American Media covarge of Israel-Arab conflict - Essay Example

The given paper will prove that the way media depicts Arabs negatively affected the Israeli-Arab conflict. Media plays a very important role in our lives. According to psychological and sociological researches, that, as it seems to us, what others think of us and of those social groups to which we belong, has a very strong impact on how we perceive ourselves and as we build the relations with the surrounding society. It is obvious that in our eyes the opinion of society about us is formed under the influence of mass media.

If we think that the opinion of mass media is negative and mass media make strong impact on the opinion of people, it is obvious that we will consider the attitude towards us to be generally negative. We will consider that the social group to which we belong, suffers from the stereotypes, which are created in the opinion of other society. It is obvious that if we consider that the attitude in the society towards us is hostile, we start being hostile to it and we seek to separate from it, even from those elements, which are not subject to the influence of mass media.

The same way Arabs, being severely criticized by mass media, have to defend themselves, but when they try to do that, their behavior is immediately characterized as hostile. The misrepresentation and misperception of Arabs in North America’s media have largely affected the most significant political conflict in the Middle East. Most Arabs believe that American media and government affect Israel. This perspective of media’s influence is debatable, the both Israeli and Arabs’ sides would say the same thing.

In American media Hamas “Palestinian party run Gaza” is seen as terrorist organization using civilians as human shields in Gaza and Israel bombing Gaza to defense itself. Actually Hamas came to the power through the democratic elections and