An Analysis of Intergroup Relations, Identities, Conflict Dialogue and Diversity Narratives on Digital Platforms from the Past Decade

Abstract

This paper examines how contested pasts are mobilized to negotiate power and identity in contemporary digital publics, using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case of “imagefare” (image warfare) preceding the 7 October 2023 Gaza war. Focusing on Vice News’ YouTube coverage (2014-2023), the study asks: What themes regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict highlight polarizing responses in public video-commentary on the Vice News channel? Methodologically, the research applies an inductive qualitative content analysis, with themes used as the reporting categories, to a manually curated corpus of 10,000 highly visible comments (top 33 comment threads per video) drawn from a random sample of 20 videos within a 37-video Vice-curated playlist. This design leverages platform-ranked “top” threads to capture discourse most likely to shape audience interpretation and community norms. The findings are reported thematically through seven identified recurrent themes, four of which concentrate on polarization: (1) empathy and affective positioning; (2) rights to existence and the ethics of violence; (3) historical, religious, and politico-cultural interpretations; and (4) settlements as a locus of legality, dispossession, and moral argumentation. Across these themes, commenters repeatedly re-litigate historical narratives (e.g., origins, legitimacy, inheritance, displacement) to authorize present-day claims, reproduce in-/out-group boundaries, and frame asymmetries of power through “victim/defensive” logics. Notably, the comment space includes both international spectators and self-identified stakeholders, suggesting that digital arenas function as an extension of conflict—where memory claims, identity resilience, and legitimacy contests are performed, amplified, and contested in real time.