The ‘blame game frame’: Ethical blame patterns and media framing upon negotiations failure in the Middle East

Abstract

To understand the relationship between ethical basis of blame, framing and its impact on future negotiations in protracted conflicts, we examined the blame occurrences (n = 721) in written press coverage of the 2014 Israeli–Palestinian and the 2016 Syrian Civil War mediation efforts. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, our study found that episodic framing is exclusively utilized when presenting action-based blame, which explicitly casts blame upon acts, while thematic framing can be utilized to present (1) action-based blame; (2) virtue-based blame, which casts blame on the personality traits of the actor; and (3) conflict-essence based blame, a meta-discourse critical of the assumption that rational, right action or virtue based on a universal ‘good’ have the potential to solve an intrinsically intractable conflict. Our data challenge the dichotomy of episodic framing/conflict escalation coverage versus thematic framing/conflict de-escalation. We illustrate that in the case of blame, thematically presented blame is more destructive for future relations and potential negotiations between the actors. These findings provide valuable insights for understanding the relationship between journalism, blame, and conflict resolution.

Keywords

Conflict discourse analysis framing middle east narrative journalism

Introduction

‘In the Middle-East, the “Blame Game” already started again’ posits a French correspondent covering the (aborted) 2014 Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations lead by John Kerry.¹ Here, the Western journalist points to a specific blaming dynamic which, from his perspective, is intrinsically characteristic of Middle Eastern conflicts. This statement highlights a discursive mechanism, the ‘blame game’ (Usher, 2012), which cyclically appears following the failure of peace or ceasefire negotiations (Hood, 2011) and is framed by media through the language of war and competition (Kampf and Blum-Kulka, 2011). This phenomenon serves as a basis of the recent research trend which examines the media role in framing blame (Hameleers et al., 2017) and the impact that such framing has on protracted conflicts (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, et al., 2016). Indeed, blame framing informs all four aspects of Entman’s (1993) framing functions defined as the promotion of ‘a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation’ (p. 52). Our study focuses on the moral dimension of the blame as framed in media coverage.

Since blame framing involves attributing causal responsibility and evaluating the moral implications of an experienced problem (Hameleers et al., 2017; Usher, 2012), blame generally imbues a news frame by dichotomizing the reality of good and evil between the blaming and the blamed actor, positioning them at proximity and distance to specific moral values. This type of conflict coverage can lead societies to conclude that conflict is a natural state of affairs, developing a skeptical attitude regarding the possibilities of positive transformation (Kempf and Shinar, 2014). Moreover, the spectrum of research on blame avoidance illustrates the collective fear of being blamed (Hansson, 2015; Hood, 2011) as well as the destructive consequences blame has in political communication.

In this study, we examine the relationship between the ethical frameworks which serve as a basis for moral blame scripts, their framing, and the impact on future negotiations in protracted conflicts. We focus on the Middle East, a geographic region which has suffered from both the longest and the most recent protracted conflicts – the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Syrian Civil War, respectively. Through an examination of these two case studies, we address the following research questions: 1) Following negotiation failure, what are actors being blamed for and what are the ethical bases for such blame? 2) How are these ethical categories framed within media coverage? By addressing these questions, we draw conclusions regarding the destructive nature of media-framed blame for future relations between the actors, while challenging accepted notions of how media framing contributes to conflict escalation or de-escalation.

