Abstract
This study proposes and applies an analytical framework of peace journalism (PJ) versus war journalism (WJ) in Israeli sport media during the 2023–2024 judicial reforms crisis and Israel-Hamas war. The framework operationalizes discursive impact through audience engagement (comment volume) and dominant sentiment (positive/cohesive, neutral/negotiated, negative/divisive), yielding eight outcomes from cohesion-enhancing to division-amplifying. Analyzing 7875 reader comments beneath 207 Hebrew-language articles covering Beitar Jerusalem, emblematic of Jewish nationalism, and Bnei Sakhnin, a flagship Arab-Palestinian club, findings show WJ systematically generates higher engagement and more negative sentiment. PJ elicits varied responses: supportive pre-war or when individually focused, but frequently hostile and oppositionally decoded during wartime. The study underscores PJ’s contextual contingency on timing and symbolic targeting, advocating balanced framing to foster inclusive discourse without claiming direct causation.
Keywords
Introduction
In the complex interplay of media, conflict, and identity, sport media is a potent yet underexamined arena for shaping public perceptions in divided societies. Sport’s symbolic power makes it a critical site for studying how media foster reconciliation or intensify polarization. This study investigates the efficacy of peace journalism (PJ) and war journalism (WJ) in Israeli sport media during the turbulent period from June 2023 to May 2024, marked by a polarizing political crisis over judicial reforms and the Israel-Hamas war post-October 7, 2023 attack. This analysis focuses explicitly on the Hebrew-language media sphere, which constitutes the dominant and agenda-setting public arena in Israel, where meanings about Jewish-Arab relations are primarily constructed, contested, and normalized.
The concept of “efficacy” is used here in a restricted analytical sense, referring to observable patterns of audience response associated with different media frames, rather than to demonstrated causal effects on attitudes or behavior. Engagement is measured exclusively through comment volume — a pragmatic but partial proxy, given well-documented skews in commenting behavior and the role of platform moderation in filtering audience responses. Unlike prior PJ research that has measured efficacy through attitudinal or behavioral change - such as shifts in intergroup perception or willingness to reconcile (Doll and Moy, 2022) - this study deliberately operationalizes efficacy through observable discursive consequences in the digital public sphere. This enables systematic comparison across articles and clubs without relying on survey measures, while avoiding claims about persuasion or long-term effects. Focusing on coverage of Beitar Jerusalem, emblematic of Jewish nationalism, and Bnei Sakhnin, representing Arab-Palestinian identity, the research proposes an efficacy model for PJ, evaluating its potential to bridge divides in wartime.
The theoretical framework draws on Hall’s (1980) Encoding/Decoding model, which highlights how audiences interpret media through dominant, negotiated, or oppositional readings shaped by social identity. In Israel, football fandom often mirrors ethnic and political alignments, with Beitar’s nationalist legacy contrasting sharply with Bnei Sakhnin’s symbolic role for Arab-Palestinians. Beitar Jerusalem, one of Israel’s most popular clubs, has never fielded an Arab player in its history - a stance defended by its hardcore fan base, La Familia, as preserving Jewish identity. Conversely, Bnei Sakhnin, based in a predominantly Arab town in northern Israel, became the first Arab club to win Israel’s national cup in 2004, serving as a source of pride and political expression for Arab citizens who comprise approximately 20% of Israel’s population.
Galtung’s (2002) PJ framework informs the contrast between reconciliation-oriented coverage and the divisive tendencies of WJ, while Entman’s (1993) framing theory guides analysis of how sport media constructs narratives. The study also incorporates Papacharissi's (2015) concept of the digital public sphere, acknowledging how online comments and platforms such as Facebook and X can amplify both pluralistic dialogue and affective polarization.
While research suggests sport media can foster inclusion in divided societies (Giulianotti, 2010), its role during active war remains underexplored. The dual crises of judicial reforms protests and the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948 heightened social tensions, with football coverage reflecting and shaping discourse around Jewish-Arab relations and intra-Jewish ideological divides. Beitar’s history of excluding Arab players and Bnei Sakhnin’s role as a cultural and political symbol provide fertile ground for examining these dynamics.
Two research questions guide the analysis. First, how do patterns of audience engagement and tone differ across PJ, WJ, and neutral coverage of Beitar Jerusalem and Bnei Sakhnin during the 2023-2024 crisis? Second, within the subset of high-engagement articles, what patterns of acceptance, resistance, or reinterpretation of PJ and WJ frames emerge among commenting users, and how do these patterns map onto the coherence or divisiveness of discourse as conceptualized in the efficacy model? Using a mixed-methods design that combines quantitative comment analysis with qualitative framing and sentiment analysis, the study aims to inform journalists, policymakers, and scholars seeking to promote more inclusive narratives in polarized societies through sport media.
Theoretical framework
This research framework outlines the theoretical and contextual foundations for examining audience responses to sport media in Israel between June 2023 and May 2024, a period marked by the government’s judicial reforms crisis and the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict post-October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The study investigates the efficacy of PJ versus WJ in sport media, focusing on two football clubs - Beitar Jerusalem, associated with Jewish nationalism, and Bnei Sakhnin, an Arab club representing key social divisions in Israel. The framework is structured into three parts: audience reception in sport media, PJ in the context of wartime mediatization, and Israel as a case study linking sport, identity, and conflict.
