (n = 46) 56.6% (n = 26) 39.1% (n = 18)
manipulation question is as follows: “The girl in the photograph is holding …” and they were given multiple answer choices. 93.5 percent of the respondents who were exposed to the Militant frame photograph answered the manipulation question correctly, while 98 percent of the respondents of the Human-interest question gave the right answer. Following that in the post-test, the participants were asked to complete a series of discrete and dimensional self-report questions measuring: 1) their opinions about the person in the photograph, 2) their emotions, 3) their general opinion about Palestinians and Israelis, 4) and their knowledge about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The knowledge questions were asked after the manipulation to avoid priming the participants about the topic. The respondents who were assigned to the control group received only general opinion questions and the knowledge set of questions.
Stimulus Material
The visual stimuli were chosen following the definitions of the two frames used in this study. The selection process was as follows: First, it started with an advanced search of photographs from the last Gaza war between the 7th of July 2014 and the 26th of August 2014. This event was selected because it was the most recent big event in relation to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, which gathered the attention of most of the International media. Hence, the possibility that people were exposed to similar photographs is higher, which increases the validity of this study.
To find the suitable photographs, I used four online image suppliers: 1) ANP photo: The Dutch news agency, 2) AP images: the Associated press photographs library, 3)
Reporters agency: a platform for photographers to sell their news and artistic photos, 4) Several Palestinian photographers’ pages and websites. After this advanced search, 10 photographs were downloaded. Photographs that can cause confusion due to the
representation of several objects were excluded, and only portrait photographs were taken to the next step to more adequately capture the effects. The remaining 6 photographs (see
appendix E) were tested in a pilot study, in which a group of international university students, computer engineers, and researchers participated (N=19). Each of them, randomly received three of the six photographs, and was asked to answer a few questions to measure the effect of the photographs on their emotions and opinions. To measure the participants’ emotional response, the following terms were used: “anger”, “sympathy”, “pride”, “inspiration”, and “disgust”. For measuring their opinion, the following terms were used: “terrorist”, “victim”, “hero”, “criminal”, “Militant”, “Nationalist”, “violent”, “peaceful”. Both sets of measures used a 7 points scale (1 = not at all, and 7 = very much). The emotions questions gave the respondents the possibility to add any feelings they had when they saw each of the photos that were not on the answer list. Finally, the pilot responses were analyzed manually and the means from both the negative emotions and descriptions were summed1. The photograph with the highest negative emotions (M=4.15, SD=1.48) and descriptions (M=4.13, SD= 2.100) was used to represent the Militant frame, while the photograph that was found the most positive on emotions (M= 4.00, SD = 1.27) and on descriptions (M=6.22, SD= .972) was used to represent the Human-interest frame in the experiment. Worth mentioning is that after I excluded the photographs that had lower scores, three photographs remained; two were for Palestinian children, and one for a funeral of a Palestinian male. Therefore, to make the comparison possible, I picked the photographs that had children almost in the same age (see figure 2) but with different settings and frames (see appendix F for photographs context and descriptions). One is depicted as a victim of the conflict (for the Human-interest frame), and the second is holing a weapon (for the Militant frame). This will make the comparison
1 Since the pilot study recruited 19 respondents only, no factor analysis were conducted on
the items, instead each positive items and negative items were summed and computed creating four items measuring: positive emotions, negative emotions, positive opinions, negative opinions.
between the two frames in the photographs possible.
Human-interest frame photograph Militant frame photograph
Figure 2. The photographs used in the experiment.
Measures
Type of frame: Militant vs. Human-interest. The type of frame is the independent variable in this study. Two photographs were used in the experimental conditions. To measure the effect of the frames, the participants were asked to look carefully at one of the photographs, and answer several questions about it.
Emotions. To measure the respondents’ emotions, the participants were asked to self-report how they felt when they first saw the photograph. This question was measured using the terms in table 2 that were derived from an earlier visual study about the emotional response toward political visual messages (Bucy, 2003). The items were measured using a 7 points scale, where 1= not at all, and 7= very much.