Epideictic rhetoric: The ethical bases of blame

Blame, as epideictic rhetoric (Rosenfield, 1980), is conventionally defined as the act of attributing a wrongdoing to some person or entity (Hood, 2011). Recent research has established that blame scripts are based either on particularistic values that guide the political conduct of a specific community (i.e. actions) or alternatively on supposed universalistic, shared cultural values, and virtues, often codified in international law (Kampf and Katriel, 2016). In parallel, Sulitzeanu-Kenan and Hood (2005) posit that blame has two essential components: (1) The perceived avoidable harm – that is, the harm could have been avoided had matters been handled through different actions and (2) the perceived responsibility or agency – that is, the harm was caused some identifiable individual or organization that has ethical virtues. Based on this distinction, we argue that a political actor can adopt an action-based ethical approach, which casts blame upon acts committed. Such an action-based ethical approach can either take a Kantian Deontological approach – in which the morality of an act is based on the inherent goodness of the act itself (Kant, 2008) or a consequentialist approach – in which the morality of an act is based on the consequences of the act (Mill, 1998). Conversely, a political actor can adopt an Aristotelian ethical approach by blaming an actor for lacking key human virtues, such as those described by Aristotle (courage, temperance, liberality, etc; see Aristotle (1999)). Our study reveals that these two ethical frameworks assume that ‘the good’ can be achieved through ethical virtues or action, while blame is based on negative action or a lack of virtue. We must point out that these two first categories are not completely mutually exclusive, as there is some fluidity between the categories of action-based and virtue-based blame. Indeed, blaming an actor for lacking key human virtues is generally based on assessment of repeated negative actions. By the same token, blaming an actor for negative action also can indicate a negative character assessment. Nevertheless, we argue that the emphasis of the former relates to a specific action, while the latter is based on an overall judgment of character. In addition to these ethical categories, we present a third option for the moral evaluation of blame, which we term the ‘conflict-essence’ ethical approach. This blaming pattern reveals a critical approach to ethics (Lyotard, 1992) which posits that the concept of ‘the good’ is a Western, enlightenment-based power structure used to both make sense of and wield power over a (judged as) chaotic part of the world.

The ethics of blame, framing, and conflict coverage

Research has demonstrated that the attribution of blame is an essential aspect of conflict media framing (Tenenboim-Weinblatt et al., 2016). Media consider blame to be newsworthy, as actors involved in the ‘blame game’ can shift both the narrative and the framing of an event (Herfroy-Mischler, 2015, 2016), as by casting blame, they suggest ‘what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue’ (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987: 143).

So far, destructive blame patterns’ manifestations have been identified with conflict escalation via the framing functions of problem definition (Hansson, 2015) and populist attributions of responsibility (Hameleers et al., 2017). Nevertheless, only limited research has engaged with the destructive implications of blame when framed as a moral evaluation. To alleviate this shortcoming, our study addresses this research gap by tackling the role of blame in framing a moral evaluation of negotiation failure.

The episodic and thematic framing of blame

While research on framing has taken several directions such as frame building (Scheufele, 1999), the cycle of frames (Miller and Riechert, 2001), cascading activation of frames (Entman, 2003), and the conflict frame building process (Bartholome et al., 2015), our research specifically relates to Iyengar’s (1991) theory of episodic versus thematic framing as a basis for understand the relationship between the ethical basis of blame and its impact on future relations. Iyengar argues that episodic news frames focus on individual stories with highly emotional input, whereas thematic news frames focus on trends over time, highlighting broad historical contexts. Various types of news coverage, including populist media outlets (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000), interpretative journalism (Hameleers et al., 2017), and political news in general (Filak and Pritchard, 2007) tend to utilize episodic frames, which can lead to nationalistic, crisis-driven, win-lose, ‘us versus them’ conflict construction (Wolfsfeld et al., 2008). Such episodic frames lead to highly emotional reactions (Gross, 2008) such as intolerance, demonization, hatred toward others and contribute to conflict escalation (Herfroy-Mischler and Barr, 2020; Aarøe, 2011).

Conversely, Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) argue that thematic framing emphasizes deeper contextual and cultural factors. This can lead to conflict de-escalation (Iyengar, 1991; Kempf and Shinar, 2014) by reducing the potential for destructive coverage (Wolfsfeld et al., 2008). Our study questions the dichotomy of episodic framing/conflict escalation coverage versus thematic framing/conflict de-escalation in the case of blame. The revision of this accepted dichotomy is accomplished by examining how the ethical underpinnings of blame are framed episodically and thematically in time of negotiation.

Case study

Our study examines the ethical basis and media framing of blame within the context of failed peace and ceasefire negotiations in current Middle-East conflicts –the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Syrian Civil War, respectively. The first case is the 2013–2014 Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations mediated by US Secretary of State John Kerry, aborted after 9 months in April 2014.² The second case study is the failed American–Russian mediation of a ceasefire in the Syrian Civil War in September 2016.³ These cases have been chosen to enable an examination of blame strategies in different contexts. While the 2014 case exhibits the failure to negotiate a final-status peace agreement, the 2016 case exhibits the failure of ceasefire talks led by two superpowers.

