United States press coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: An integrative theoretical model of influence of news treatment of news sources

Highly involved in the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict includes four major U.S. newspapers through their uses of news sources who might have framed this issue. This dissertation endeavors to scrutinize the adoption and resulting impacts of news sources with an integrative theoretical path model that employs concepts of hierarchy of influences, the international communication world system and framing analysis.; Findings from data analyses showed that Israeli officials were treated more favorably than their counterpart Palestinian officials as a result of greater press access in Israel and a friendlier foreign policy toward that country. However, more favorable news treatment of Israeli officials doesn't lead to selection of Palestinian terrorism or peace process as the dominant news frame, while resulting in thematic nature of news content. Neither does better treatment of Israeli officials assign, directly or indirectly, causal responsibility to Palestine. That Israeli casualties are capable of directly assigning causal responsibility to Palestine provides an additional prospective for future framing research.; Therefore, theoretically, (more favorable news treatment of Israeli official) news sources have only marginal bridging roles between contextual variables of international communication (press access and foreign policy) and framing research (nature of news content) as proposed in the framework and path model.