Abstract
In this study, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was utilised to examine the Al Jazeera Arabic news website with respect to its reports on the social actors in the Yemen war, particularly the KSA, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain coalition and the opposing Houthis, both before and after the Gulf crisis that occurred on 5 June 2017. The analysed data included a total of 32 news articles related to the war in Yemen, with 16 articles covering the period prior to the Crisis, from 2015 to 2017, and 16 covering the period following the onset of the crisis, from 2017 to 2019. The overall aim was to uncover the ideological implications of various linguistic elements, such as lexical choices, news headline creation, and de-legitimisation strategies, and the results revealed identifiable, distinct, and non-random changes in tone and angle of representation relating to the various social actors and their actions. Before the crisis, the coalition was represented positively while Houthis was presented negatively, while after the crisis, the tone towards these social actors was completely reversed. The various discursive strategies used in the articles across both periods thus show that the coverage of the Yemen crisis was intended to ideologically and politically guide readers’ understanding of the crisis.
Keywords
Introduction
Internet-based news now has widespread availability, making it much more accessible for most individuals than ever before. News outlets have thus increased their power to frame the perceptions of individuals concerning policies and government decisions, and global news institutions compete against one another to frame public opinion of the social actors involved in wars, utilising language in various ways to convey their chosen messages (Hoskins and O’loughlin, 2010). In any functional democracy, press freedom and independence are fundamental, and many studies support the significance of freedom of the press in such situations (Curran, 2005, 2012). The majority of scholarly publications, however, have focused on press freedom in terms of covering local issues, paying little attention to how host governments enable news media to cover foreign events.
Similarly, only a limited number of scholarly studies have examined transnational news agencies’ effects beyond their home countries’ national borders (El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2003; Lynch, 2006; Miles, 2010; Zayani, 2019). The coverage of the Yemeni crisis by Al-Jazeera thus provides an interesting opportunity to examine the autonomy of news media when covering a foreign event. This case also allows examination of whether Al Jazeera openly supported the host country, namely Qatar, in common with several other news organisations, even in liberal democracies, or whether the institution demonstrated a greater level of professionalism in reportage. This study thus applies a critical discourse methodology to explore how the Al Jazeera News Group covered the war in Yemen, with particular reference to its attitudes towards the social actors involved, as well as examining whether the eruption of the Gulf crisis had any influence on its coverage of the war. This should provide insights into the articulation of ideology in Al Jazeera news reports based on thorough examination of the linguistic constructions used to communicate events, and the focus of this study is thus within the purview of critical discourse analysis (CDA) studies, adding to the body of existing literature on Arab media discourse as well as advancing the field of scholarship in this area (Abdulmajid, 2019; Ali and Omar, 2016; Al-Jenaibi, 2014; Al Nahed, 2016; Bazzi, 2009; Bosio, 2013; Damanhoury and Saleh, 2017; Douai, 2019; El-Nawawy and Strong, 2012; Ethelb, 2016; Fahmy and Al Emad, 2011; Kharbach, 2020; Lahlali, 2011; Paletz and Hafez, 2001; Zayani, 2019; Zeng and Tahat, 2012).
The work begins by providing a comprehensive brief background of the socio-political context relating to the case study, including an overview of the Al Jazeera news outlet, a history of the war in Yemen, and the background to the Gulf crisis.
Al Jazeera
The Al Jazeera news channel, based in Qatar, is part of the vast Al Jazeera Media Network. Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA), which is a subsidiary of the media network, first appeared in 1996, offering the first Arabic-language news channel to provide a 24-hour uncensored news service to an international audience. The AJA news website followed in 2001, at which point Al Jazeera was generally considered a credible global source of news among Arabic people, who deemed it to be a more trustworthy source than clearly western sources such as the BBC and CNN (Johnson and Fahmy, 2008). The channel’s ongoing commitment to reporting controversial topics across both the western and Arab worlds helped to increase its credibility for that audience.
