Visual framing of Muslim women in the Arab Spring: Prominent,active,and visible

Western media portrayals of Muslim women

For the past half century, scholarship on the portrayal of Muslim women in Western media has yielded several consistent themes: Muslim women live in poverty and sadness in conflict-ridden places (Fahmy, 2004; Falah, 2005; Roushanzamir, 2004); they are covered from head to toe as ‘unattractive and uneducated’ slaves, a ‘submissive nonentity’ in male-dominated societies (Shaheen, 2000: 26–28); or, quite differently, they are seductive, sexual objects, using their sexuality to cloak their terrorist intentions toward the West (Nacos, 2005).

An iconic early example is Leila Khaled, a Palestinian who in 1969 was part of a team that hijacked a TWA flight on its way from Athens to Damascus (Nacos, 2005). In the Western media, she was the first Muslim women who gained attention as a female terrorist (Bickerton and Klausner, 2010; Nacos, 2005). Photographed wearing a headscarf and holding an AK-47, Western news described her as a stunning, beautiful hijacker with her ‘dark-eyed pin-up look’ (Nacos, 2005: 439). She was called ‘the glamour girl of the international terrorism,’ or the ‘bombs’—referring to her breasts (p. 439). The Iranian Revolution in 1979 brought another wave of coverage of Muslim women, and Western reports framed Iranian women as ‘sexually available underpins’ for Muslim men (Hirji, 2011: 34), symbols of ‘traditionalism, violence, terrorism, fanaticism,’ as well as the ‘oriental other,’ who are ‘faceless,’ ‘emotional,’ ‘impoverished,’ and ‘oppressed’ (Roushanzamir, 2004: 24). In the 1990s, the Gulf War and the Chechen War brought more Muslim women into the focus of the Western media as passive victims, cooks, the weak supporters of men, domestic captives, and the ‘black widows’ (Hirji, 2011: 97).

After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Western media’s negative framing of the Muslim women continued, and some scholars suggest it worsened (Fahmy, 2004; Falah, 2005). This time, Afghan women, covered head-to-toe by Burqas, were brought to the top of international news headlines (Ayotte and Husain, 2005). In these images, Afghan women were often faceless, framed as passive victims, dehumanized, without identities, enslaved, victimized, and insecure others who needed liberation from Taliban (Ayotte and Husain, 2005; Fahmy, 2004). In 2002, the suicide attack of Wafa Idris, a 32-year-old Palestinian woman, once again found Western media portraying a Palestinian woman as a beautiful terrorist (Nacos, 2005). Beginning in 2003, the Iraq War prompted additional attention of Western media to Iraqi women, who were often framed as passive victims or active suicide bombers and terrorists (Falah, 2005; Manley, 2009).

These portrayals can be understood in relation to portrayals of Western women in Western media. Western women, too, are generally portrayed in less powerful and positive positions compared to men (Carlin and Winfrey, 2009; Goffman, 1976; Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles, 1996; Wasburn and Wasburn, 2011). Further, Western women largely receive media coverage in gender-specific boundaries such as femininity, appearance, personality, attractiveness, and wardrobe (Carlin and Winfrey, 2009; Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles, 1996; Wasburn and Wasburn, 2011). However, a stark difference in Western media is the depiction of Muslim women as deviant, enslaved, dehumanized oriental ‘others’ (Ayotte and Husain, 2005; Fahmy, 2004; Roushanzamir, 2004).

Muslim women in the Arab Spring and Islamic feminism

The Arab Spring and its waves of uprisings across the Arab world was also a revolutionary event for Muslim women, as they played foundational roles in regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen (Anderson, 2011; Gelvin, 2012). Coleman (2012) argues that women’s participation was a key inspirational element for other opposition groups and minorities to stand against the regimes in the Arab world. Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian, Nobel Peace Prize winner and a human rights activist, even claims that the Arab Spring would have not succeeded without the vast and active participations of women (WWICS, 2012). Sahar (2011) calls the Arab Spring ‘the Arab Feminist Spring,’ arguing that women joined the uprisings mainly to gain their own freedom and rights (p. 692). Moreover, Power (2012) names the Arab Spring an action of ‘sexism’ of women in the Arab world (p. 39).