Methodology

This study utilizes both a quantitative and a qualitative approach informed by a constructivist frame analysis (Entman, 2007) to identify recurring dominant blame patterns. Specifically, we utilize a grounded theory approach, defined as ‘the discovery of theory from data systematically obtained from social research’ (Glaser and Strauss, 2007: 1). Therefore, the coding proceeded in three phases:

We gathered online news articles a week before and 3 weeks after the failure of peace negotiation (i.e. 29 April 2014) and the failure of the ceasefire negotiation (i.e. 20 September 2016). We approached news, editorials, opinion pieces, and quotations of political leaders as a single corpus, rather than differentiating between each according to Tenenboim-Weinblatt’s (2008) method. Since the study aims to characterize blame ethics and its framing, rather than the agents of blame, the single corpus approach is preferred. Argument patterns are identified to establish categories based on Entman’s (2007) model focusing on problem definitions, causes, consequences, moral judgments, and solutions. We chose the same newspapers (online and printed) for both case studies to limit alternative explanations for differences in blame attribution (i.e. France, Russia, Israel, Pan-Arab, representing both Syria and Palestine, and the United States). For each country, we chose two newspapers with distinct political editorial lines (i.e. Le Figaro and L’Humanité; Moscow Times and Russia Today; Haaretz and Israel Hayom; Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya;⁴ New York Times and The Washington Post). We yielded at N = 316 news articles as illustrated in Table 1.

To construct the ethical categories upon which blame is based, we utilized a Grounded Theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 2007), in which the ethical categories were developed inductively through analysis of the corpus. Three main categories emerged from the data: (1) action-based ethics, (2) virtue-based ethics, and (3) conflict-essence-based ethics. We then examined how each ethically categorized blame occurrence was framed in the media (either episodic or thematic).

Table 1.

News articles per news website that contain blame.

	USA		France		Israel		Pan-Arab		Russia
	New York Times	Washington Post	Le Figaro	L’Humanité	Haaretz	Israel Hayom	Al Jazeera	Al Arabiya	Moscow Times	Russia Today
2014	11	11	9	9	44	41	5	6	0	3
2016	17	21	10	1	25	14	23	34	7	25
Total	28	32	19	10	69	55	28	40	7	28

Since recent research has established that ‘only a few news stories are exclusively episodic or thematic’ (Boukes et al., 2015: 125) and that ‘an actor’s reproaching or blaming another’ (Schuck et al., 2014: 182) can serve as a valid unit for coding conflict framing within a news story, we decided to adopt as a coding unit each blame occurrence (n = 721). We then quantified the number of occurrences for each of the six possible combinations (i.e. thematic/virtue, thematic/action, thematic/conflict essence, episodic/virtue, episodic/action, and episodic/conflict essence). A Krippendorff inter-coders reliability test (Hayes and Krippendorff, 2007) was conducted on approximately 20 percent (160) of the coding. This resulted in a Krippendorff’s α reliability of 0.886. We then engaged in a qualitative content analysis of each combination, analyzing each specific combination of blame strategies and framing.

Findings

In this section, we examine the ethical basis and the corresponding framing of each blame ethic. Of the six potential combinations, we found that only four were manifested in the text: episodic/action, thematic/action, thematic/virtue, and thematic/conflict essence. In Figures 1 and 2, we sum up the quantitative results for each combination.

Figure 1.

Blame framing ethics combination for 2014 case.

Figure 2.

Blame framing ethics combination for 2016 case.

Episodic framing

Combination 1: episodic framing of blame exclusively uses action-based ethics

Among the n = 721 blame occurrences in our study cases, the most recurrent (47% in the 2014 case and 55% in the 2016 case) was action-based blame. Interestingly, it is the only blame ethic framed episodically. This validates previous research according to which news coverage of political issues is mostly episodically framed (Iyengar, 1993). We found that when blame is framed episodically, the ethical nature of an action itself is the object of scrutiny, which can either be Deontological or Consequentialist in nature.

Deontological blame

Deontological moral blame categories focus on the motive of the actor. In the following, we summarize the two Deontological blame categories utilized when an actor blames another actor upon negotiations failure.

Making a bad choice

In this category, the bad choice is cast as a fateful act that destroyed negotiations, presenting a choice as an either/or decision between a good and bad option. For our 2014 case, the joint Fatah-Hamas declaration on 23 April 2014, stating the intention to implement a national unity government, is cast as a choice that led to negotiations failure. Prime Minister Netanyahu is quoted as stating, ‘This evening, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has chosen Hamas over peace’.⁵ A mirroring dynamic is used by the Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, who states, ‘The Netanyahu government chose settlements over the option of peace’.⁶

In the case of 2016, Al Arabiya runs an article that blames Russia for the ‘apparent decision to abandon the peace process this week’,⁷ referring to its military assault on Aleppo. Another example is found in the Washington Post which argues that the United States has allowed Russia to impose ‘political outcomes in regions the United States once dominated’, claiming that ‘the United State is not weak; in fact, it is far stronger than Putin’s Russia. U.S. fecklessness is a choice’.⁸ Thus, the United States allowing Russia to impose outcomes is presented as a bad choice rather than a necessity based on strategic weakness.