Audience reception in sport media
Sport media is among the most widely consumed forms of media globally, transcending national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Whether through live broadcasts, digital streaming, print journalism, or social media, sports coverage reaches billions of viewers daily (Billings et al., 2021; Rowe, 2004). While much research focuses on production practices and institutional dynamics, examining audience reception - how audiences interpret, negotiate, and respond to sport media - offers crucial insight into its cultural, political, and economic significance. This focus on journalism-audience relationships has gained scholarly attention in recent years (Hess et al., 2022; Uth et al., 2023).
The digital public sphere can foster both pluralistic dialogue and affective polarization. Online comments and social media posts (e.g., on Facebook, X, and Telegram) reflect these dynamics, amplifying or resisting media frames depending on engaged public positionality (Bennett and Segerberg, 2013; Papacharissi, 2015). Moreover, participatory actions such as commenting or creating user-generated content are increasingly encouraged by media organizations (Domingo et al., 2008; Shao, 2009).
Audience reception theory recognizes that audiences actively interpret media through dominant, negotiated, or oppositional readings shaped by social identity, lived experience, and cultural context (Hall, 1980). In divided societies, sport fandom amplifies these dynamics: Beitar Jerusalem’s association with Jewish nationalism contrasts sharply with the Arab identity of Bnei Sakhnin, generating polarized audience responses to coverage of each club (Bairner, 2001; Billings et al., 2021). Sport media can adopt WJ frames - emphasizing division and enmity - or PJ frames promoting reconciliation and inclusion (Galtung, 2002).
Peace journalism and the mediatization of war in sport media
The global increase in armed conflicts - with over 50 state-based conflicts reported in 2023 (Davies et al., 2024) - has renewed scholarly focus on media’s role in shaping public perceptions of war and peace. Media framing, as defined by Entman (1993), involves selecting certain aspects of reality to promote specific interpretations, thereby influencing public opinion and policy (Gamson et al., 1992; Gamson and Wolsfeld, 1993). In conflict settings, WJ tends to emphasize violence, binary narratives, and enemy images, which can exacerbate polarization (Ottosen, 2010), especially in the digital media environment (Nordbrandt, 2023). The active participation of social media users in sharing, responding to, and creating content further amplifies the emotional impact of conflict coverage (Steinert and Dennis, 2022).
PJ, by contrast, prioritizes reconciliation, humanizes all parties, and highlights structural causes of conflict (Lynch and McGoldrick, 2022; Doll et al., 2023). Various studies have examined its effects in wartime contexts (Anderson, 2015; Demarest and Langer, 2018; Ersoy, 2016; Hussain, 2017; Ibrahim et al., 2013), demonstrating that there remains significant scope to investigate how PJ affects societies (Doll and Moy, 2022; McGoldrick and Lynch, 2016). As Doll and Moy (2022, p. 273) conclude, “the effects of peace journalism remain understudied.”
Sports media - often overlooked in conflict research - constructs narratives that engage identity, belonging, and emotion (Billings et al., 2021). In divided societies, sports coverage can either reinforce social boundaries or promote unity (Giulianotti, 2010; Kertcher, 2021, 2025). Yet social media can also foster polarization by enabling echo chambers where like-minded individuals reinforce negative out-group perceptions (Beam et al., 2018; Horner et al., 2023; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019). Like political media, sports journalism reflects biases shaped by regional, ethnic, and commercial interests, portraying some groups as “enemies” or promoting cross-community empathy (Carrington, 2010; Van Sterkenburg et al., 2010). During wartime, it can be expected that readers will engage more with the articles projecting their ideology and suggest alternatives (Rowe, 2015).
By analyzing reader engagement alongside the tone and thematic content of audience responses, this study assesses the role of sport media in fostering either social cohesion or division during wartime. The findings aim to inform media strategies and policies that support inclusive narratives in conflict contexts. This framework integrates media reception theory, peace and war journalism, and sport media studies to evaluate the relative efficacy of PJ and WJ in Israel’s divided society during the 2023–2024 conflict.
Efficacy model of Peace Journalism and War Journalism.
The distinctiveness of this model lies in what enables scholars and practitioners to do, that prior conceptualizations did not. Whereas earlier PJ evaluations relied primarily on content analysis of journalistic output (e.g., Galtung, 2002; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2022) or on post-exposure survey measures (e.g., Doll and Moy, 2022), this framework integrates two observable behavioral traces - comment volume and dominant sentiment - to classify outcomes systematically across media strategies, clubs, and time periods. This makes it portable across digital news environments, enabling comparison without experimental or longitudinal designs.
Cohesion-enhancing outcomes are characterized by high engagement combined with positive/supportive sentiment, indicating that audiences accept and amplify the reconciliatory frame. Negotiated-constructive outcomes, by contrast, involve audiences who partially accept the PJ frame while introducing qualifications or counter-narratives - productive disagreement that nonetheless operates within a discourse of coexistence rather than division.
