Jazz Ward
Mass media holds a vast level of power over people. It controls not just our schedules, our communications, and our serotonin, but also how and why we think about current events. Critical thinking may be encouraged when reading academic papers or encountering divisive online rhetoric, but how has mass media shaped our thoughts when we read about ordinary or everyday news? The media can create an illusion in the way it presents certain news articles, steering us to accept a point of view while we remain unaware that we have abandoned our critical thinking. Consequently, mass media can strongly influence how we classify tragedies. Mass media indirectly controls international legal discourse and directly effects victims of genocide, delaying their redress and ability for justice.
Consider the ongoing genocides in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Palestine. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has seen around 7 million people displaced and more than 25 million people experiencing food insecurity since Rwandan refugees sought safety in the country.[1] Identifying the cause of such a bloody conflict is multi-faceted and rooted in historical precedents, and importantly it’s largely dependent on how the media reports it. Most sources attribute the start of the first war in 1996 to the influx of Rwandan refugees.[2] However, refugees do not just simply appear or flee, there are hundreds of causes and perpetrators behind each unique situation. And for time’s sake, it’s understandable that media sources don’t analyze everyone, but by the media labeling the cause of a war as simply due to incoming refugees, perpetrators are relieved of liability and blame.
We can look to a phenomenon called media manufacturing to understand the dire consequences of this surface level reporting. Media manufacturing occurs when companies use specific words to “evoke emotions, sway opinions, and influence narratives.”[3] Although this can occur on the large scale by picking and choosing what stories to share or report on, it often happens in small pieces that go largely unnoticed. CAIR Los Angeles investigated media manufacturing at play with reporting on Palestine and Gaza. It found that media conglomerates employ dehumanization tactics and passive voice to slowly influence their readers’ minds and opinions.[4]
Media Manufacturing
Passive Voice
“Passive voice is used to emphasize an action rather than the subject… News headlines report that Israelis die actively after being ‘killed’ or ‘butchered’ by Hamas, while Palestinians passively ‘lose their lives’ or ‘die’ with the attacker being left unnamed.”[5] Similarly, the ongoing conflict in the DRC has spanned twenty years as armed rebels continue to fight over minerals and natural resources present in the region. The natural resources at issue is coltan which is used in mobile phones.[6] Simply reporting on the demand for the coltan, without analyzing where the demand originates, largely ignores assigning any blame. This employment of passive voice avoids engendering guilt or angering any western nations: “The surge in mobile phone production (from 60 million to 250 million units) drives soaring demand for coltan, fueling violence in the DRC as armed groups seize mines to fund operations.”[7] Without concocting a timeline of colonialism and events leading to the demand for coltan, the media seemingly blames the DRC itself for having such internal conflict over natural resources.
Dehumanization
Dehumanization is when one group denies the humanity of another group, and Genocide Watch lists it as one of the Ten Stages of Genocide.[8] When a group has their humanity taken away, it is easier to justify violence against them. Mainstream media and members of the U.S. and the Israeli governments have used dehumanizing rhetoric to refer to Palestinians, including calling them “human animals,” “monsters in Gaza,” and “children of darkness.”[9] Although these words can seem obvious in their attempts to influence the dehumanization of Palestinians, dehumanization can take place unassumingly. Calling immigrants ‘aliens’, ‘illegal’, ‘convicts’, or ‘prisoners’, instills in readers a sense of moral inferiority and danger. This leads those readers to lose humanity for the people they describe and feel less outraged when genocides and tragedies occur.
How does this affect anti-genocide work and international legal accountability?
These reporting styles directly affect public opinion which shapes how we manage the ongoing conflicts.
On September 16th, 2025, The United Nations Human Rights Council offered a telling conclusion on the ongoing tragedy in the Gaza strip.