2. Breaking a promise

Deontological blame can be also based on an accusation of breaking a promise, measuring actions against words. The journalist recalls a commissive speech act – a promise to perform a certain act (Searle, 1969) – and examines whether the actor acted accordingly. For example, in the 2014 case, a Haaretz reporter writes,

The peace talks entered an evidently terminal crisis at the end of March, when Israel refused to release the last group of long-term Palestinian prisoners as it agreed to do at the outset of the talks.⁹

A similar accusation is illustrated by Al Arabiya: ‘Israel reneged on the release unless it received an assurance that the Palestinian authority would continue the talks beyond the deadline’.¹⁰ The lexical choice of ‘renege’ illustrates that breaking a promise is the essence of this blame occurrence.

In the 2016 case, Moscow Times reports on Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov accusing ‘the U.S. of not keeping to promises agreed in a recent ceasefire agreement’,¹¹ referring specifically to their undermining purported anti-terrorist operations. Al Jazeera reports, ‘there has been little movement on promised aid deliveries to besieged areas’.¹² Here, both examples cast blame for breaking promises.

Consequentialist blame

Consequentialist blame does not attribute negative value to the act itself, but instead point to negative consequences of action. Our data consisted of two consistent patterns.

Timing with bad consequences

While the unity agreement between Palestinian factions can be condemned through a Deontological approach (as above), the American mediator tends to cast blame for the same event through the Consequentialist approach of ‘bad timing’. This is illustrated in New York Times:

In an initial reaction last week, Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, called the Palestinian move ‘disappointing’ and the timing ‘troubling’, coming days before the April 29 expiration date for the American-brokered peace talks.¹³

Journalist interpretation latches onto this Consequentialist approach, as reporter Barak Ravid adds, ‘Kerry, for his part, didn’t express his position on the agreement between Fatah and Hamas, only on its timing’.¹⁴

In the 2016 case, Al Arabiya blames the American administration for waiting too long to sign a ceasefire agreement, stating ‘the agreement comes at a time when Assad is in a much stronger position than where he was a few months ago’.¹⁵

2. Ambiguity leading to different understandings

Actors can also cast Consequentialist blame for using ambiguous wording. Research has shown that ambiguously worded texts in peace documents can lead to a breakdown in negotiations (Friedman, 2017). For example, New York Times journalists blame Secretary Kerry for the negative consequences of using ambiguous wording:

Mr. Kerry has his share of the blame, at times leaving Israeli and Palestinian leaders with disparate understandings that would lead to later blowups.¹⁶

This pattern is also manifest in the case of the Syrian ceasefire. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is reported as telling Kerry that ‘documents related to the Syrian ceasefire agreement should be published to avoid “any double meaning” over how the deal should be implemented’.¹⁷

This section illustrates how the episodic framing of blame operates through an action-based ethics. In both Deontological and Consequentialist approaches, blame strategies limit condemnation to a particular incident. The episodic media framing operates via a telephoto lens on discrete events, rather than examining broader historical contexts. Thus, episodic framing offers a grade of moral condemnation that is not all-encompassing, as it assumes that actions can be altered in the future to bring about a more positive result. The framing of the blame patterns suggest that the conflict is resolvable, if actors were to act differently.

Thematic framing

Thematic framing of the blame strategies constitutes 53 percent of the 2014 case and 45 percent of the 2016 case. We found that thematic framing can utilize action-based ethics (8% in 2014 and 12% in 2016), virtue-based ethics (36% in 2014 and 24% in 2016), and conflict-essence-based ethics (9% in 2014 and 2016).

Combination 2: thematic framing of action-based blame ethics

Although it is the least salient of the thematic framing category, we start by examining thematic framing/action-based ethics, as this category is most tightly connected to the above-described episodic framing/action-based ethics combination. This category represents 8 percent of blame occurrences in the 2014 case and 12 percent in the 2016 case. While the condemnation is action based, its framing is thematic, as the actor is accused of engaging in a repeated pattern of actions through a broader viewpoint. While this type of blame focuses on action over character, its thematic framing and focus on repeated action illustrates certain malleability with the category of virtue-based blame: repeated action results in character-based judgments.

