Media Framing

The coronavirus pandemic has attracted the international media since the first infection was identified in Wuhan, China in late 2019. Despite the similar frames all around the world, the present study assumes that international media have not portrayed the countries with confirmed outburst of the disease in similar terms. It is believed that diseases in the world are both political and biological. The present study, therefore, employs media framing, as conducted by Entman and Van Gorp, to analyze the first fifty VOA and BBC Persian news that covered the spread of COVID-19 in Iran. These agencies are chosen for their significant position in the western public diplomacy and their probable influence within the country. The results indicate that the outbreak of COVID-19 in Iran is framed in seven major frame packages: Iran at crisis, Iran as the source of regional and international threatening virus, lack of determination and confidence in decision making in Iran, Iran’s incompetence and disqualification as an ill-equipped system, lying and hypocrisy in Iran, violation of human rights, and finally, Islamic political ideology as a source of corruption.

This study investigates the ideological dimensions of media representation of the Russia-Ukraine crisis by comparing British and Arab online newspapers. Grounded in Fairclough's framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper investigates the narrative structure of The Guardian, The Sun, Arab News, and Gulf News in representing the conflict and how sociocultural and political contexts influence language use and framing strategies underpinning the ideologies. The study shows that British media, most especially The Guardian and The Sun, claim to mainly reinforce Western geopolitical narratives by framing Russia as an aggressor and Ukraine as a victim of war, emphasizing themes of democracy, aggression, and victimization. However, the media in the Arab world, such as Arab News and Gulf News, afford a more balanced approach that focuses on regional concerns like economic stability, humanitarian issues, and neutrality; on the other hand, it also covers a broad spectrum of views. Using such a comparison, this study exemplifies and contrasts the different ideological roots of media discourse within diverse cultural and political contexts. By pointing out how sociopolitical priorities and cultural values shape media framing, this study contributes to an understanding of the role that media plays in building global public opinion about international conflicts, more precisely in how media from different regions may frame the same event quite differently. This thus underlines the importance of cross-cultural media literacy and gives insight into the power of media in the perception-shaping process of a conflict.