“Paddy pointed his pseudo-liberal finger at us”

An analysis of civilian public diplomacy films following the 2023 Hamas terror attack

Bibliographic Data

ID21642002
AuthorsElie Friedman (0000-0003-1235-9136, Ashkelon Academic College, corresponding author), Ayelet Kohn (0000-0002-0871-4492, David Yellin College of Education)
Year2025
Volume28
Issue3
Pages325-355
Publication date2025-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Communication Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1071-4421 • E-ISSN: 1547-7487
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10714421.2025.2524988
OpenAlexW4411833447
LanguageEN
References cited64

This study engages in multimodal semiotic analysis of six citizen-produced public diplomacy films, from a corpus of 56 films, created in wake of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Southwestern Israel, following the perceived failure of official public diplomacy efforts. Utilizing multimodal semiotic analysis, this study illustrates how such films employ the richness of multimodal communicative acts, that is textual speech acts combined with visual and aural communication, to “do” something in the world. The study examines multimodal communicative acts that express feelings of betrayal, while attempting to elicit a range of audience emotions. Furthermore, the study illustrates how these films utilize double articulations to engage in condemnation and blame, in which specific audiences are called out for hypocrisy or obtuseness, while broader audiences are challenged to join the in-group in solidarity by taking action. The study illustrates how multimodal communicative acts in public diplomacy situations can serve as a unique tool that civilians employ in complex public diplomacy situations, employing a rich interplay among modalities to produce various perlocutionary effects, such as the facilitation of solidarity, the mobilization of support and calls to action, and the elicitation of shame, while implying that indifference is comparable to betrayal

Computer security · Diplomacy · Political science · Politics · Public Diplomacy · Computer Science · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Public Relations and Crisis Communication · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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