IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-05184425.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Conflict Reporting in the Digital Age

Author

Listed:
  • Sophie Hatte

    (CERGIC - Center for Economic Research on Governance, Inequality and Conflict - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon)

  • Etienne Madinier
  • 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)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Sophie Hatte & Etienne Madinier & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2025. "Conflict Reporting in the Digital Age," Working Papers hal-05184425, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05184425
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3845739
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05184425v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05184425v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2139/ssrn.3845739?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05184425. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.