For example, in the 2014 case, Israel is accused of engaging in a repeated pattern of building settlements. L’Humanite blames Israel for ‘choosing to expand its construction of settlements which grew by 123% in one year’,¹⁸ while Russia Today quotes Secretary Kerry, who states, ‘There is a fundamental confrontation and it is over settlements – 14,000 new settlement units announced since we began negotiations. It’s very difficult for any leader to deal under that cloud’.¹⁹

In the 2016 case, the blame category ‘breaking a promise’ illustrated above as framed episodically can also be framed thematically as a repeated pattern. For example, John Kerry is quoted in Russia Today as claiming, ‘Four times, countries have said, “We will do this,” and four times, it’s been shredded by independent actors, by spoilers who don’t want a ceasefire’.²⁰

Our results show that action-based blame, when framed thematically, takes a more severe tone, as it posits a negative, repetitive pattern on the actions performed, potentially discrediting the interlocutor for future negotiations. The implicit narrative is that the conflict is solvable if actors change their continued policy.

Combination 3: thematic framing of virtue-based blame ethics

Within the context of thematic framing, the most salient ethical blame category was found to be virtue-based ethics for both cases: 36 percent of the blame occurrences in the 2014 case and 24 percent in the 2016 case. This pattern consists of blaming an actor for lacking key virtues, thus engaging in a kind of ‘character assassination’. As such, virtue-based blame is more destructive than action-based blame, as it attacks the character of the interlocutor. Such blame strategies claim that the negotiations failed due to an inherent failure in character of an actor.

The actor accused of being a terrorist/barbarian

The accusation of being a ‘terrorist’ and/or a ‘barbarian’ was found to be a salient approach. For the 2014 case, this is illustrated when coalition whip Yariv Levin is quoted in Israel HaYom as saying, ‘The true face of the Palestinians has been exposed again’.²¹ According to Levin, the choice of partnering with Hamas served to unmask the ‘true face’, that is, the intrinsic character, of the Palestinians. Here, he appears to be referring to a specific action which implicates fundamental virtue flaws, illustrating the malleability between action-based and virtue-based blame. Utilizing Fatah–Hamas reconciliation as virtue-based blame is also echoed by an Israel HaYom columnist:

The covenant between blood brothers, between the leaders of the ‘good’ terrorists from Ramallah, and the ‘bad’ terrorists from Gaza illustrates determines and confirms – they both have the same goal: the destruction of the State of Israel, not just expulsion of the settlers from Judea and Samaria.²²

This discourse makes the basic character assumption that Palestinians are a uniform entity, inherently violent ‘blood brothers’ characterized by the goal of the destruction of the State of Israel.

A similar type of character assassination is illustrated in the 2016 case through the accusation of being ‘barbaric’. This moral condemnation is cast by American ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power on both the Russian and Syrian leadership:

Instead of helping get lifesaving aid to civilians, Russia and [Syria] are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals and first responders who are trying desperately to keep people alive’.²³

Such a characterization is echoed by in New York Times, which reports that ‘The bombings were so ferocious that the United States and Britain accused Russia of “barbarism” and “war crimes” for backing the Syrian air campaign’.²⁴

2. The actor accused of being a manipulative hypocrite

A second manifestation of a virtue-based blame is blaming an actor for being a manipulative hypocrite, an accusation cast, in the 2014 case, following the Israeli cabinet decision to suspend negotiations due to the Fatah–Hamas reconciliation agreement. Palestinian actors and various media sources cast blame on Israel, by arguing that such a decision exposes the manipulative, hypocritical nature of the Israeli leadership. For example, Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, is quoted by the Washington Post as stating,

Benjamin Netanyahu and his government used the split between the Palestinian factions as an excuse to reject a peace agreement in the past. Today, they are using Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse for the same thing.²⁵

This blame pattern is echoed by Haaretz columnist, Amir Oren, who argues, ‘Reconciliation with Hamas is merely Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s transparent pretext for dodging acceptance of an agreement’.²⁶

In the 2016 case, for example, following President Putin denial of Russia’s role in the bombing of an Arab Red Crescent warehouse, the Washington Post reports that John Kerry accused,

Moscow of inventing its own facts to explain the air attack for which Russia is responsible. Kerry told the UN Security Council, ‘We don’t get anywhere by ignoring facts and denying common sense.²⁷