In the US, however, Al Jazeera was accused of spreading anti-American sentiment while simultaneously aiding terrorists such as Osama bin Laden during the period following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, as well as during the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Conversely, some Arab governments accused it of being an agent of the CIA and serving American interests in the region (Pintak and Ginges, 2008; Zayani and Ayish, 2006). The news corporation itself claims that all branches of its media network operate under the same principles, with the intent to give a voice to the voiceless (About Us | Today’s Latest from Al Jazeera, n.d.). The Al Jazeera Arabic website, AJA, was therefore selected as a case study for this work, which seeks to ascertain whether the Gulf crisis influenced representation of social campaigners and military action throughout the war in Yemen.
The war in Yemen
The ongoing war in Yemen is rooted in the early 2011 Yemen uprisings, when the people demonstrated for regime change. During this period, Saudi Arabia, acting as leader of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), intervened in an attempt to prevent civil war in Yemen. The international community in the form of the United Nations supported Saudi Arabia’s intervention, constructing a plan known as the Gulf Initiative, which aimed to support an orderly and peaceful transfer of power. This succeeded in convincing the former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to step down to allow for the elevation of Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi as a consensus candidate in February 2012. Once Hadi took power, however, Saleh allied with the Houthis, who had previously been his opponents, to subvert Yemen’s democratic transition. The Houthis, who call themselves أنصار الله (Supporters of Allah), are an armed Shia Muslim group with goals arising from both religious and political interests (Gasim, 2018). The group was founded in the 1990s, and its main slogan was ‘Allah is the greatest, death for America, death for Israel, curse the Jews, victory for Islam’. On 21 September 2014, the Houthis took control of the Yemen capital, Sanaa, along with many other Yemeni cities, with assistance from forces loyal to Saleh. The Houthis subsequently forced Hadi to resign following a siege of the presidential palace, and Hadi thus announced war against the Houthis, requesting military support from the Gulf states. At that point, Saudi Arabia announced a new military coalition of nine Islamic Sunni countries, with the key members of the coalition being Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Sudan, Egypt and Morocco. The coalition aimed to restore the legitimacy of the Yemeni government by liberating Yemen from Houthi influence and expansion (Darwich, 2018).
However, during the war in Yemen, the Gulf Crisis occurred suddenly in June 2017, and the coalition ended all Qatari military support and ordered the withdrawal of Qatari ground soldiers from Yemen. Further, although Qatar was originally a key member of the coalition, it is still not clear whether the exit of Qatar obstructed other coalition military operations in Yemen (ibid).
The Gulf crisis
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain severed their diplomatic ties with Qatar during the Gulf crisis, withdrawing their ambassadors, imposing air, land and sea embargos on the peninsula and ending Qatar’s GCC membership on 5 June 2017. This rift was triggered by an article posted on Qatar News Agency (QNA) quoting the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, offering praise and support to Iran, the Palestinian movement Hamas, and the Lebanese Hezbollah, as all of these entities were seen as terrorists by Saudi Arabia and its allies. The GCC further declared additional reasons for Qatar’s rejection, however, which included accusations that Qatar had meddled in the affairs of the other GCC countries, attempting to sow the seeds of instability and negatively impacting the GCC. In addition, Qatar was accused of financing various additional terrorist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS, as well as the Qatar-based Al Jazeera News Media allowing the voices of such groups to be heard more widely. Qatar firmly denied these as baseless accusations, regretting the GCC’s decision to cut ties; it claimed that QNA and its twitter account were hacked, and that investigation was ongoing into the situation with the help of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the British National Crime Agency. Such statements were not taken seriously by the Saudi government and its allies, however.