The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the following actus reus of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.[10]
Although the UN confirmation of a genocide offers some hope for more international outrage regarding the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, it also begs the question of why the Council needed two years to recognize such a tragedy. One likely answer is in public opinion, which has largely changed as the media reporting has changed, specifically with the rise of social media reporting. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that on “social media, many of the barriers and gatekeepers that exist in traditional media are not a factor. Indeed, Gazan journalists have had significant success in reaching audiences on platforms such as X, Instagram, and TikTok.”[11] Subsequently, other states have begun recognizing the tragedy unfolding in Palestine and taken concrete steps to recognize Palestine’s rights in the international community. Canada, the U.K., Australia and other countries will formally recognize Palestine as a state.[12] Correspondingly, in the U.K., 44% of the population supported recognizing Palestine as opposed to 18% against it.[13] Although the United States has yet to recognize Palestine as a state, a new poll conducted in the United States shows plunging U.S. public support for Israel’s war on Gaza.[14] Only 32 percent of survey respondents said they approve of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, down 10 points from last year.[15] Public opinion directly influences democracy and that public opinion is considerably influenced by mass media. [16]
Concluding Thoughts
Advocacy plays a huge role in distributing international aid and assistance. Democracy relies on public opinion when deciding where to send limited resources and energy. When media outlets subjectively report on tragedies by undermining certain groups, they allow international states to avoid responsibility. Citizens hold their governments accountable through advocacy and the threat of losing re-election, and similar means should be available to hold the media companies themselves accountable when they sway public opinion for their own advantage. The United States has yet to recognize Palestinian statehood and changing public opinion could unlock the path toward justice for Palestine. The Western perpetration of armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has largely gone unnoticed simply because of the reporting of mass media companies. Without international outrage regarding how governments are influencing and using mass media to further their own goals, the perpetrators will continue to escape unscathed in international conflicts. Recognition of genocide is crucial to obtain the proper support and backlash necessary to hold perpetrators accountable. That recognition starts with accurate and unbiased reporting.
[1] War in Congo, Panzi Foundation (Nov. 6, 2009), https://panzifoundation.org/war-in-congo/ (discussing how Rwandan refugees were forced to flee during their country that was experiencing its own genocide.)
[2] Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1996-Present, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Nov. 2024), https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/democratic-republic-of-the-congo/1996-present (“The first war in 1996 began as a direct result of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.”); War in Congo, Panzi Foundation (Nov. 6, 2009), https://panzifoundation.org/war-in-congo/ (“After the Rwandan genocide, 2 million Rwandese refugees, including members of militias responsible for the genocide, flee into eastern Congo (then Zaire), destabilizing the region.”); Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Global Conflict Tracker, (June 9, 2025), https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/violence-democratic-republic-congo (“The First Congo War (1996–1997) began in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.”); A Guide to the Decades-Long Conflict in DR Congo, Aljazeerza, (Feb. 21, 2024), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/21/a-guide-to-the-decades-long-conflict-in-dr-congo (DRC conflict begins as a major spillover of ethnic wars in neighboring Rwanda.”)
[3] How the Media Manufacturers Consent for Genocide in Gaza, CAIR California, (Jan. 10, 2024), https://ca.cair.com/updates/how-the-media-manufactures-consent-for-a-genocide-in-gaza/
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] War in Congo, supra note 1.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Legal Analysis of the Conduct of Israel in Gaza Pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Rep. of the Hum. Rts. Council, U.N. Doc A/HRC/60/CRP.3 (2025)(emphasis added).
[11]Georgios Karagiorgos et al., Gaza Through Whose Lens?, Center for Strategic & International Studies, https://features.csis.org/gaza-through-whose-lens/index.html#:~:text=From%20Television-,to%20TikTok,a%20user%20only%20one%20perspective (last visited Sep. 30, 2025).
[12] Chandelis Duster, U.K., Canada and Australia Recognize a Palestinian State, Despite U.S. Opposition, National Public Radio, (Sep. 21, 2025), https://www.npr.org/2025/09/21/nx-s1-5549084/uk-canada-recognize-palestinian-state-australia
[13]Matthew Smith, Britons Support Recognising Palestinian Statehood by 44& to 18%, YouGov, (Sep. 19, 2025), https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53016-britons-support-recognising-palestinian-statehood-by-44-to-18
[14]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/29/new-poll-shows-plunging-us-public-support-for-israels-war-on-gaza
[15]Ali Harb, New Poll Shows Plunging US Public Support for Israel’s War on Gaza, Aljazeera, (July 29, 2025), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/29/new-poll-shows-plunging-us-public-support-for-israels-war-on-gaza
[16]Legal Analysis of the Conduct of Israel in Gaza Pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Rep. of the Hum. Rts. Council, U.N. Doc A/HRC/60/CRP.3 (2025).