Sharing Across the Battle Lines? Israeli and Lebanese Blogs in the 2006 Lebanon War

Priscilla Ringrose

Abstract


This article focuses on six English-language “media blogs” authored by Israeli and Lebanese bloggers during the 2006 Lebanon war. These blogs were featured in the global Western media and represent a wide spectrum of political allegiances. The authors used their blogs to promote their interpretations of the war to their global readership communities. Their attempts at persuasion were undertaken directly by means of political discourse, and indirectly, by means of references to global popular culture. Using a rhetorical approach, I examine the extent to which these strategies—used by bloggers across both national and ideological divides—exhibit commonalities of form and content. I demonstrate that there is commonality in rhetorical forms across ideological and national divides, as well as some commonality of rhetorical content across the national divide. Finally, the comments sections of these blogs reveal the limited effects of persuasion on the other national blogger community.

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