To create a new variable measuring emotions, a principle component analysis (PCA) was conducted on the 6 items with orthogonal rotation (Varimax). The analysis shows that two components have an eigenvalue above 1, and the scree plot confirmed that with two clear points of inflexion. Three items loaded under each of the two factors and all the items have strong positive associations with the factor it loaded under (see table 2). The first factor
represents positive emotions (α= .56) while the second factor represents negative emotions
(α= .58). Although the two factors resulted in a weak reliability of the scales, they were still
accepted and used in this study, because they loaded moderately to strongly with their factors. Additionally, they were derived and adapted from a reliable scale from a previous study: (Bucy, 2003). The items which loaded under the first factor were computed and formed a new dependent variable measuring positive emotions (M= 2.72, SD= 1.28) , whereas the items which loaded under the second factor were computed forming another dependent variable measuring negative emotions (M= 4.53, SD= 1.41)(see table 2) .
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics and Exploratory Factor Analysis With Varimax Rotation of Emotions (N= 123)
Items
Descriptive Rotated Factor Loadings
M SD Positive emotions Negative emotions
Angry 4.41 2.03 .80 Sympathetic 4.31 2.18 .68 Proud 1.64 1.23 .73 Inspired 2.24 1.68 .81 Disgusted 3.39 2.13 .66 Sad 5.81 1.60 .71 Eigenvalues % of variance α 1.75 28.82 .56 1.60 27.27 .58 Note. Factor loadings < .40 were not shown.
Opinions about Palestinians. To measure the respondent’s opinions about
Palestinians, the participants were asked two questions. In the first question, the respondents were asked to self-report what they think of the child. This variable was measured using the
following terms: “terrorist”, “victim”, “hero”, “criminal”, “Militant”, “nationalist”, “violent”, “peaceful”, and “brave” (see table 3 for descriptive statistics). The items were also measured with 7 points scales where 1= not at all, and 7= very much.
A new variable was formed from the nine items using principle component analysis with orthogonal rotation. The analysis resulted in two components with eigenvalues above 1. To improve the reliability of the scales, the analysis recommended deleting two items: “victim” (M=6.30, SD= 1.27) and “Peaceful” (M= 3.54, SD= 2.21). The factor analysis was conducted again with the remaining seven items. Five of the items loaded under the first component and two items loaded under the second. All the items correlate strongly and positively with the factor in which it loaded (see table 3). The first factor represented the negative opinions about the child, whereas the items that loaded under the second factor represented positive opinions.
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics and Exploratory Factor Analysis With Varimax Rotation of Opinions (N= 123)
Items
Rotated Factor Loadings M SD Perceiving the child
negatively
Perceiving the child positively Terrorist 1.67 1.27 .79 Hero 2.31 1.68 .76 Criminal 1.67 1.24 .72 Militant 2.33 1.84 .82 Nationalist 2.67 2.00 .80 Violent 2.20 1.65 .83 Brave 3.50 2.07 .78 Eigenvalues % of variance α 3.44 42.01 .85 1.68 22.11 .63 Notes. Factor loadings less than .40 were not shown.
The reliability of the scale of the first factor was strong (α = .85), while the reliability of the second factor was moderate (α = .63). The items of the first factor that was named
perceiving the child negatively were computed and formed a new variable measuring
negative opinions (M= 2.10, SD=1.30), and the two items which loaded under the second factor named perceiving the child positively were also calculated, forming a new variable measuring positive opinions (M= 2.90, SD= 1.61).
While the question above measured the opinion of the participants about the children in the photographs, two other questions were asked to measure their opinions about
Palestinians. One of these questions was asked to measure their level of agreement with 6 statements derived and adapted from an earlier study that focused on visuals’ effects on respondents’ attitude toward Palestinians and Israelis (Brantner et al., 2011). 7 point Likert scales were used to measure how strongly the participant agreed or disagreed with each statement. Three of the statements were biased to the Israeli side, for example: “The Israeli
military attacks on Palestinians are justified” (M= 2.88, SD= 1.63) and 3 were biased to the
Palestinian side, for example: “Palestinians have the right to defend themselves in every
possible way”(M= 3.90, SD= 1.67) (see appendix E for the full wordings). A principle
component analysis (PCA) was conducted on the six items and resulted in two components with eigenvalues above 1: (factor 1= 2.2, factor 2 = 1.08) with three items loaded under each of them. The first factor was named Palestine attitudes” (α = .53) and the second “Pro-Israel attitude” (α= .57). However, the reliability of the scales of the two factors was weak, hence, the measure’s of both components were not used. 2
The second question measured the respondents’ attitudes towards Palestinians and Israelis in general. This question “How do you feel about: 1) Palestinians (M= 4.39, SD= 1.09), 2) Israelis (M=3.95, SD= 1.23). The respondents were asked to report their feelings toward each from 1-7, ranging from strongly dislike to strongly like. Additionally, a semantic
2 The two scales were still tested as dependent variables with the two frames, but resulted in
differential 7 points scale was used to measure if the participants consider themselves “Pro- Palestine=1” or “Pro- Israel= 7”, (M=2.84, SD= 8.08).
