Article Title:
Evolution of News Frames during 2011 Egyptian revolution: Critical discourse
analysis of Fox's News and CNN's framing of protesters, Mubarak, and the Muslim
Brotherhood.
Journalism and Mass Communication
Quarterly
Author:
Andrea L. Guzman
Introduction
The article is a critical
discourse analysis for U.S. news organizations (CNN and Fox) framing the key
participants of Egyptian revolution in online news content. The critical
discourse (quantitative methodological approach) is analyzing how the social
power abuse is reproduced and resisted by the text and talks of the political
and social context (Dijk, 2010). The author, Guzman, studied the portrayal of
how "multiple segments" of Egyptian society - like President Hosni
Mubarak and his government, Muslim Brotherhood, and anti-government protesters
- enacted and viewed for power during the revolution. It frames the online
texts and talks, from the American journalistic ideology, of people who seek
democracy ruling including Islam and Muslims as active participants.
This study is both using
analytical discourse aligned with framing theory (Reese, 2011); media (CNN
& Fox) portrayals selects a certain aspect (Egyptian participants’ online
news content) or a reality (Egyptian revolution) and make it salient to
examine a particular problem (mis-reporting of U.S. news organization to Middle
East news).
Author’s Claims
Guzman claimed that American
media didn’t play a direct role in the Egyptian revolution, but they
were interested to explain the events more clearly to the American audience. This
study is specially designed to show how U.S. news created the picture of
Egyptians’ uprising wrongly, because they considered Egyptian friends and
report them in a good frame if they are pro-U.S. and if not the face of “War on
Terror” appears.
Also, Guzman claimed that the
introduction of social media as a platform for news made framing more difficult
for scholars to define, because independent news organizations reports the
conflicts, local news organizations report about the governmental rulers,
international news organizations focuses on their enemies, and the social media
get all those possible and can be framed on social networks through
hashtags.
Findings
1. CNN
and Fox’s media coverage of Mubarak, Muslims’ Brotherhood and anti-governmental
protesters is supporting who is allied with U.S. and who is its enemy.
2. Media
frames and U.S. media portrayal of Middle East and African region is dynamic
and static, because frames change with the shift of focus from group to
another. And it is static too as U.S. based its report upon the degree of
involvement in the event.
3. U.S.
portrayal of the anti-government protester that the right will be in their hands
and they will take in charge, shift after 4 years when the military gained
power after Morsy.
Criticism
The idea of framing any of the
Egyptian revolution participants as enemies or allies depended on the idea of
“Orientalist Stereotypes.” And it is also affected by the U.S. human interest.
Guzman realized how online news
content shared by Egyptians in the revolution changed the way of glocalized spread of information. And the U.S. news organizations were very behind
focusing all their reports on Arab as terrorist due to September 2011 events.
But what actually happened from the author view is that U.S. news organizations
got affected by the outcomes of the Egyptian revolution participants’
contribution.
So, the lack of real news sources
can shift the reality of situations and blurring a real reporting for the
current events, resulting in using the history as a source of information and
the drama as the strategy of writing it.
Fox news coverage for Muslims’
Brotherhood was firstly trying to report how the White house is balancing
between Mubarak and anti-government protesters. But it turned finally to use
Bush-era opinions about Muslims’ Brotherhood and mixing it with Obama’s
resulted in blurring the real situation in the Egyptian revolution. So, media
portrayed frames of U.S. is both dynamic and static, according to Guzman.
References
Ayish, Muhammad. "TELEVISION
REALITY SHOWS IN THE ARAB WORLD: The Case for a ''glocalized'' Media
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Dijk, Teun A Van. "Critical
Discourse Analysis." (2010): Discourse in Society. Teun Dijk, Web.
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Guzman, A. L. "Evolution of
News Frames During the 2011 Egyptian Revolution: Critical Discourse Analysis of
Fox News's and CNN's Framing of Protesters, Mubarak, and the Muslim
Brotherhood." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (2015):
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Web. <http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/25/1077699015606677.abstract?rss=1>.
Reese, S. D. (2001). Prologue. In
S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, & A. E. Grant (Eds.), Framing
public life: Perspectives on
media and our understanding of the social world (pp. 7-31).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