Muslim women played crucial and courageous roles as active participants in the anti-government protests during Arab Spring (Sahar, 2011). Women were the organizers of several demonstrations and led online propaganda efforts to globalize the uprisings (Jadallah, 2011; WWICS, 2012). Generally, women were on the frontlines, carrying slogans and flags, and men strongly encouraged them to chant and speak, because male protestors thought women’s voices were heard better the men’s (BBC, 2011; WWICS, 2012). This expanding social and political activism was met with resistance. Throughout the Arab uprisings, many women were harassed, beaten, chased, sexually assaulted and even raped by ‘state and nonstate actors’ (Marcus, 2011: 2). For example, in Egypt some women suffered virginity tests by male military forces, some were raped, and some were dragged and beaten on the streets during the protests (WWICS, 2012).

Muslim women’s roles and their courage in the Arab uprisings gained international attention, including in Western media. Some examples include: Antelak Tawakkol Karman, a 32-year-old Yemeni female activist who shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize (Kasinof and Worth, 2011). Razan Zaitouneh, a Syrian human rights lawyer who has publicized the Assad regime’s brutality since 2005, went into hiding in 2011, was kidnapped by a group of armed men in December 2013. Her whereabouts remains unknown (Human Rights Watch, 2015). Manal Al-Sharif, a Saudi woman, gained worldwide attention when she filmed herself driving a car. The New York Times reported her Facebook campaign, ‘Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself,’ was inspired by broader uprisings across the Arab world demanding new freedoms (Mackey, 2011, para. 3).

A large number of these Muslim women advocate gender-equality and broader human rights in Arab societies through Islamic feminist ideals, which in detail are quite distinct from Western feminism. Scholars note that feminism is a cultural ideology that has grown many branches based on secular, religious, racial, and ethnic values across the world (Badran, 2002; Hirschmann, 1997; Wadud, 2002). Feminists in different parts of the world fight for different kinds of freedom, because what is considered women’s freedom in one culture, might mean ‘unfreedom’ in another culture (Hirschmann, 1997: 464). In other words, women in different parts of the world are privileged some rights and deprived of others (Waugh and Wannas, 2003). Among feminist branches, Islamic feminism ‘is a feminist discourse and practice articulated within an Islamic paradigm,’ which ‘seeks rights and justice for women, and for men’ based on ‘understanding and mandate from the Quran’ (Badran, 2002, para. 1). Islamic feminists argue that religion gives them more power (Eltantawy, 2007; Waugh and Wannas, 2003).

The practice of veiling in public is one example where cultural differences in feminist ideology are apparent. Islamic feminists define the veil as a symbol of ‘resistance,’ ‘agency,’ ‘cultural membership’, and ‘morality’ (Hirschmann, 1997: 464–466). They claim that the veil gives women more control of their bodies and makes them less likely to be viewed as sexual objects (or victims) in male-dominated societies (Eltantawy, 2007; Waugh and Wannas, 2003). However, from a Western feminist perspective, the veil is a symbol of inequality, barbaric Islam, domestic violence, and oppression (Hirschmann, 1997: 464). Islamic feminists disagree with the anti-veiling feminist ideologies—arguing that Western feminism exploits women, making them sexual objects more than providing them sexual freedom (McDonald, 2006; Debating France's new Burqa Ban, 2011; Haddad et al., 2006; Waugh and Wannas, 2003).

News sociology and visual framing

News sociology focuses on analyzing the factors inside and outside media organizations that influence media content, suggesting that news content is social construction rather than an objective reflection of reality (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). News content reflects the ‘experiences, personalities, and knowledge’ of the people who create it, in which in-group individuals are often portrayed as normal, and out-group individuals are framed as abnormal (p. 4).