Knowledge about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The participants’ level of
knowledge about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict was measured with six knowledge questions on a nominal scale. The questions were with different levels of difficulty; some were related to recent news, and some to historical events. To provide further insight into how this was measured, here is an example of one of the questions used: “The Israeli- Palestinian conflict dates back to the year” the answers options were: 1) 1887, 2) 2000, 3) 1973, 4) 1948, 5) Can’t say. The six questions (see appendix E) formed the moderator variable of this study and the following steps were taken to use this variable in analysis: 1) the questions were recoded into a different variable and the correct answer of each question was coded as 1 and a wrong answer was coded as 0, 2) the six questions were computed and one new variable was created. The new variable was measured through a 6 points scale (M= 3.15, SD= 1.86). Only 9 percent of the respondents answered all the questions correctly and over 11 percent of the participants failed to answer any of the questions correctly.
Results
As explained in the methods section, the principle component analysis resulted in two variables for measuring each of the dependents. Hence to test the two frames’ effects on the respondents’ emotions (H1) and opinions (H2), I used the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The reason behind using MANOVA is to enable testing the effect of the frames on the composite of the two dependent variables (Field, 2009) and to be able to compare the two frames’ effects on each of the dependent variables. All the analyses were carried out using the IBM SPSS software.
more positive emotions toward Palestinians than the Militant frame. To test this hypothesis, the positive and the negative emotions variables were used as dependent variables in the MANOVA. The Box’s M value of 1.12 was associated with a p value of .776, F (3, 2658137) = .37, which is interpreted as non-significant, thus the null hypothesis that observed
covariance matrices of the dependent variables are equal across the frames was accepted, meaning that the robustness of our MANOVA test is guaranteed (Rimarcik, 2007). The Pillai’s trace analysis showed a significant effect of the frame on the respondents’ positive and negative emotions, V = 0.10, F (2, 120) = 6.83, p < .01.
Moreover, a separate univariate ANOVA on the outcome variables, using Pillai’s trace, showed significant frame effects again on the positive emotions, F (1, 121) = 12.46, p < .001. However, this analysis showed a non-significant frame effect on the negative
emotions, F (1, 121) = 1.35, p > .05.
The Levene’s test of equality of variances assumes that error variance of the dependent variables is equal across the frames. This assumption was accepted for both the negative emotions (p > .05), and the positive emotions (p > .05). This means that the ANOVA applied above is valid and the homogeneity of variances is guaranteed (Field, 2009).
Looking at the mean differences of the two frames in relation to the positive and negative emotions variables, we can see that the Human-interest frame photograph resulted in more positive emotions than those exposed to the photograph with the Militant frame. On the other hand, participants who saw the photograph with the Human-interest frame had slightly more negative emotions than those who were exposed to the Militant frame. However since hypothesis 1 is investigating the effect of the Human-interest frame on positive emotions solely, the effect of the frames on negative emotions were ignored. Therefore the significant
results of the frames on positive emotions, in addition to the significant difference between the two frames on it and based on the mean difference between the Human-interest frame and the Militant frame (see figure 3). The Human-interest frame lead to more positive emotions than the Militant frame, therefore hypothesis 1 is fully supported.
Figure 3. The Means of the Positive and Negative emotions in the Two Frames.
To test whether the Militant frame would elicit more negative opinions towards Palestinians than the Human-interest frame (Hypothesis 2), the same analyses as in
hypothesis one were conducted. The two variables “Perceiving Palestinians positively” and “perceiving Palestinians negatively” were used as dependent variables in the MANOVA. The Box’s M value of 11.21 with a significant p value of .012, F (3, 2658137)= 3.67, caused the null hypothesis of equality of covariance matrices of the dependent variables to be rejected. But we can ignore this figure because the number of participants of each framing group is equal (Rimarcik, 2007).
Using Pillai’s trace, the MANOVA showed a significant effect of the frame on the composite of the two variables regarding opinions, V = 0.20, F (2, 120) = 15.06, p < .001.