This accusation of inventing facts is further illustrated by the Moscow Times stating that ‘the [Russian] Defense Ministry’s version of events, that has been changing every 12 hours or so, strains credulity, creating what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described at the UN as a “parallel universe”’.²⁸

3. The actor accused of being a fake

Actors can utilize virtue-based ethics to blame an actor for acting in opposition to its own aspired identity. In the 2014 case, Israel is blamed by various actors for destroying its aspired democratic nature through its colonialist tendencies. For example, following the failure of negotiations, John Kerry declared to a closed forum:

A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens – or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.²⁹

While Kerry’s warning serves as blame for a future scenario, more critical actors use resolute language couched in apartheid discourse. For example, an Al Jazeera journalist writes,

Israel as a democratic state keeps on behaving as a colonialist by the expropriation of Palestinian land and illegal building of settlements….Israel must move beyond the mantra and behavior of a colonialist power, much like South Africans did.³⁰

In addition to building settlements, L’Humanite argues that Israel’s essence as a colonial power is illustrated through its behavior of refusing international involvement, insisting only on direct bilateral negotiations, an act which serves to ‘sanctify the lack of balance between occupier and occupied forces during the ‘negotiations’’.³¹ According to this approach, the insistence on direct negotiations between occupiers and occupied is not motivated to aim for real negotiations but a manifestation of an inherent colonialist nature.

In the 2016 case, the United States aspires to identify itself as a leader in fighting terrorism. However, Russia Today blames the United States for being out of touch with its aspired identity and condemns the United States for ‘rebranding terrorists and rebels based on interests on the ground rather than on a core definition’.³² This behavior, according to the Moscow Times, ‘can only be characterized as de-facto support of terrorists by the current U.S. administration’.³³ As such, while the United States aspires to lead the fight against terrorism, it is itself blamed for supporting terrorism.

This section illustrates how virtue-based blame is framed thematically: often historically based characterizations about the other actor is given via ‘character assassination’. This approach claims that the adversary has inherent character traits that prevent conflict resolution. While such blame is not completely distinct from action-based blame, as inherent character traits are based on repeated action, it emphasizes the unchangeable nature of such negative character traits.

Combination 3: thematic framing of conflict-essence-based blame ethics

Our coding revealed a third pattern that we call ‘conflict-essence-based ethics’, systematically framed thematically and representing 9 percent of blame occurrences in both 2014 and 2016 cases. This ethic posits that the concept of ‘the good’ is essentially a Western, imperialist, colonialist power structure used to both make sense of and wield power over a (judged as) chaotic part of the world: The Middle East. Blame patterns relying on this ethical approach (1) blame the conflict for being intractable in its essence and (2) blame the conflict resolution approach as being based on colonialist paradigms. Both sub-categories have the common denominator of taking a broad, meta-approach toward conflict resolution. Despite the relatively small amount of blame occurrences in each case, we argue that this category requires attention, as it points to an active attempt by political actors and media to alter the accepted conflict-resolution frame.

The conflict is essentially intractable

Superpowers’ attempts to mediate conflicts are based on the rationalist concept that by enabling shared interests, solutions to seemingly unbridgeable disagreements are possible. A conflict-essence-based ethical approach, which rejects the notion of ‘the good’ as an objective value which can be achieved, repudiates this assumption, as illustrated in the following quotation in New York Times:

It’s part of the pathology of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship that what one side demands the other side has a predisposition to reject. It’s one of the reasons that it’s so difficult to sustain negotiations, never mind get an agreement’ said an American official knowledgeable about the negotiations, speaking on the condition of anonymity under White House dictate.³⁴

This official depicts the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a Sisyphean ‘pathology’, casting doubt on the very assumption that a mediator can resolve a conflict whose essence is so intractable.

Similarly, in the 2016 case, the intractable nature of the conflict itself is blamed. For example, New York Times reports Kerry’s skepticism regarding the possibility of reaching a ceasefire:

The Syria deal, as Mr. Kerry himself conceded at the State Department on Monday, is far more complex, in part because there are so many other players, beyond Washington and Moscow, with stakes in the outcome. In private, he has conceded to aides and friends that he believes it will not work.³⁵

At least in private, Kerry concedes that rational conflict mediation cannot always succeed in a chaotic conflict situation.