In their hierarchy of influences model, Shoemaker and Reese (1996) identify five factors—ideology, external media forces, organizational factors, routines of journalism work, and individual-level characteristics—that create a continuum of macro to micro influences on media content, with the macro level forces exerting the greatest impact. Ideology, the most powerful factor, is a ‘relatively formal and articulated system of meanings, values, and beliefs of a kind that can be abstracted as a ‘world-view’ or a ‘class outlook’’ (p. 222). Ideology integrates societal interests in that some values and beliefs are defined as acceptable, while other values ‘are read out of legitimacy’ (p. 225). Studies show that the US media tend to cover those international events that are in violation with their own cultural-ideological norms (Chang et al., 1987; Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). ‘The more deviant an international event is, the more likely it is’ to be covered in the US media (Chang et al., 1987: 399–400).

News frames are the result of content production processes defined by news sociology.

Entman (1993) notes that news frames are based on common cultural values, which help journalists make sense of social issues and problems. Routines in news work add to the framing process, as journalists exercise their professional values (e.g., news values) to determine what makes news (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). News frames become the extension of journalism routines, as journalists seek to package information to fit their professional norms and audience expectations (Scheufele, 1999).

News frames can have important media effects. Frames assign attributes to issues and people in the news, making these attributes more salient by highlighting and connecting them ‘so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation and/or solution’ (Entman, 2004: 5). Framing can be used in ‘making new beliefs available about an issue, making certain available beliefs accessible,’ or making existing beliefs ‘strong’ in people’s evaluations (Chong and Druckman, 2007: 111). Framing occurs through verbal and nonverbal attributes, including visual images (Coleman and Banning, 2006: 313).

Visual images have strong communicative power (Mandel and Shaw, 1973: 355), as they contain facial expressions and gestures that give emotion to the image and create intimacy between the image subjects and audience (Hoy, 1986; Kobre, 1999). Images, like words, that have cultural resonance are likely most influential, as they are understandable, memorable, and emotionally charged (Entman, 2004: 6).

Like other media content, visual images are influenced by news sociology factors in two phases: news gathering and news production (Barnett, 2003; Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011). First, visual frames occur before the image is taken by environmental factors and journalists’ choices of lens distance, placement of the subject in the frame, camera angles, and lighting (Barnett, 2003). The second phase of visual framing happens after the photo is taken by ‘digital manipulation’—using certain software, cropping, color changing, and so forth (p. 108). Research has identified important visual framing devices are focal point, lens distance, depiction, and image dominance (Barnett, 2003; Hoy, 1986; Kobre and Brill, 2008; Mandel and Shaw, 1973; Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011). These visual framing techniques, used as measures in this study, are explained briefly below.

Focal point is a way of framing the most important parts of the image (Codak, 2010). ‘The primary and secondary focal points create a hierarchy that guides viewers through the visual narrative,’ (para. 3), illustrating which parts of the image are most important and relevant to telling a visual story.

Lens distance is another way of placing emphasis in a visual image (Hoy, 1986). Long shots capture the whole figure of a subject at a distance that implies isolation, loneliness, strangeness, and otherness (Fahmy, 2004; Hoy, 1986; Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011). Medium shots are known as ‘waist up shots,’ in which subjects are photographed from an acceptable social distance (Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011: 55). Close shots hone in on the dominant elements in the image, providing the potential for emotional intimacy with the image’s subjects, through their faces and expressions (Kobre, 1999).

Visual depictions are often defined as active and passive (Fahmy, 2004; Goffman, 1976). In active depictions, subjects are in powerful positions such as leading, controlling, helping, ordering, etc. (Fahmy, 2005; Falah, 2005). In passive depictions, subjects look as motionless, sad, shy, quite, and receivers (Bullock and Jafari, 2000; Fahmy, 2005; Falah, 2005; Goffman, 1976; Hardin et al., 2002; Rantanen, 2005; Ross-Sheriff, 2006).