3.12 (SD = 1.25) 4.39 (SD = 1.45) 2.33 (SD = 1.20) 4.69 (SD = 1.37)
Positive emotions Negative emotions 2 3 4 5 M ean of p ar ti ci p an ts e moti on s
The separate univariate ANOVA showed a significant effect of the type of frames on
perceiving the child negatively F (1, 121) = 28.67, p < .001. However, this analysis showed
that the frame had a non-significant effect on perceiving Palestinians positively, F (1, 121) = .25, p > .05. The Levene’s test had a significant difference for the negative opinions (p < .05), however the positive opinions had a non-significant one (p > .05). Thus, the null hypothesis of equality of the independent variables’ error variance across the groups, is violated for negative opinions.
On average, participants who were exposed to the Militant frame photograph had more negative opinions (M = 2.68, SE = 0.15), than those from the Human-interest frame (M = 1.55, SE = 0.15). However, there was no difference regarding the positive opinions in the Militant frame (M = 2.98, SE = 0.21), compared to those exposed to the Human-interest frame (M = 2.83, SE = 0.21).
Additionally, a one-way ANOVA was conducted to measure the respondents’ general opinions about Palestinians, (measured with 7 points scale between strongly dislike and strongly like). However the analysis resulted in insignificant differences between the 3 groups: Human-interest frame (M = 4.55, SD = 1.19), Militant frame (M= 4.29, SD = 1.06) and the control group (M= 4.30, SD= 1.00), F (2,161)= 1, p >.05. Therefore, there is no effect of the frame on general opinions about Palestinians 3.
To find out the effect of the frames on the general attitudes respondents have toward the conflict, a one way ANOVA was conducted on the variable “where do you stand from the conflict” which was measured in a semantic differential scale (Pro-Palestine=1, Pro- Israel= 7). However, the frames appeared to have no significant effect on the attitude (F (2,161)= .98, p > .05). On the contrary, the difference between the groups (Militant, Human-interest,
3 The same analyses were conducted between the two groups with the manipulation leaving
out the control group, however the results did not change.
and no photo group) was opposite to the expectations; the Militant frame resulted in a lower mean (M= 1.67, SD= 13.48) compared to the Human-interest frame (M= 3.28, SD= 1.342) and the control group (M= 3.74, SD= .99).
Therefore, hypothesis 2: the Militant frame will lead to more negative opinions about Palestinians, is partially accepted, because the effect of the frames on the respondents’ direct opinion about the child was significant, but, the effect on the general opinions result in insignificant differences between the experiment groups.
Konstantinidou (2008) argued that the Human-interest frame evokes empathy with the victim. For further interesting investigations, two more independent t-tests were conducted; the first was to find the effect of the frames on the respondents description of the children in the photographs as victim. The analysis resulted in significant deference between the frames, in describing the children in the photographs as victims, T (121) = 3.45, p< .01. The Human-interest frame resulted in higher mean (M= 6.68, SD= .76) than the Militant frame (M= 5.92,
SD= 1.55). The second analysis was to investing the effect of the frames on the respondents’
feeling of. On average, participants felt more sympathy for the child in the photograph with the Human-interest frame (M = 4.97, SE=. 25) than for the child in the photograph with Militant frame (M = 3.64, SE = .28). Significant difference was detected in feeling sympathy between the Human-interest frame and the Militant frame T (121) = 3.52, p < .01. The results above confirm Konstantinidou argument in this regard.
A more detailed MANOVA has been conducted to investigate whether the
participants’ knowledge about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict moderates the relation between the type of frame and the opinion of the participants. However, the analysis showed that knowledge does not affect the participants opinions, and does not moderate the
aforementioned relationship, V = 0.02, F (2, 108) = 1.15, p > .05. In addition to that, univariate analysis was conducted on two other dependent variables to test the moderation
effect of knowledge. However no significant effect was found on: 1) the respondents’ attitude toward the conflict (Pro- Palestine, Pro- Israel), F (2, 151)= .82, p >.05, 2) the respondents’ general opinions about Palestinians F (2, 151) = .08, p > .05.