Claiming that the Gulf crisis was a consequence of the Qatari government’s efforts to crate independent foreign policy combined with the effects of the Al Jazeera channels’ offering a voice to those accused of terrorism, the remaining GCC countries imposed 13 demands on Qatar to end the hostility. One of these was the cessation of Al Jazeera news, while another was that Qatar cut ties with Iran due to accusations of Iran’s support for the Houthis (Ulrichsen, 2020). Alongside the diplomatic rift between Qatar and the Saudi-led coalition, however, a heated ideological war was growing in the media. Discourse was the fuel for this media war, and this research paper thus seeks to look beyond the direct discourse between parties on the Al Jazeera Arabic website (AJA) during the Gulf Crisis to the more specific discourse on the war in Yemen as a way to explore whether such discourse was affected.
Literature review
The academic study of Arab media discourse has accrued a substantial body of research, and two main themes have been identified within this. The first is theoretical, with a focus on conceptualising Arab media discourse, while the second is empirical and focuses on examining Arab media outlets’ outputs. With regard to the first trend, a growing number of studies have conceptualised Arab media discourse as a trend within a specific cultural, social and geopolitical setting (Ayish, 2002; Douai, 2019; Pintak, 2010; Rugh, 2004, 2007; Thussu, 2006). For example, in his study of changes to Arab media discourse on the advent of new technologies, Douai (2019) explained that the emergence of social media platforms had created a “post-truth” era in which “the networking affordances of digital and social media platforms” are challenging traditional mainstream media flow (p. 131). Ayish (2002), however, discussed the political communication patterns connected to the historical development of television broadcasting in the Arab world, noting three main types: traditional government-controlled television with strict editorial norms which is treated as a mouthpiece for regional and international government policies; reformist government-controlled television, which is more liberal version than the previous version in that media organisations are given restricted freedom to cover regional and international events; and liberal commercial patterns, which adopt western-media norms in their coverage based on critical and pluralistic views of society. To some degree, Al Jazeera is an excellent example of this model.
Rugh (2004, 2007) suggested that the three patterns of Arab media platforms are connected with specific political systems. The mobilisation category is associated with authoritarian, one-party systems in which the leading class exploits the media to mobilise and support its political agenda. In contrast the loyalist category, while also connected to authoritarian systems and, as such, used by such systems is far less aggressive. The final system type in this framework is the diverse media system, exemplified by a variety of voices and viewpoints. Thussu (2006), however, classified media discourse into two major types: the controlling Western flow that dominates the international media industry and a lower status contra-flow containing the discourse of Arab media outlets like Al Jazeera. These discrepancies highlight the difficulty of conceptualising the broader frameworks in which Arab media discourse operates, with most classifications failing to capture their nuanced complexity. Politics and Arab media discourse are symbiotically linked, creating a dynamic system in which Arab media discourse constantly changes, depending on the current ruling elites or other regimes (Rugh, 2007).
Empirical patterns are thus more focused on examining Arab news organisations’ output. Three literature-produced trends can be identified in this regard: the first is comparative studies involving Al Jazeera and other international media outlets, the second is comparative studies of Al Jazeera and other Arabic media outlets, while the third and most frequent is direct comparison of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, analysing the media production of Al Jazeera on an individual basis. This pool of studies is too large for a short review, however, so the current focus is only on those studies of direct relevance to this research topic, that is, those reflecting the media discourse of Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera versus International media
The Al Jazeera channel has already been the focus of multiple comparative studies, with comparisons made with a range of different international media outlets in terms of output. Several researchers have also focused on examining Al Jazeera’s media coverage of particular topics as compared to that of international news broadcasters: such topics have included the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Aqtash et al., 2004; Barkho, 2007; Damanhoury and Saleh, 2017), the Arab Spring (Al Nahed, 2016; Bosio, 2013; Karyotakis et al., 2017) and terrorism (Alshathry, 2015; Gerhards and Schäfer, 2014). Damanhoury and Saleh (2017) compared output from CNN and Al Jazeera America (AJAM) to investigate how these channels framed the 2014 Gaza War, for example, revealing that the two media outlets applied differing reporting strategies: in particular, AJAM differentiated between civilians and militants when reporting death tolls, whilst CNN did not clarify whether any casualties were civilians or militants. Furthermore, while AJAM and CNN both took Haaretz as their main source, CNN also referenced other Israeli news outlets.
