Political satire and the Six Day War: a comparative content analysis

Political cartoons are powerful symbols used to convey a message in just a few simple images. Danjoux (2012), states that political cartoons identify the most important issues at the time and document how people interpret those issues. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the symbolism used in political cartoons in Israel and Palestine during the period of the Six Day War. The Six Day War was chosen as it provides a data set that allows the study of two opposing countries with diverse political and cultural conditions. The design method used to conduct research on the study was comparative content analysis and semiology. As Berg (2009) describes, content analysis is a "passport to listening to the words of the text and understanding better the perspective(s) of the producer of these words," or in the case of this study, images (p. 343). The political cartoons offer a chance for an investigation as to how the cartoons mediated public and government opinion of the opposing nations before, during, and after the war.