The complexity of the situation, to which an ethic that aspires to achieving ‘the good’ is antithetical, is illustrated by the Moscow Times:

The ceasefire agreement faces daunting challenges: a gaping lack of trust between Moscow and Washington, unruly and suspicious local proxies, unhappy outside players in Iran and in the Gulf states, a hodgepodge of legal loopholes and lack of viable enforcement mechanisms. Its successful implementation is hard to fathom, but there is no other plan.³⁶

Here, the rationalist approach, which posits that every problem can be solved, is criticized and rejected in favor of a rather chaotic approach toward reality.

2. Conflict resolution is based on colonialist paradigms

This approach blames the essence of the conflict resolution paradigm as being dictated by colonialist power structures. In the 2014 case, this approach is manifested though the claim that peace negotiations based on the ‘land for peace’ post-1967 war paradigm ignores the inherent colonial nature of the State of Israel, as argued by an Al Jazeera journalist:

The emerging narrative assumes the occupation of Palestinians began two decades after Israel’s creation and crucially negates past historical facts like the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. This became the framework for future negotiations. A lack of reference to the root of the conflict; namely the expulsion and exodus of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians and the absence of restitution or compensation for their descendants is inherently why peace talks have failed.³⁷

Here, the journalist argues that peace negotiations are based on a colonialist paradigm which neglects the true sources of conflict and its injustice.

In the 2016 case, we identified a pattern that illustrates how this conflict-essence-based blame ethic can be utilized to blame Western powers for adopting a mistaken, Western-style emancipation reading of events in the Middle East. Here, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France are blamed in Le Figaro for

reading the Syrian Civil War with the same interpretation tools as used for the Arab Spring and therefore deciding to support the rebels as apparently democratic forces facing a brutal dictatorship.³⁸

Western powers are blamed for naively interpreting the Syrian civil war through a Western-style ‘David versus Goliath’ lens, when in fact, the situation is far more complex than this. In this blame category, the media organization connotes that the attempt by Western powers to dictate how ‘the good’ will be achieved, represents a problematic power structure, in which false assumptions prevent the possibility of conflict resolution. This contributes to frame the conflict as unsolvable due to its inherent nature and the skewed mediation.

In Table 2, we sum up our findings and their framing on potential future negotiations, explained in the following section.

Table 2.

The blame game frame and its impact on future negotiations.

Framing/ethical approach	Blame pattern	Framing of potential future negotiations
Episodic/action	Deontological: X blames Y for engaging in bad action.Consequentialist: X blames Y for engaging in an action that has bad consequences.	The conflict is solvable if actors act differently.
Thematic/Action	X blames Y for a repeated pattern of bad action.	The conflict is solvable if actors change policy.
Thematic/Virtue	X blames Y for having a deficient character.	The conflict is currently unsolvable because of the actor’s character.
Thematic/Conflict essence	X blames Y for assuming that there is such a thing as ‘right action’ that can resolve an intractable conflict.X blames the paradigm of conflict resolution as being based on colonialist principles.	The conflict is unsolvable because of the nature of the conflict and its mediation.

Conclusion and perspectives

Our research goal was to understand the nexus between ethical basis of blame, its framing (thematic or episodic), and its impact on future negotiations. We engaged with three ethical bases for casting blame: (1) action-based, (2) virtue-based, and (3) conflict-essence based. Our data showed that most action-based blame was framed episodically, thus validating Filak and Pritchard’s (2007) findings. Nevertheless, our results challenge prevalent literature (De Vreese, 2005; Iyengar, 1991; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000) which argues that episodic framing contributes to conflict escalation. In fact, our data reveal that in the case of blame, episodic framing of action-based blame allows for the prospect of future change. In this case, episodic framing offers limited moral condemnation, as it assumes that actors could take different action to potentially resolve the conflict. In the case of blame, our data demonstrated that episodic action-based framing is the least destructive option. Therefore, we suggest that further empirical research is needed to more extensively establish the conflict de-escalation potential of episodic framing.

Furthermore, our results show that thematic framing was consistently used for the three ethical bases for blame. Our content analysis challenges the prevalent literature (De Vreese, 2005; Iyengar, 1991; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000) which argues that thematic framing contributes to conflict de-escalation. In the case of blame, thematic framing is potentially more destructive than episodic framing, as it casts long-term, historically grounded, de-legitimizing judgments about (1) actions, (2) characters, and (3) situations, leaving little hope for future negotiations. While thematic framing that illustrates historical contexts is surely essential in the depiction of war, we found that in the case of blame, such thematic coverage is committed to reinforce negative characterization of other actors, rather than enabling different contextual information to allow for a re-evaluation of events.