Other studies support an ongoing difference in journalistic methods between AJE and other foreign media sources in terms of coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Barkho (2007) explored the discursive structures used in stories published by the BBC, CNN and AJE in their reporting the conflict, illustrating that AJE displayed different linguistic patterns when reporting on the conflict to those used by other outlets, a variation ascribed to the differing political-socio-economic structures that underlie the media systems of these platforms. Similar results emerged in Al Nahed’s (2016) examination of the framing of the Libyan uprising by Al Jazeera Arabic and BBC Arabic. That study found that these media outlets’ coverage was affected by their political agendas as derived from the foreign and national policies of their host countries. Bosio (2013) also analysed AJE, CNN and the BBC in terms of how they dealt with alternative journalistic modes in the early days of the Arab spring: that study found that AJE had a greater tendency to include media materials created by activists in its coverage, a result in line with Robertson’s (2013) research on the relationship between traditional and new media in the news coverage of the Arab Spring by AJE, Russia Today, CNN International and BBC World. Robertson (2013) used a comparative method to point out that Al Jazeera ‘outclassed the others in terms of the absolute number of reports it aired that drew on user-generated content or focused on the role of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or the Internet in general in these events’ (p. 338).
Al Jazeera versus Arabic media
Most previous studies have compared Al Jazeera with other Arabic news media, particularly the Al Arabiya channel, as these news channels are, between them, regarded as the most popular and influential news sources in the Arab world (El-Nawawy, 2003; Nisbet and Myers, 2011). Researchers have thus focused on these news channels’ content with respect to news framing and the political and ideological ramifications of this for Arab media discourse (Abdulmajid, 2019; Ajaoud and Elmasry, 2020; Kharbach, 2020; Lahlali, 2011; Zeng and Tahat, 2012). These studies have investigated in particular how the Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya news channels frame news about terrorism; according to Zeng and Tahat (2012), both networks spread the idea that terrorism is a predominately Muslim narrative, despite the fact that some terrorists are not Muslims, as presented in Western media. However, in examining how the Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera television networks present news about terrorism, they also noted that the two outlets offer different ways of framing terrorism and anti-terrorism stories. Following the American media, Al Arabiya emphasises those terrorist acts committed by Muslims, especially in the Middle East and North America, while Al Jazeera focuses on events worldwide, being less discriminatory in its coverage in terms of media sources, frames and places.
Based on this, Zeng and Tahat (2012) suggest that both media outlets still comply with the official opinions and stances of their host governments. Abdulmajid (2019) reached similar findings related to the two channels’ editorial agendas, suggesting that Al Jazeera and Arabiya both serve the interests of their sponsors, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, respectively; however, these results may be less reliable because of the small sample size in Abdulmajid’s research, which was just four news articles from each news source. Kharbach (2020) reached a similar conclusion concerning the editorial goals of the two platforms using CDA on media content from both; this highlighted that the media discourse on both platforms is ideologically biased and slanted towards the political perspectives of the channel’s respective host government, thus serving the interests of its sponsor, albeit to a lesser degree for Al Jazeera English. Moreover, the channels utilise different discursive strategies to construct subjective mental models and reference frames to influence recipients’ perceptions of crisis. Kharbach’s findings were corroborated by subsequent research: Ajaoud and Elmasry (2020) compared coverage of the 2017 Gulf crisis in the flagship evening news shows on Al Jazeera, and Al Arabiya using framing theory, showing that Al Jazeera used the frame of a victim being attacked by an external oppressor, while Arabiya framed Qatar as a sponsor of terrorism.