Worth mentioning that both hypotheses and the research question were also tested using MANCOVA controlling for gender, age, and the participants’ interest in the conflict, but no significant effect was found.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to investigate which of the Palestinians’ photographs have a stronger influence on international audiences’ opinions and emotions toward Palestinians. Building on previous framing studies (Brantner et al., 2011; Carpenter, 2007; Dimitrova & Strömbäck, 2005; Schwalbe et al., 2008) two frames were used: the Human-interest and the Militant frame. It was hypothesized that the Human-interest frame will lead to more positive emotions about Palestinians than the Militant frame (H1) whereas the Militant frame will lead to more negative opinions than the Human-interest frame (H2). Furthermore, the way
knowledge about the conflict moderates the relationship between the frames used and the respondents’ opinions was also explored. The experiment found that the Human-interest frame made people feel more positive about Palestinians, so hypothesis 1 was supported. However, the effect of the frames on the internationals’ opinions about Palestinians was only partially accepted. The respondents who viewed the photograph with the Militant frame, had relatively more negative opinions about the child in the photo, nevertheless, their opinions about Palestinians in general did not differ in comparison with the opinions of respondents who viewed the photo with the Human-interest frame. Furthermore, the study found that knowledge does not affect the relationship between the type of frame and their opinions of Palestinians.
The findings of this study show that the Human-interest frame influenced the
individual’s emotions more strongly, while the Militant frame was stronger on opinions. The first finding of the experiment regarding the Human-interest frame is in line with the findings of Brantner et al. (2011) and Cho and Gower (2006) that the Human-interest is a strong frame and has an emotional power in affecting peoples’ feelings. However, in this study we can see that the Militant frame also resulted in high negative emotions. The reason for this might be that the subject photographed is a child, and still has a strong human side. The weapon in the photograph might be responsible for the negative emotions but further investigation is needed to state this definitively, creating a need for a future study on this topic.
In line with previous studies (Brantner et al., 2011; Griffin, 2010; Sheafer & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2010), the second finding of the experiment showed that individual opinions about the people in the photograph is affected in the way the subject is framed, resulting in more negative opinions of the child captured in the Militant frame. However the effect stops here, and does not go beyond that to the general opinions/attitudes about Palestinians. The
explanation of this can be summarized in two main points; the study focuses on an ongoing 67 years old conflict and individuals might have a connection to it that can hinder such strong attitudinal changes. The second point is related to the first; people are “particularly sensitive to changes in a positive or negative direction” (Boettcher, 2004, p. 333), and according to Sheafer & Dvir-Gvirsman (2010) the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict falls under this sensitivity which makes taking sides in such a conflict a complex decision making process.
Surprisingly, the fact that the two photographs are of children, did not prevent negative effects from the individuals toward the Palestinians, the Militant photograph still reflected negative effects on the individual’ opinions and emotions about Palestinians. Also, it was found that respondents sympathized more with the child in the Human-interest frame, which confirms Konstantinidou (2008) argument that this frame evokes empathy with the
suffering. If we look closely at the results we can see that to some extent both children in the two photographs were seen as victims. This indicates that visual frames with photographs of children might have special effects on people’s emotions and opinions. This is partially in line with the argument of Höijer (2004) who states that visuals of children, women and old people as victims, move our emotions, adding that children are the most effective in the perspective of compassion. Nevertheless, empirical evidence on this remains scarce, so these findings present aspects of framing that need to be further investigated. For future empirical studies, it would be valuable to test if the visual frames with children have different effects of the perception of the people about the event, than those without children.
On the contrary, of several studies (Kinder & Sanders, 1990; Lecheler & de Vreese, 2012) that found a moderation effect of the knowledge on the relationship between the frame and the opinion, this study found no effect of knowledge. The reason could be that the level of knowledge of the respondents about the conflict was generally low, potentially due to the large geographic distance between respondents and the conflict, and a lack of interest in the conflict.
The two photographs used in this study coincidently happened to be taken by the same Palestinian photographer “Mohammed Saber”, whom I interviewed after conducting the experiment to see what his expectations of the audience’s perception are about Palestinians. The words he mentioned when talking about the Human-interest photo were more or less similar to how it was perceived by the respondents, however, he was reluctant about the Militant photo and said: “the way this child with a weapon is perceived depends on the people and their experience with wars. If they ever experienced wars they would know this is normal and judge us positively” and added: “She is a strong brave child, and reflects the strength of our people”. For Saber, the girl is celebrating victory in Gaza after the war ended, where the Palestinian children were exposed to extreme violence. This indicates signs of
misframing, the child was not perceived positively as the photographer expects, but he referred to something interesting to be considered as a moderator for future studies, which is the individual’s experience with wars/ conflicts.