Image dominance results from news production and reflects how visual editors package and place images among all news content. An image is dominant when it appears with the news headlines, title, and summary on the front page of a publication or website (Hardin et al., 2002; Schwalbe et al., 2008). In contrast, all other photos appearing inside the news stories are non-dominant; they are usually smaller than the dominant image (Hardin et al., 2002).

Sample

The sample of this study was drawn between 1 January 2013 and 31 March 2013—a 3-month consecutive sample. A total of 1460 images about the Arab region were published on CNN and Al-Jazeera, of which 419 (28.7 percent) included Arab women in the primary or secondary focal point. Twenty-two Arabic-speaking countries and territories comprise the Arab region: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates (AUE) and Yemen, plus Israel and Palestinian territories (Gelvin, 2012). All news images that included Arab women from the above countries on CNN English and Al-Jazeera English websites during the 3-month period were included in the sample.

The study included only still images to limit each unit of analysis to a single image, which can be analyzed more accurately and objectively for framing variables (Coleman and Banning, 2006); conversely, video motion pictures consist of as many as ‘30 frames per second’ (Schwalbe et al., 2008: 453) with many different variables that complicate the process of analysis (Barnett, 2003; Garber, 1990: 136; Grimes and Drechsel, 1996). Also, still images—as standalone content—tell their own stories and influence people’s decisions about whether to read a news story (Zillmann et al., 2001). Still images are the images news consumers encounter when they come to the website, whether they watch the videos or not.

Images that were the opening frame for video stories were included in the sample, as these images are still until activated (clicked on).

Measures

The visual framing variables were focal point, lens distance, visual depiction, the presence of a Hijab (veil) and dominance.

The primary focal point is the most important element of the image, the point that first attracts the viewer’s eyes (Codak, 2010). It is the closest or biggest person or object, or the element in the image to which other people inside the image were attracted. Multiple people were the primary focal point when they were of equal size in the image, of equal distance from camera, and equally focused.

Visual depiction was measured as active, passive and can’t tell. Active depictions included women moving, helping, instructing, ordering, attacking, fighting, and leading others (Fahmy, 2004; Goffman, 1976). Passive portrayals included women who were motionless, in quiet poses, looking away from the camera; receiving aids and help from others, or watching others who are active (Fahmy, 2004; Falah, 2005; Goffman, 1976; Hardin et al., 2002).

Lens distance was coded as long, medium, and close-up (Hoy, 1986). A long shot captured the entire figure of a woman/women with some background (Hoy, 1986; Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011). A medium shot captured a woman/women from head to waist (Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011). A close-up shot focused on the face (portrait), and included a woman/women from the shoulders up. In a few images close shots focused on parts of a woman’s body (hands, foot or feet) (Hardin et al., 2002; Hoy, 1986).

Hijab was measured based on the presence of a veil and visibility of the faces and heads of Arab women in the primary focal point. It was coded in four categories: 1) face-veil—full faces covered including eyes, or faces covered except for eyes, 2) full faces visible but heads covered, 3) no Hijab, and 4) other (Hirschmann, 1997).

Image dominance was measured based on the placement of the images. Dominant images appeared on the homepage, positioned at the top of stories with news headlines, placed first or at the top of photo essays, or packaged as a still image that could be clicked on to begin a video in the news report (Hardin et al., 2002; Schwalbe et al., 2008). Non-dominant images were published inside the news stories and photo essays, and were smaller than the dominant image.

Inter-coder reliability

The first author coded all the images (n = 419) and was the primary coder of the content. To ensure a level of consistency in coding, a second coder analyzed a random sample of 40 images (20 each from CNN and Al-Jazeera), about 10 percent of the entire sample (Wimmer and Dominick, 2011). Cohen’s kappa was calculated to measure the inter-coder reliability, or the level of agreement between the coders on each variable (Riffe et al., 2005). The kappa coefficients ranged from .928 to 1—focal point (1.0), Hijab (.930), depiction (.939), and lens distance (.928)—reaching a high level of reliability on all variables (Fleiss et al., 2003).