Al Jazeera media
The third and final category of studies have focused on Al Jazeera with respect to media production. Al Jazeera has become a popular and credible news provider for many Arabs and non-Arabs (Al-Rawi, 2017), and since starting its news website in 2001, it has undergone significant growth, attracting users from all over the world (Fahmy and Al Emad, 2011). However, its popularity has greatly heightened diplomatic disputes between Arabs and non-Arabs in certain nations including the US, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt, with some countries either withdrawing or downgrading their diplomatic relationships and others banning it and blocking its website (Jones, 2019; Williams, 2014).
Its dominance is an understandable concern among some states, as noted by El-Nawawy and Iskandar (2003), who stated that it is ‘considered the leading and most influential network in the Arab region’ (cited in Fahmy and Al Emad, 2011: 229), as well as being the major news networks scooping Western media with respect to certain critical news events, especially those featuring terrorism and issues arising from Arab nations’ relationships with the West (Fandy, 2007). The Saudi state offers an example of this: Saudi Arabia decided to recall its ambassador from Qatar and ban Al-Jazeera correspondents from covering the annual pilgrimage to Mecca after a series of interviews with Saudi dissidents were aired by a popular Al-Jazeera talk show in June 2002. One study also found that, during the Saud-Qatari dispute, there was a rise of negative news about Saudi Arabia, which then reduced in the year following the historic resolution in 2007 (Samuel-Azran and Pecht, 2014). The Qatari leadership appears to have relied on Al Jazeera as an important media tool within its soft power strategy, utilising a hybrid model described in a WikiLeaks document by Lebron as follows: ‘Qatar will continue to use Al-Jazeera as a bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries particularly those soured by Al Jazeera’s broadcasts’ (Figenschou, 2013: 27). Samuel-Azran (2013) thus drew the conclusion that Al-Jazeera has become a powerful public diplomacy tool that can effectively influence public opinion and thus exert pressure on Qatar’s rivals.
The dual standard of coverage appeared most clearly after the Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2011, and several studies have thus examined the Al Jazeera network’s responses to the Arab Spring (Abdul-Nabi, 2017, 2022a; Bosio, 2013; Campbell and Hawk, 2012; Cherribi, 2017; Sarnelli, 2013; Sultan, 2013). Generally, the Al Jazeera network was viewed as an effective public diplomacy tool due to its critical and independent coverage of events taking place in the region (Abdul-Nabi, 2022a). Abdul-Nabi’s (2017) study of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the uprisings in Bahrain and Syria showed, however, that the protests in Bahrain were framed as sectarian disputes between Sunnis and Shiites, rather than as pro-democracy uprisings highlighting democratic demands and human rights violations; further, the voice given to the demonstrators in the case of Syria Al Jazeera’s coverage was highly in favour of the Syrian demonstrators. The coverage of the Bahrain uprising, however, contradicted coverage of the uprisings in the region as pro-democratic revolutions by taking an encouraging position with respect to the revolutionaries and ordinary people.
The literature in this area also abounds with academic studies on Al Jazeera’s coverage of various wars and conflicts (Bessaiso, 2019; El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2003; Fahmy and Al Emad, 2011; Iskandar and El-Nawawy, 2004; Lynch, 2006; Saber, 2016; Samuel-Azran, 2010). Interestingly, El-Nawawy and Iskandar (2003) suggested that one of Al Jazeera aims was to put Qatar on the international map, yet the channel cannot be said to have been utilised to promote Qatar’s foreign policy due to inconsistencies between Al Jazeera’s critical coverage and Qatari diplomatic policy. For example, Al Jazeera broadcast critical coverage of Israel during the Palestinian Intifada in 2000 that mobilised Arabs and united them for the first time since the 1970s, in opposition to the official Qatari position. Saber (2016) offered similar findings regarding Al Jazeera’s coverage of the sixth Arab-Israeli war in Lebanon, based on its use of a pan-Arab form of discourse reminiscent of the Arab nationalist and anti-colonial discourse of the 1950s. Al Jazeera has, however, also been accused of providing a platform for Israeli government officials among others, based on Qatar’s good diplomatic relationships with Israel. The latter was exemplified by Sheikh Hamad, Emir of Qatar, meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, showing his willingness ‘to seriously consider the possibility of increasing the level of diplomatic relations’. (Da Lage, 2019: 57), while Al Jazeera’s claim is that it pursues a strategy that offers access to the airwaves to a wide spectrum of groups, giving everyone a fair platform (Lahlali, 2011). However, despite the network’s best efforts, based on an examination of its corporate communications strategy and news dissemination method, Zayani (2008) observed that ‘the identity of Al Jazeera remains opaque for its publics’ (p. 220).