One of the interesting stories Saber mentioned during the interview was that: “weapons are trendy among children because of the successive wars on Gaza in the past few years, my 5 year old child wants a tattoo with a Kalashnikov4 on his arm, and in holidays you see most
of the children here playing with fake weapons”. Obviously, the meaning of the Militant photo in the Palestinian context differs from that of the Internationals as the study shows, and this can be due to notions of cultural/political relativism. This confirms what Segall et al. (1966) said about the human perception and how it is influenced by their culture and inspired by Saber I would add that the perception might also be influenced by the person’s history with wars. A recommendation for future research is to replicate this study experimenting the same stimuli and frames on a Palestinian and an Israeli sample, to investigate how those involved in the conflict perceive the frames, in comparison with the findings of this study.
Scholars are not alone in their call for careful use of photographs to avoid the misperception of its meanings (Zillmann et al., 1999). Palestinian politicians in the 1990’s also warned photographers not to photograph children with weapon according to Saber, and those who published such photos used to receive a fine from the Palestinian committee of journalists in Gaza.
Naturally, this study has several limitations; the first is that the sample was very diverse nationality wise, however, it included no Jewish people, hence the effect of the individual’s religious views in such a conflict that is highly associated with religion might have hindered interesting findings when controlling for religion. The second limitation is related to the
4 A type of military weapons, and the tattoo in the quote refers to body stickers that are trendy
stimuli of this study. Although the use of children photographs revealed interesting
indications for future studies, they also might have weakened the frames used, specifically the Militant frame. The last limitation to be addressed is regarding the generalizability of the findings. The convenient sample collected through an online experiment, decreased the external validity of the findings of the study, as it was not a truly random sample.
Despite the limitations, the findings of this study contribute to the limited but growing body of research on the effects of visual framing. This study might be the first of its kind that show how two different frames from the same event and the same side of a conflict can make a difference on the way the subjects of a photograph are perceived. In addition to that, it did not only look at the effects of the frames on emotions and opinions, but also looked closely at the direction of the effect (positive or negative). Technically, the items that were used to measure the opinions resulted in a reliable scale, which can be developed and used for future studies about the Middle East.
Eventually, the media content is becoming more and more visualized especially in such time when sharing a photo is made easy; e.g. Facebook members alone share 350 million photos daily (Crook, 2013). On the other hand, wars and conflicts do not seem about to diminish soon, which gives visual framing studies of wars a higher importance nowadays, and will continue to be of such importance for the foreseeable future.
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APPENDICES
Appendix (A): General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon
Appendix (B): Facebook groups where the lists where published
Facebook group Number of members
ISN Amsterdam online market 25,500
Expats in the Hague 19,900
Freundschaft Schweiz-Israel 2339 ISN ESN Utrecht online market 426 Utrecht international students 4,140
PuK Forum 1189
Expats Utrecht 4,056
Arts Students League of New York 2,740
Appendix D: The complete experiment questions in the order it was presented to the respondents:
Introduction: Dear participant,
You are kindly invited to participate in my master's thesis research. Your participation will take no longer than 10 minutes. In a form of a survey, you will be asked about foreign news and the way you perceive it.
The data gathered for this study are for academic purposes only. This means that your answers will remain completely anonymous, and will be used only for scientific research. You can quit the study at any time, for any reason, without any consequences.
Informed consent for participation, please read the terms below before proceeding.
I agree, fully and voluntarily, to participate in this research study. With this, I retain the right to withdraw my consent, without having to give a reason for doing so, I also have up to 24 hours after my participation to cancel my consent. I am aware that I may halt my
participation in the experiment at any time. If my research results are used in scientific publications or are made public in another way, this will be done such a way that my
anonymity is completely safeguarded. My personal data will not be passed on to third parties without my express permission. I am fully aware that I might be exposed to offensive
material, and I know I have the right to withdraw my participation if I feel disturbed. For more information about the research and the invitation to participate, you are welcome to contact me at ruba.mimi@student.uva.nl. Should you have any complaints or comments about the course of the research and the procedures it involves as a consequence of your participation in this research, you can contact the designated member of the Ethics Committee representing ASCoR, at the following address: ASCoR Secretariat, Ethics
Committee, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15793, 1001 NG Amsterdam; 020‐525 3680; ascor-secr-fmg@uva.nl. Any complaints or comments will be treated in the strictest
confidence.
Thank you for taking part in the study, I greatly appreciate it. Kind regards,
Ruba Mimi
Graduate student, MSc Political Communication University of Amsterdam
PRE-TREATMENT
INSTRUCTIONS: I will ask you short questions about your news habits and interest in politics. Please note, you will not be able to go back within the questionnaire once you have moved to the next page.
Q1) How interested would you say you are in politics?
