Humanitarian Actor Representation in Gaza Freedom Flotilla News Reports: A Transitivity Analysis

Abstract

This study examines how Al Jazeera English (AJE) and The New York Times (TNYT) represent humanitarian actors in their online coverage of the 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, focusing on the textual dimension of Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis as operationalized through Halliday and Matthiessen’s transitivity system. Rather than pursuing Fairclough’s full three-dimensional model, the analysis is delimited to the lexicogrammatical level, treating participant roles, process types, and circumstantial elements as the primary evidence of ideological positioning. Using a qualitative descriptive design, four online news reports (two per outlet, published May–October 2025) were analyzed at clause level. The findings show that AJE assigns humanitarian actors as the Actor role in 41.3% of clauses, embeds them predominantly in material processes (64.5%), and frames their action through circumstances of Purpose and Means, constructing them as deliberate, self-directed agents. TNYT instead assigns the Goal role most frequently (36.4%), relies more heavily on verbal processes (29.4% versus 13.8% in AJE), and foregrounds circumstances of Place marking displacement rather than intention, constructing humanitarian actors as participants who are acted upon rather than agents who act and speak for themselves. These patterns show that ideology here is not asserted through explicit commentary but built cumulatively through recurring, consistent grammatical choices, and the study makes explicit the interpretive steps by which such patterns can be read as ideological rather than incidental.