Over the years, the Al Jazeera network has been adopted as an interesting research topic by a wide range of researchers utilising a range of different perspectives; it has thus been commonly compared to other networks, and most particularly other Arab media. The literature is therefore awash with academic studies on the Al Jazeera network from comparative perspectives, while the topic of the current research, Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Gulf crisis and the war in Yemen, is more focused. Other studies have, however, also examined this topic to a certain extent (Abdul-Nabi, 2022b; Al Khalifa, 2019; Gasim, 2018; Mejalli, 2019; Naier, 2021; Samuel-Azran and Pecht, 2014; Satti, 2020). Such studies have analysed Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Gulf crisis from various angles, as with Naier’s (2021) study that explored Qatar’s tools for utilising soft power, such as lobbying, international mediation, and, of course, the Al Jazeera network, which created a national brand for Qatar during that period. By 5 June 2017, the Al Jazeera network had thus become an important tool in Qatar’s soft power strategy, and one of its most important weapons in terms of defend its state interests. Similarly, Samuel-Azran and Pecht (2014) investigated the famous allegations by Wikileaks that Al Jazeera Arabic and English were both utilised as diplomatic instruments by Qatar to discredit Saudi Arabia’s image during the Gulf crisis, specifically from 2002 to 2007. They found a strong correlation between the stance taken by Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA) on Saudi issues and the onset of the Gulf crisis, as well as a vast increase in the number of articles that openly criticised Saudi Arabia in terms of human rights violations and terrorism support throughout the period of struggle, noting that this negative tone with respect to Saudi Arabia ceased after the historic settlement between two countries. Interestingly, however, Al Jazeera English (AJE) did not appear to change its stance pre- and post-Gulf crisis.
The latter finding contradicts Satti (2020), however, who compared the online content of AJA and AJE to determine whether news stories differed across the two websites. That work was guided by agenda-setting theory, covering three time periods including July 2017 to April 2018. The findings showed that news stories on AJA were rarely similar to those on AJE, though, interestingly, the Gulf crisis received greater coverage on AJE than AJA, despite being largely an Arab issue. This seems intriguing, yet the researcher simply attributed this to the fact that Al Jazeera sought to disseminate information to a larger number of English online readers by drawing more direct attention to an issue that was already making headlines in the Arab world, seeking to make such news consumers aware of and attentive to the issue despite the fact that it not relate to them directly. Moreover, significant focus on Egypt was found across both AJA and AJE as part of their Gulf crisis reporting, with several additional links made to political events there such as civil unrest or elections as compared to coverage of other African countries. This finding was further corroborated by Abdul-Nabi’s (2022b) analysis of AJA and AJE online coverage of Bahrain’s uprising during the periods before and after the Gulf crisis, which was based on Peace Journalism (PJ). The findings from that study showed that once the crisis began, AJA’s coverage shifted from being pro-Bahraini regime to pro-protest, with a concentration on quoting human rights activists and reporting regime violations that somewhat contradicted (Abdul-Nabi, 2017) previous coverage. However, although AJE focused more on these regime violations, it remained more PJ oriented, being less affected by the Gulf crisis than AJA.