The model builds on prior attempts to evaluate PJ effects (e.g., Doll and Moy, 2022; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2016) but shifts focus from self-reported survey measures to observable behavioral traces in the digital public sphere. While high-engagement positive PJ represents the ideal-type outcome (“cohesion”), high-engagement negative responses to PJ may paradoxically worsen division by providing a platform for oppositional decoding and affective polarization.
Research on conflict resolution in divided societies emphasizes that intergroup contact and narrative transformation can reduce prejudice when power asymmetries are acknowledged (Bar-Tal, 2013; Maoz, 2011; Ron and Maoz, 2013), though such gains are fragile when broader societal narratives emphasize threat - a dynamic this study traces in the digital comment sphere.
High-engagement PJ with positive sentiment can foster tolerance, while high-engagement WJ with negative sentiment may deepen alienation. Moreover, high-engagement WJ with dominant positive sentiment may also encourage social divide by reinforcing in-group unity. This model guides the analysis of audience responses to sport media, accounting for changes in engaged public positionality as variables shift, such as article type, timing, and broader contextual factors.
Israel as a case study: Sport, identity, and conflict
Israel’s multicultural society is characterized by deep divisions, particularly between Jewish and Arab-Palestinian communities - who comprise approximately 20% of the population - and between liberal and Jewish nationalist groups (Lewin-Epstein and Cohen, 2018). The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and subsequent war - the deadliest for civilians since 1948 - intensified these divides, amplifying fear, stereotypes, and political extremism (Cohen, 2024; Kertcher & Turin, 2025). Football, Israel’s most popular sport, mirrors these tensions: Beitar Jerusalem, a symbol of Jewish nationalism, has historically excluded Arab players, while Bnei Sakhnin embodies Arab-Palestinian identity (Kertcher, 2012, 2021).
This study analyzes audience responses to 207 sport media articles and 7875 comments collected from June 2023 to May 2024, focusing on two key divides. The Jewish-Arab divide, rooted in historical trauma and mutual mistrust, shapes responses to coverage of Arab clubs versus Beitar Jerusalem (Bar-Tal, 1998; Bauer, 2002). Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel face conflicting social trends: some studies indicate an increase in Palestinian national identity alongside the rise of right-wing Jewish policies, which has deepened alienation from Israeli society (Rekhess, 2014; Rosmer, 2022). Others document increased economic and social integration in local governance, healthcare, and sport (Smooha, 2013, 2022).
The liberal-nationalist divide relates to the 2023 political crisis, driven by the Netanyahu government’s judicial reforms, which polarized Jewish society between liberal, multicultural visions and religious-nationalist ideologies (Winston, 2025; Yonah, 2005). Jewish citizens are split between those advocating for a multicultural, tolerant society and those supporting stronger religious and nationalist values (Lewin-Epstein and Cohen, 2018; Peled, 2018). Since the 1990s, Jewish nationalist sentiment has steadily risen, often accompanied by repressive attitudes toward perceived “others,” framed as threats to Jewish religious-national dominance and Netanyahu’s leadership (Cohen, 2024; Mautner, 2011; Winston, 2025).
These two cleavages - Jewish-Arab and liberal-nationalist - are analytically distinct but empirically entangled in the cases analyzed here. Beitar Jerusalem primarily activates the liberal-nationalist divide, with coverage generating intra-Jewish debate about nationalism, racism, and democratic values. Bnei Sakhnin, by contrast, sits at the intersection of both cleavages: as an Arab club, it triggers the Jewish-Arab divide, while simultaneously becoming a flashpoint for liberal-nationalist tensions when Jewish commenters disagree about the appropriate treatment of Arab citizens. Understanding which cleavage is most salient in a given article - and for which audience segment - is therefore essential for interpreting the efficacy outcomes observed in this study.
Research questions
Research Question 1: How does audience engagement differ across peace and war journalism, and neutral coverage of Beitar Jerusalem and Bnei Sakhnin during Israel’s judicial reforms crisis and the wartime with Hamas (October 2023-May 2024)? Research Question 2: What patterns of audience engagement-acceptance, resistance, or reinterpretation - emerge in high-engagement PJ and WJ articles?
This question employs qualitative analysis to examine audience responses to PJ and WJ frames, focusing on the top-performing articles for each club and media strategy. Drawing on Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model and Papacharissi’s concept of affective publics, the analysis identifies audience sentiment and narrative construction s (Rowe, 2015; Von Sikorski and Hänelt, 2016; Ziegele et al., 2014).
Methodology
This study uses a case study approach with a mixed-methods design to examine audience responses to sport media during judicial reforms crisis in Israel arising from Netanyahu’s contested reforms and the war with Hamas post-October 7 attack. By integrating quantitative content analysis and qualitative framing analysis, the study captures both broad patterns and nuanced interpretations of media frames. The methodology focuses on Hebrew-language sports media coverage of two football clubs - Beitar Jerusalem (symbolizing Jewish nationalism) and Bnei Sakhnin (representing the Arab-Palestinian minority) - to assess how audiences navigate social divisions through PJ and WJ frames.
Data collection
The corpus consists of 207 sports-related articles published between June 2023 and May 2024 on two major Israeli news platforms: Ynet (mainstream, centrist-liberal) and Walla (mainstream, center-right). These platforms were selected for their national reach and contrasting editorial stances.
