Bottlenecks in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the coverage of the first and second intifada in the Flemish press

Various authors suggest that the public's knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inadequate. As it is generally accepted that public opinion on international news items is mainly formed by media content, the international media are often held responsible for sustaining the prevailing misconceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by covering the conflict parties in a biased and imbalanced way. This study focuses on the representation of Israelis and Palestinians in the news coverage of the First and Second Intifada by the Flemish press. By way of a content analysis evolutions and discrepancies in the coverage of both Intifadas are described in a longitudinal analytical perspective. We conclude that the portrayal of the Palestinian actors shifts from a rather positive view during the First Intifada period to a more critical portrayal during the period of the Second Intifada. At the same time, there is an opposite move in the representation of the Israeli actors in the conflict. Although our results show differences in the distinct portrayals, they do not provide sufficient evidence to conclude unequivocally that the coverage of the First and Second Intifada is imbalanced. Indeed, we find that while some variables definitely favour the Israeli point of view (e.g. the use of sources), others clearly sustain the Palestinian side (e.g. the individualisation of victims). In other words, the Flemish dailies cover the First and Second Intifada in quite a balanced way, contrary to what international studies on the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have concluded regarding the media in different national settings

Welfare conditionality and social marginality: the folly of the tutelary state?

In a contemporarnb 1`vby evolution of the tutelary state, welfare reform in the United Kingdom has been characterised by moves towards greater conditionality and sanctioning. This is influenced by the attributing responsibility for poverty and unemployment to the behaviour of marginalised individuals. Mead (1992) has argued that the poor are dependants who ought to receive support on condition of certain restrictions imposed by a protective state that will incentivise engagement with support mechanisms. This article examines how the contemporary tutelary and therapeutic state has responded to new forms of social marginality. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with welfare claimants with an offending background in England and Scotland, the article examines their encounters with the welfare system and argues that alienation, rather than engagement with support, increasingly characterises their experiences