Al Khalifa (2019) produced similar findings regarding the editorial agenda of Al Jazeera by using a framing analysis to define and construct the presentation of the Gulf crisis as it broke out by AJE, utilising eight news articles. According to the Qatari government, Al Jazeera changed its narrative by placing the event in a conspiracy frame, and 15 references across the eight articles support this framing. However Gasim (2018), who compared coverage of the Yemen war both before and after the Gulf crisis on AJE’s websites, with data from the day the Gulf crisis erupted compared with that just after agreement was reached as well as further data over two phases to ensure rigorous comparison of both events, found a significant increase in negative news coverage of Yemen following the crisis, especially with respect to the coalition’s role, with most articles then focussing on the resulting humanitarian crisis and civilian casualties. This finding was further corroborated by Mejalli (2019), who analysed AJA’s online news articles throughout the war in Yemen to determine whether any change in coverage might be related to the mediatisation of political theory. That study addressed both media and political perspectives by focussing on how Al Jazeera’s content and identification of political actors was governed by political and media logic, with results that showed that the tone of Al Jazeera’s news articles covering the war in Yemen shifted significantly simultaneously with the Gulf crisis. In particular, negative coverage of the coalition in Yemen increased in intensity at that point, while positive coverage declined.
Bias in news reporting
Text and context are both equally significant when interpreting discourse, predominantly due to the fact that discourse is not confined to text-based linguistical properties, extending beyond this to be sociocultural context, thus allowing for investigation based on linguistic characteristics (Blommaert, 1999). Richardson (2017) claims that by combining text with context, a better understanding of the main discursive practices utilised by reporters for the purpose of aligning different texts with their own views can be developed: indeed, if this were not the case, all media institutions would report all aspects of news in an identical manner. However, this means that representations of action in the news do not directly reflect reality; instead, they are the result of a complicated process of ranking, filtering and producing information (Berger and Luckmann, 1991).
Bednarek and Caple (2012) argued, however, that the worth of news depends on the match between its underlying values and reality, with news production dictated and driven by the deliberate and unconscious inclusion and exclusion of information, keywords, visual images, placement, repetition, association and information sources, among other things. While values are not necessarily essential for a story to be reported, the final story as presented is nonetheless formed by journalists’ manipulation of language in support of a particular set of values. In a similar vein, Fowler (1991) pointed to the influential impact of word order within news, based on the effect of the reciprocal process of stereotyping between writers and readers. An issue ordinarily introduced in a negative context will consequently be perceived, whether consciously or unconsciously, in a negative frame, leading to the stimulation of hatred, anxiety and similar negative responses. Additionally, Fowler (2013) argued that the value of news coverage relies on the extent to which a story identified within a specific representation: thus, the act of selection leads to an ideological act of interpretation. Consequently, Beard (2000) concluded that there is no such thing as either an unbiased report or neutral language in terms of news production.
Bias within the portrayal and dissemination of news is thus an ongoing and persistent problem. Qayyum et al. (2018) defined bias as a tendency to lean towards a positive or negative representation of something or someone that is inherently reliant on the reporter’s own viewpoint or prejudices rather than any facts and evidence. Hamborg et al. (2019) similarly illustrated that bias in the media can be implemented in several ways: these include news selection; the quoting of particular voices to the exclusion of others; an emphasis on uncertainty regarding certain sources while highlighting the objectivity of others; the selection of positive or negative lexicon variations when referring to particular persons, groups, or topics; positive or negative comparisons; and the size and placement of various articles in newspapers, with the aim of drawing additional attention to certain topics. The lexical term ‘democracy’ can be used as an example, as this has multiple, often hazy, connotations that might be twisted to imply positive affect and success, thus influencing the minds of the audience towards specific arguments. It is also common to utilise quantification, manipulating numbers to make generalisations in support of a particular perspective (De Saussure, 2005).
The Al Jazeera news website contains much of the same evidence of particular values and objectives within its coverage as any other news outlet: based on this, studying the content of Al Jazeera’s news reports online can aid the development of an overall understanding of the methods utilised by media outlets to construct their representations of reality. The Al Jazeera news website has covered the war in Yemen throughout its full duration, continuing to do so across the Gulf crisis. News articles regarding the war were thus in constant production, supporting people around the world who were eager to remain informed about the latest developments.