It should be noted that both Ynet and Walla employ editorial moderation of their comment sections, which functions as an intervening variable in the audience engagement data. Moderation policies may suppress the most extreme content, meaning the comments analyzed represent a filtered - though still highly polarized - sample of audience responses. The gatekeeping role of these platforms should be understood as shaping, rather than simply reflecting, the discursive environment captured in this study.
Articles were collected using keyword searches for club names (בית“ר ירושלים, בני סכנין) in the sports sections, yielding: • 103 articles on Beitar Jerusalem • 104 articles on Bnei Sakhnin
Articles focusing solely on match scores or player transfers were excluded to prioritize coverage with social or political relevance. A total of 7875 audience comments were collected from the comment sections of these articles. Engagement is operationalized exclusively as comment volume; other metrics such as views, likes, or social media shares were not available for analysis. The focus on Hebrew-language platforms reflects an analytical decision to examine audience responses within the hegemonic media sphere, rather than to claim coverage of all communicative arenas in Israel’s fragmented public sphere.
Analytical approach
The methodology unfolds in three stages to provide a layered understanding of audience responses to PJ and WJ in sport media:
Stage 1: Qualitative Content Analysis (Framing)
The 207 articles were coded using Entman’s (1993) framing theory to identify PJ and WJ frames. Coding dimensions included: • Platform: Ynet or Walla • Date: Pre-war (June–September 2023) or wartime (October 2023–May 2024) • Headline and Main Topic: Identifying key narratives • Tone: ◦ Positive/integration-oriented (e.g., shared identity, peace narratives) ◦ Neutral (e.g., technical, match-related coverage, player profiles) ◦ Negative/exclusionary (e.g., suspicion, violence orientation, ethnonational tension) • Themes: e.g., national unity, empathy toward Arabs-Palestinian, patriotism, political protest, violence, dual national affiliation
Two coders independently assigned tone (positive/integration-oriented, neutral, negative/exclusionary) and themes to all 207 articles. To handle occasional mixed judgments (e.g., negative/neutral), categories containing negative elements were consolidated as negative. Pre-consensus percent agreement was 83.7% for tone and 91.3% for themes, yielding Krippendorff’s alpha of 0.76 (tone) and 0.90 (themes) (Krippendorff, 2004). Remaining discrepancies were resolved through discussion with the author to produce the final codes used in analysis.
Stage 2: Quantitative Engagement Analysis.
The total number of comments (7875) was counted to assess audience engagement. Articles were ranked by comment volume to identify high-engagement PJ and WJ articles, enabling cross-club comparisons.
Stage 3: Qualitative Analysis of High-Engagement Articles.
The 18 highest-engagement articles were purposively selected because they account for 29.3% of total comments despite representing only 8.6% of articles, confirming that a small number of polarizing pieces drive the majority of engaged public participation. We therefore explicitly analyze the most vocal and likely most polarized segments of the audience rather than claiming representativeness of all Israeli football fans. Rather than a flaw, this focus allows the study to assess whether PJ withstands contact with polarized audiences, a necessary condition for any broader societal impact. Two trained research assistants and the author conducted manual coding. Discrepancies were resolved through discussion, ensuring inter-coder reliability.
Researcher positionality and ethics
This study analyzes user-generated comments that frequently contain inflammatory, hateful, or discriminatory language directed at ethnic and political groups. The lead researcher and the coders are Israeli scholars positioned within the society under study, which provides linguistic and cultural competence but also necessitates reflexive awareness of potential biases. To mitigate this, coding frameworks were developed collaboratively, and multiple coders reviewed materials to ensure interpretive consistency.
Ethically, the study analyzes only publicly posted comments on major news platforms where users voluntarily contributed to public discourse with the understanding their comments would be visible. No private communications or personally identifiable information beyond publicly chosen usernames were collected. Direct quotations are translated from Hebrew; comments containing slurs were anonymized, and quotes are partially redacted to minimize harm.
Strengths and limitations
This mixed-methods approach provides a comprehensive analysis of audience responses, combining quantitative breadth (comment volume across 207 articles) with qualitative depth (tone and thematic nuances). However, reliance on comment volume as the sole engagement metric is a notable constraint: comment sections systematically over-represent active, opinionated users, and platform moderation introduces a filtering effect that the data cannot fully account for. Readers who engage silently — without posting — remain invisible to this operationalization. Limitations include potential bias in comment sections (e.g., self-selection of engaged users) and the inability to capture offline audience sentiments. The absence of passive audiences - readers who consume content without commenting - limits claims about persuasion or attitudinal change. However, silence in digital environments may reflect disengagement, avoidance, or reluctance to participate during wartime rather than indifference. Future research combining surveys, interviews, or clickstream data could assess whether peace-oriented coverage reaches broader, less polarized publics beyond the comment space.
The focus on Hebrew-language media excludes Arabic-language public spheres, which constitute parallel and often segregated arenas of discourse. This is not merely a technical limitation but reflects the fragmented nature of Israel’s media system, where Arab-Palestinian voices are frequently marginalized within dominant national platforms.