Within the category of thematic framing, we found that action-based blame casts negative action as a repeated, longitudinal, behavioral pattern. Thus, the only hope for conflict resolution is portrayed as a change to such pathological behavior. Virtue-based blame, by passing judgment on the inherent character of an actor, engages in ‘character assassination’. Here, the negotiation breakdown is rooted in an actor’s deficient character, implying that conflict resolution could only occur with new actors. Such character assassination patterns corroborate previous research which shows how blame serves as a fertile ground for the naturalization of conflict (Friedman and Gavriely-Nuri, 2017; Kempf and Shinar, 2014).

Despite clearly different emphases between action-based blame and virtue-based blame, our results illustrated that there is some fluidity between the categories. While accusations of negative action, such as making a bad choice or breaking a promise, emphasize an act that could be rectified, leaving hope for positive future relations, they can lead to overall negative characterizations, particularly when framed thematically. Conversely, virtue-based blame, such as accusations of being a terrorist, a manipulator, or being fake, is based on a negative assessment of repeated action. The malleable borders between these categories must be acknowledged. Therefore, our conclusions regarding how different blaming patterns lead to distinct framing possibilities for future negotiations between the parties must be understood as a model for understanding the impact of blame. In reality, there is some elasticity between these effects: in particular, repeated action-based blame can lead a society to lose hope regarding the possibilities for resolving a conflict. However, the fact that each type of blame offers a different object of condemnation, action versus actor, implies a relative sense of hope or despair for future relations.

Finally, our results show that conflict-essence-based blame calls into question the very basis of conflict resolution. This ethical category is deeply thematic, historically rooted, and meta-ethical, as it calls into question the very foundations of how problems are framed in Middle East conflicts. This ethical category reaches beyond general thematic frames of the actions or characters, suggesting that we must redefine the conflict paradigm through an alternate lens, thus advocating a revisionist approach toward traditional conflict resolution paradigms. Referring to Entman’s Cascading Activation model, we argue that conflict-essence-blame serves as ‘frame contestation’ (Entman, 2003: 18), a complete alternative narrative which attempts to ‘pump’ new frames for understanding conflict resolution failure up the cascade to elite realms. This type of framing calls into question accepted frames and paradigms, as it questions both the possibility and basis of conflict resolution.

We suggest that further research is required to evaluate conflict-essence-based blame, with an aim to examine whether it can offer new paradigms for conflict resolution. Furthermore, there is a need to investigate the notion according to which elite newspapers tend to adopt thematic framing while the popular press adopts episodic framing (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000), as our coding revealed numerous examples in which the opposite trend was found. In general, further research is needed to clarify the relationship between the ‘blame game’ and populist communication, interpretative journalism, and/or extremist narratives (Corman and Schiefelbein, 2008; Herfroy-Mischler and Barr, 2017, 2018; Hamerlseers, et.al, 2017; Tibi, 2007). Alternatively, research could also potentially unveil new paradigm toward a culturally specific approach to conflict resolution and the role of journalism as a watchdog (Waisbord, 2000) in a solution-oriented journalism (Rosen, 2000).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jonathan Sobel and Jael Eskenazi for their dedicated work as research assistants on this project and Professor Zohar Kampf for his guidance and helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Author’s note

Both authors are considered first authors as they have contributed equally to the research and composition of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Notes

Author biographies

Alexandra Herfroy-Mischler is an associate researcher at the CNRS/CRFJ and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She completed her PhD at the Department of Media Studies, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, (Paris3), France. Her research focuses on developping methodologiocal tools in order to identify the various role of an event’s narrative when framed by old and digital journalism practices. Her research has identified the role of narrative in building post-transitional collective memory (2013; 2016), imposed silences in Counter-Terrorism and intelligence events (2015) or foster conflicts in jihadism (2017, 2019) and Peace negotiations. Her research can be read in Media, War & Conflict Journal, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Visual Communication.

Elie Friedman is currently a Lady Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Communications and Journalism and a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is an adjunct lecturer at University of Maryland and Bar-Ilan University. His research interests include political discourse in national and international contexts with an emphasis on public diplomacy and media studies. His first book (with Dalia Gavriely-Nuri) Israeli Discourse and the West Bank: Dialectics of Normalization and Estrangement was published in 2017 by Routledge. He has published articles in several leading discourse and communication journals.

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