ABSTRACT
For many decades nuclear threats have been at the top of the international agenda. In the Middle East, threat and mistrust are particularly prominent due to its history of war and ongoing religious conflicts. This chapter compares the content of two prominent Israeli newspapers with different political ideologies when reporting on the development of Iran’s nuclear program over a ten-year period. Using semantic network analysis, we found that the main narrative told by the two Israeli newspapers was about the fear of war with Iran. Additionally, both outlets displayed similar frames: Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, negotiations for peace and sanctions, missile attacks on Israel, the election of a hard-liner president in Iran, and its economic resources. Together with similarities, we found that each newspaper emphasized different solutions to the problem: diplomacy and international pressure in the more leftist newspaper vs. economic sanctions and military actions in the centrist newspaper, reflecting their different political agendas.