Quantitative findings
Quantitative data corpus.
These results are interpreted within the context of Israel’s entrenched social divisions (Jewish-Arab, liberal-nationalist) and the heightened tensions post-October 7 2023 Hamas attack. 1
Overall engagement patterns
The findings reveal clear differences in audience engagement across article types and clubs. Bnei Sakhnin accounts for 104 articles and 4316 comments (54.8% of total comments), compared with Beitar Jerusalem’s 103 articles and 3559 comments (45.2%). This is notable given Beitar’s status as one of Israel’s most popular clubs and the main football team in the capital, whereas Sakhnin is a peripheral town.
WJ articles dominate both in volume (108 articles, 52.1% of the corpus) and engagement (6208 comments, 78.8% of all comments), underscoring the capacity of conflict-oriented narratives to drive participation. Neutral articles (65 total) generated 912 comments, while PJ articles (34 total) generated 755 comments.
WJ articles averaged 57.4 comments, compared to 21.8 for PJ and 14 for neutral pieces.
Beitar Jerusalem: Nationalist symbol under scrutiny
Beitar’s 57 WJ articles generated 2901 comments (81.5% of the club’s total), averaging 50.9 comments per article. This reflects the club’s symbolic association with Jewish nationalism, which attracts attention for divisive narratives - especially before the war, when its controversial identity was a recurring topic.
In stark contrast, Beitar’s 21 PJ articles produced only 108 comments (3% of the club’s total), averaging 5.1 comments per article.
Beitar’s 25 neutral articles attracted 550 comments (15.4% of the total), averaging 22 comments each. This suggests moderate engagement with non-ideological content but confirms the stronger pull of polarized (WJ) over reconciliatory (PJ) or technical (neutral) narratives.
Bnei Sakhnin: Suspicion and polarization
A similar trend is observed for Bnei Sakhnin. The club’s 51 WJ articles generated 3307 comments (76.6% of its total), averaging 64.8 comments per article. This aligns with the expectation of increased engagement - often negative - toward Arab clubs during wartime, likely driven by heightened suspicion toward the Arab-Palestinian minority.
However, Sakhnin’s 13 PJ articles generated 647 comments (15% of its total), averaging 49.7 comments per article - substantially higher than Beitar’s PJ average. This challenges the assumption that PJ content always produces low engagement for Arab clubs, suggesting that integration-oriented coverage can provoke substantial discussion, potentially reflecting both supportive and oppositional stances (Papacharissi, 2015; Van Sterkenburg et al., 2010, 2019).
Sakhnin’s 40 neutral articles generated 362 comments (8% of the total), averaging just 9 comments per piece. The high share of neutral articles (37% of the club’s total) may indicate an editorial preference for avoiding ideological framing to reduce controversy. However, the low per-article engagement suggests limited audience interest in non-polarized narratives.
To summarize, the data highlights the role of sports media in amplifying social divisions during wartime. WJ’s dominance confirms its capacity to stimulate engagement through polarization, particularly regarding Arab clubs, aligning with Papacharissi’s (2015) affective model of digital discourse.
The negligible engagement with PJ articles on Beitar contrasts with the substantial engagement for Sakhnin’s PJ coverage, suggesting that integration-oriented narratives may have greater discursive potential when applied to Arab clubs.
These findings carry implications for sports journalism strategies: PJ may be more effective for Arab club coverage, but its timing and framing must be carefully considered to avoid backlash in times of heightened tension. The substantial imbalance between PJ and WJ framing in the media corpus - with WJ articles outnumbering PJ articles 3:1 - may have contributed to patterns consistent with social division in the comment space, although no causal inference can be established. However, establishing this as a definitive causal driver would require experimental or longitudinal designs that control for confounding variables. The correlation observed here suggests that media imbalance is one factor among many shaping polarization.
Qualitative findings: Commenting users to sport media in Israel, June 2023-May 2024
Quantitative data for 18 sample articles with highest engagement in each category.
The qualitative analysis focuses on the 18 highest-engagement articles in each category (PJ and WJ for each club), representing only 8.6% of articles but 29.3% of all comments. This purposive sampling strategy enables in-depth analysis of the most resonant media narratives, though it necessarily focuses on the most active - and likely most polarized - segments of the audience. Findings therefore illuminate peak engagement dynamics rather than average or representative audience responses. Generalizations about “audiences” throughout this section should be understood as referring specifically to these highly engaged commenters.
Audience responses to peace journalism about Bnei Sakhnin
This section analyzes the five most prominent audience responses to five PJ articles published in Hebrew sports media concerning Bnei Sakhnin during the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. The analysis draws on 607 online comments to explore the reception of PJ framing, which seeks to foster reconciliation and social cohesion through humanizing all parties and highlighting structural causes of conflict (Doll and Moy, 2022; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2022).
