Representation Of The "Self" And "Other" Of Arab Spring Reporting In CNN And AJE'S Online News Articles
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Date
2017-02
Authors
Hanan, Hasan Abdul-Razzaq Al Radhi
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This study aimed to explore the situation often referred to as the 'Arab spring' that
prevailed in the Arab world after 2010-2011 by analyzing CNN and AJE's online news
articles released in their websites 2013. The main concern of the study is to unveil the two
well-known agencies' ideologies in relation to the Arab spring upheaval and to discover how
their media discourse has been manipulated to control people's minds with respect to
countries involved in the Arab spring, namely, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. This goal
was achieved by using a combination of the following theories: 1) van Dijk's theory of
Semantic Macrostructure (1980) to examine macro and micro structures of CNN and AJE's
online news articles, 2) van Dijk's theory of Ideological Square (1998c) to examine CNN
and AJE's ideologies embedded within their online news articles and 3) Wodak's Discourse-
Historical Approach to endorse linguistic and ideological analysis of CNN and AJE's online
news articles. In addition, Fairclough's three-dimensional Approach was utilized to organize
the process of analysis of the study's data. The macro level of the linguistic analysis focused
on the semantic macrostructures of the online news articles to determine their global
meaning while the micro level of analysis examined the syntactic, lexical and rhetorical
structures of the same online news articles to determine their local meaning. The ideological
analysis was conducted to determine their ideological positive ''Self'' (in-group) and negative
''Other'' (out-group) presentations. Concerning Research Question 1, the findings revealed
that the CNN's final semantic macrostructure about Arab spring was outlined as the
following: "Amid complete failure of Islamists, Arab people still suffer from economical
difficulties, life hardship and power abuse".
Description
Keywords
Arab Spring reporting in CNN and AJE'S , online news articles