Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for more information

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Journal of Communication Inquiry
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
0196859907311695v1
32/2/140    most recent
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Handley, R. L.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Israeli Image Repair

Recasting the Deviant Actor to Retell the Story

Robert L. Handley

The University of Texas at Austin, roberthandley{at}mail.utexas.edu

When Israeli citizens commit terrorist attacks against other Israeli citizens, they problematize the dominant Western news narrative that says that Palestinians commit terrorist attacks against Israelis who respond in self-defense. The citizen-terrorist also wrecks the image boundaries of "terrorist" and "citizen," because citizens are normally victims of terrorism. This study scrutinizes how elite U.S. print reporters covered three different terrorist attacks committed by Israeli citizens against Israeli citizens. Two attacks were carried out by Arab Israelis and one was carried out by an Israeli Jew. In all three cases, reporters managed to repair the image of the "citizen" by suggesting that terrorism came from the West Bank, not Israel. However, reporters repaired the image of the Jewish Israeli but not did repair the Arab Israeli image. By restoring the dominant images of Jew-as-victim and Arab-as-aggressor, reporters managed to re-invoke the narrative that Arabs attack Israelis.

Key Words: conflicting images • Israel • myth • paradigm repair

This version was published on April 1, 2008

Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 32, No. 2, 140-154 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0196859907311695
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?