Pre-war and wartime periods showed markedly different reception patterns, reflecting how digital media can amplify affective polarization (Papacharissi, 2015). An article published September 3, 2023, highlighted opposition leader Benny Gantz’s empathy toward injured Arab midfielder Biram Kayal, framing his sporting contributions within a unity narrative in divided societies (Giulianotti, 2010). Positive and neutral comments dominated (“He will overcome this successfully… return quickly to Migrash[field]”), generating high-engagement, positive-sentiment responses that supported social cohesion (Anderson, 2015; McGoldrick and Lynch, 2016). However, even in this relatively depolarized period, some negative comments linked Kayal to pro-Arab sentiment, revealing PJ’s vulnerability to nationalist counter-framing (Bairner, 2001; Hall, 1980).
Post-October 7, PJ articles addressing personal tragedies faced heightened hostility. An October 20, 2023 article mourning Lior Asulin - a former player for both clubs killed at the Nova festival - elicited primarily low-engagement condolence messages with limited reconciliatory potential (Bar-Tal, 1998; Bauer, 2002). High-engagement negative comments included anti-Arab slurs and demands for Arab leaders to condemn Hamas, aligning with WJ patterns that polarize rather than unify. This shift indicates wartime conditions amplified politicization of sports figures’ identities (Entman, 1993; Ottosen, 2010).
When PJ framing featured Arab leadership - as in a March 19, 2024 Ynet article quoting Bnei Sakhnin chairman Muhammed Abu Younes on the national anthem controversy - responses were overwhelmingly hostile. Only four of 24 comments were positive or neutral; the majority accused Abu Younes of hypocrisy. The wartime context and symbolic weight of national rituals constrained PJ’s capacity to foster cross-group empathy (Demarest and Langer, 2018; Hussain, 2017).
Two mid-October 2023 Walla articles addressed integration challenges faced by Arab players. Although dozens of supportive comments rejected hate (“Our problem is Gaza and Hamas”), the majority - 130 of 166 in one article, 268 of 306 in the other - were high-engagement negative posts demanding Arabs “choose sides” or using inflammatory stereotypes (“Every Arab in Israel has the potential to be a terrorist”).
Three patterns emerge: First, timing shaped receptivity - the pre-war Kayal article elicited cohesive responses, while wartime articles provoked entrenched hostility. Second, personal stories generated more empathy than collective identity debates, though even these were susceptible to nationalist reframing. Third, negative engagement consistently outweighed positive, with hostile comments dominating threads.
Negotiated/neutral comments (13.4 % of the high-engagement corpus) proved heterogeneous. Three sub-types emerged. First, conditional engagement partially accepted the PJ premise but added a qualifying clause: “You can understand the problem, but when you play for the national team you have to show belonging” or “The interview is nice… but still, the punishment is ridiculous.” Second, structural redirection rejected both PJ and WJ frames and pivoted to an alternative political grievance: “Stop generalizing - should we all be hated because of the hilltop youth?” or “What does this have to do with the occupation?” Third, meta-disengagement addressed the thread itself rather than the article: “I’m genuinely asking - are there still people who care about football? How do you find interest with everything going on outside?” These responses confirm that the neutral/negotiated category is not merely residual but a distinct discursive space of partial acceptance, redirection, and wartime exhaustion, nuances aggregate sentiment coding necessarily flattens.
In summary, PJ framing briefly fostered supportive engagement when highlighting individual achievements in less polarized periods. However, during acute conflict, such framing was frequently overwhelmed by high-engagement negative responses that reinforced division. These findings underscore PJ’s limited transformative potential in deeply divided societies during crisis.
Audience responses to peace journalism about Beitar Jerusalem
This section examines the five most prominent audience responses to five PJ articles in Hebrew sports media concerning Beitar Jerusalem, drawing on 85 online comments. The analysis explores how PJ strategies intended to promote reconciliation or unity were received amid heightened Jewish-Arab and liberal-nationalist divides (Ibrahim et al., 2013; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2022).
A Ynet article published September 2, 2023, prior to October 7, reported an Israeli-Arab-player joining Beitar Jerusalem’s women’s team, framing it as Jewish-Arab coexistence. Of 35 comments, 14 were positive or neutral, praising the inclusive step. Negative responses, however, targeted Beitar’s perceived racist image or questioned the player’s loyalty, highlighting challenges in overcoming the club’s entrenched nationalist identity.
Four Walla articles (October 13, 2023; December 7, 2023 [two articles]; May 12, 2024) covered Beitar’s symbolic gestures - building monuments, holding solidarity ceremonies, commemorating fallen soldiers. While adopting PJ frames of unity, these avoided explicit Jewish-Arab reconciliation, limiting cross-group empathy (Demarest and Langer, 2018). Across 50 total comments, positive responses lauded Beitar’s contributions to Jewish solidarity, reinforcing in-group cohesion but potentially deepening polarization by excluding out-groups (Ottosen, 2010). Some negative comments rejected Beitar’s symbolic role, linking it to political grievances: “a bunch of racists who took over the government”; “nationalist rhetoric serving a harmful political agenda.”
These cases reveal PJ’s mixed reception. Pre-war coexistence narratives garnered some support but faced identity-based resistance (Hall, 1980). Wartime symbolic gestures strengthened Jewish in-group unity but rarely bridged ethnic divides and occasionally triggered political backlash, highlighting PJ’s vulnerability in polarized contexts (Demarest and Langer, 2018; Peled, 2018).
Audience responses to war journalism about Bnei Sakhnin
Two case studies examine WJ coverage of Arab football during the conflict escalation, drawing on 870 comments: the national anthem controversy (566 comments) and Palestinian National Team coverage (304 comments).
Two articles - one Ynet, one Walla - reported Bnei Sakhnin fans turning their backs during the Israeli national anthem and booing an Israeli-Ethiopian military reservist. These WJ-framed articles generated 566 comments (222 Ynet, 344 Walla), with 83% exhibiting negative sentiment targeting Arabs: “Don’t buy from Arabs”; “Revoke citizenship of everyone who disrespected the anthem”; “Those who oppose the Jewish state do not belong here.”
Three secondary negative themes emerged: linking Arabs with left-wing activism (“We have no tolerance for Kaplanists”), intersecting anti-Arab rhetoric with anti-government sentiment targeting Jewish settlers (“Then expel all the settlers too”), and referencing ultra-Orthodox Jews as a parallel group rejecting national symbols (“Try singing Hatikva at an ultra-Orthodox gathering”). These intersections show how WJ framing exacerbated both Jewish-Arab and liberal-nationalist divides.
Positive comments (12%), primarily on Ynet, expressed support for the Israeli-Ethiopian player or national pride. A few Walla comments advocated empathy (“They are not Hamas”). These lower-engagement comments had minimal cohesive impact.
The second case study assesses two articles (Ynet, November 15, 2023; Walla, March 28, 2024) that covered Israeli-Arab players joining the Palestinian National Football Team, framed through WJ to highlight disloyalty. Across 304 comments (153 Ynet, 151 Walla), 88.5% were negative, frequently labeling players as terrorists (“A terrorist in soccer boots”; “Faces of Hamas terrorists”) and demanding citizenship revocation (“Choose: Israeli or Palestinian”). Bnei Sakhnin was accused of hypocrisy, and Arabs were portrayed as existential threats (“99.9% of Israeli Arabs… hate us”). Approximately 10% of comments acknowledged players’ rights or separated sports from politics, but their low engagement rendered them ineffective against dominant hostility.
Both case studies highlight WJ’s capacity to intensify negative discourse, particularly when emphasizing symbolic defiance (anthem) or explicit adversarial alignment (Palestinian team). The anthem case elicited some intra-Jewish tension, while the Palestinian team case was framed almost entirely in existential terms. Positive and neutral comments, though present, were overshadowed by antagonistic responses shaped by WJ’s binary framing, encouraging echo chambers that reinforce polarization (Beam et al., 2018; Horner et al., 2023).
Audience responses to war journalism about Beitar Jerusalem
Two case studies examine WJ coverage of Beitar Jerusalem, based on 752 comments: politicization of football (504 comments) and violence against left-wing demonstrations (248 comments). These illustrate how WJ intensified inflammatory rhetoric, primarily reinforcing the liberal-nationalist divide.
Articles published 4 days before October 7, 2023, framed Beitar and La Familia as symbols of violence and government-aligned extremism, highlighting ties to far-right Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Across 504 comments (169 Ynet, 335 Walla), 90% were negative, criticizing Beitar, La Familia, and the government rather than targeting minorities. Comments attacked Ben Gvir’s character (“utterly terrifying”), likened La Familia to militias (“Ben Gvir’s Revolutionary Guards”), and accused the government of promoting racism (“turned Beitar into a racist and repugnant team”).
Positive and neutral comments (9.5%) defended Beitar or endorsed law and order. Some included extreme nationalist rhetoric (“eliminate the Amalek seed… to preserve pure Judaism”), while others urged removing hooligans from stadiums, reflecting high-engagement responses that often reinforce in-group solidarity within exclusionary frameworks.
Articles addressing Beitar fans’ violence toward left-wing demonstrations generated 248 comments (180 Ynet, 68 Walla), with 83.5% negative. Anti-protest comments portrayed demonstrators as opportunistic and unpatriotic, with some explicitly endorsing violence (“a shame Beitar fans didn’t step up to beat them”). Others accused media of left-wing bias (“never able to report honestly”). Conversely, anti-Beitar comments compared fans to terrorists (“worse than Arabs!”) or labeled them government enforcers (“Bibi and Ben Gvir’s stormtroopers”).
Positive and neutral comments (15.7%) either endorsed Beitar’s actions, minimized incidents, or proposed institutional solutions like blacklists or increased fines.
WJ framing amplified divisive rhetoric across both cases. In politicization of football, hostility targeted political figures and far-right culture; in protest violence, it split between anti-left delegitimization and condemnation of Beitar extremism. The liberal-nationalist divide dominated, with the Jewish-Arab divide surfacing occasionally. WJ’s conflict narrative reinforced in-group boundaries, with positive comments rarely fostering cross-group solidarity.
The side-by-side analysis of these emblematic clubs thus underscores how sport media frames navigate multiple, interacting cleavages, offering portable insights for conflict journalism beyond the Israeli context.
Conclusion
This study advances scholarly understanding of PJ in sport media by analyzing audience responses to coverage of Beitar Jerusalem and Bnei Sakhnin during Israel’s turbulent 2023–2024 period, judicial reforms crisis and post-October 7 war. The efficacy model, integrating engagement levels with tone and thematic content, elucidates media strategies’ interplay with social divisions in wartime, extending reception and conflict journalism frameworks (Galtung, 2002; Hall, 1980; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2022).
Quantitative findings show WJ dominating coverage (52% of articles, 79% of engagement), driving higher comment volumes - especially for Arab clubs postwar - and negative sentiment, reflecting affective polarization (Papacharissi, 2015; Van Sterkenburg et al., 2019). PJ about Bnei Sakhnin elicited substantial engagement but frequent resistance and oppositional decoding, while PJ tied to Beitar generated low participation, underscoring entrenched identities (Bar-Tal, 1998; Peled, 2018).
Qualitative analysis reveals WJ intensifying divides (75% divisive comments) consistent with WJ’s tendency to emphasize binary narratives and enemy images (Entman, 1993; Ottosen, 2010). High engagement is therefore not a neutral indicator of success, but often signals heightened discursive toxicity, particularly under wartime conditions. Yet, pockets of negotiated readings (13.4%) advocate coexistence supporting audience reception theory’s emphasis on active interpretation (Billings et al., 2021; Hall, 1980). PJ stimulates debate but risks backlash when poorly timed, as wartime context often overrides reconciliatory intent (Doll and Moy, 2022; McGoldrick and Lynch, 2016).
Placing Beitar Jerusalem and Bnei Sakhnin side by side yields insights that a single-club study could not produce. The contrast reveals that PJ’s efficacy is not a universal function of framing strategy alone, but is conditioned by the symbolic valence of the club involved: PJ generates negligible engagement when applied to a club (Beitar) whose audience views nationalist identity as non-negotiable, while it generates substantial, if frequently oppositional, engagement when applied to a club (Bnei Sakhnin) that occupies a contested space in the national imagination. This suggests that the identity of the symbolic subject is as consequential as framing.
These findings advance PJ scholarship by demonstrating sport media’s dual role as both a divisive force and a potential catalyst for dialogue in conflict settings (Giulianotti, 2010; Kertcher, 2021; Kertcher, 2025; Van Sterkenburg et al., 2010). The analytical framework proposed here highlights that high-engagement PJ with positive sentiment is associated with more cohesion-oriented discourse, while poorly timed or framed PJ is associated with increased polarization (Anderson, 2015; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2022). The model does not claim universal audience behavior, but offers a portable analytical framework that can be tested across linguistic spheres, conflicts, and media systems.
The correlational nature of this study cannot establish definitive causation, and the findings should not be read as evidence of attitudinal or behavioral change among audiences. Rather, they document observable discursive patterns — the measurable footprint of media framing in the comment space — consistent with the study’s explicitly limited operationalization of discursive impact as a proxy for efficacy. Yet the systematic patterns observed across 207 articles and 7875 comments suggest that media framing choices are one important factor shaping discourse in conflict settings (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019).
For media practitioners, these findings suggest the value of context-aware PJ strategies, particularly during wartime when nationalist sentiments and mistrust prevail (Doll et al., 2023). For policymakers, the results highlight how patterns of media framing are associated with different forms of public discourse, rather than providing direct evidence for the effects of specific interventions (Gamson and Wolsfeld, 1993). Any policy application should therefore be approached cautiously and ideally complemented by causal research designs.
For sport journalists working in divided societies, this study offers three practical takeaways derived from the efficacy model. First, timing is determinative: PJ framing is most likely to generate cohesion-enhancing responses in lower-tension pre-conflict or inter-conflict periods; deploying PJ during acute war risks providing a platform for oppositional decoding. Second, individual-focused narratives outperform collective identity narratives in generating empathetic responses, even in polarized contexts. Third, journalists should anticipate that high engagement is not a reliable proxy for positive impact - in wartime conditions, high-engagement PJ articles may amplify divisive discourse more than low-engagement ones.
Several limitations constrain these findings. The focus on Hebrew-language platforms excludes Arabic-language media consumption patterns among Arab citizens, potentially missing alternative public spheres where different dynamics prevail. The analysis of comment sections captures only actively engaged users willing to post publicly, likely overrepresenting polarized voices relative to the broader public. Engagement measured solely through comment volume is a partial proxy that does not capture passive audiences, private discussions, or offline reactions.
The researcher’s positionality as an Israeli scholar, while providing cultural and linguistic competence, necessitates ongoing reflexivity in interpretation. In addition, the study’s correlational design cannot establish whether media framing drives polarization or whether polarized audiences selectively engage with congenial content — likely both processes operate simultaneously. Establishing causal effects would require panel surveys, experimental designs, or field interventions beyond the scope of this study.
Future research should pursue longitudinal analyses to assess the durability of these trends, incorporate Arabic-language media to capture a broader range of audience perspectives, and examine offline responses; comparative applications — for instance to football coverage in post-conflict Balkan societies — would further test the model’s portability.
Footnotes
Acknowledgement
The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, as well as to the participants of a 2025 workshop organized by the Center for Sport Diplomacy at Ben Gurion University of the Negev for their insightful feedback with the ideas presented in this article.
Ethical considerations
This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.