The current study builds on this extensive body of research on Arab media discourse by providing a distinct analytical approach intended to enrich CDA scholarship on the subject. The study is thus of importance based on its discussion of Al Jazeera from a linguistic perspective, utilising CDA approaches to uncover the ideological construction of the Arabic website of Al Jazeera before and after the Gulf crisis in order to fill any gaps in this research area and to provide a comprehensive overview of the period. The current study thus aims to extend scholarship on Arab media discourse and to contribute to discussion around the concept of ideology and its mediation of critical discourse in media from a linguistic perspective.
Research questions
This study attempts to answer the following questions:
What lexical choices does Al Jazeera employ when referring to social actors (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009), specifically the Houthis and their allies and the members of the coalition formed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and its partners? What ideologies do these suggest?
Based on the concept of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ (van Dijk, 1998), how does Al Jazeera frame the Houthis and the coalition in its news headlines?
How does Al Jazeera linguistically achieve discursive legitimisation (Reyes, 2011) of the various social actors in describing their actions?
In reporting the war in Yemen, did Al Jazeera’s coverage tone change with respect to any of the social actors, whether the coalition or the Houthis, or was it able to retain impartiality both before and after the Gulf crisis?
Methodology
This research must be placed within the broader critical movement in discourse studies known as critical discourse analysis (CDA). According to Van Dijk (2001a), CDA ‘primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context’ (p.352). CDA’s ongoing success can be attributed to the efforts of multiple analysts (Fairclough, 2013a; Phillips and Jørgensen, 2002; Van Dijk, 2001b, 2018; van Leeuwen, 2008; Wodak and Meyer, 2009), and this research thus views CDA as an entire field of study that employs analytical methods and theoretical frameworks to comprehend the structure of discourses in light of multiple surrounding subjects such as politics, society, ideology and religion. As a result, CDA forges connections between micro-level analyses that focus on language itself and the broader macro-level analysis that concentrates on social issues such as domination, ideology and discrimination, specifically focussing on various forms of power abuse (Van Dijk, 2001a). In this research, the CDA framework is further broadened to be transdisciplinary by the employment of three analytical methods across the various different approaches of CDA employed. The first approach draws on the analysis of lexical choices in a manner drawn from the discourse-historical approach (DHA) (Reisigl and Wodak, 2016), which connects the underlying discourse to the relevant historical background of its socio-political context in order to reveal any implicit ideology. Lexical choices are thus considered to be an influential tool in CDA, allowing investigation of the reasons underlying the selection of certain words by an author as opposed to their various synonyms (Manchin and Mayr, 2012). This research also applies two discursive strategies, which Reisigl and Wodak (2009) described as ‘positive self-representation’ and ‘negative other-presentation’, or, in other words, the referential and predicative. Referential (nomination) strategies reference how the social actors are nominated or referred to, thus reflecting the strategies that people choose as they label others using the wide range of options that language provides them, thus conveying their own evaluative and ideological viewpoints.
In contrast, the predication strategy is an evaluation of the qualities, characteristics, features and traits attributed to the various social actors, whether negative or positive, as seen in references to both the coalition and Houthis. This approach depends on identifying results that exemplify the relationship between news representations of the social actors and the underlying ideology motivating these in light of van Dijk’s (1998) Ideological Square model. Based on this, the method provides a dual strategy that aids the discovery of the implicit ideology of discourse by noting an emphasis on positive actions by those that news outlets deems its ingroup, while their negative actions are deemphasised. In contrast, the ideological square deemphasises the positive actions of any outgroup members, while simultaneously emphasising their negative actions. van Dijk (1998) employed a variety of discourse structures to uncover ideologies and identify disputed groups, including lexical style, presuppositions, propositions, topic choice, hyperbole and syntactic structures, suggesting that the semantics of discourse indicate the topicalisation that must be considered to be a significant marker of ideological orientation. Herman and Chomsky (2010) later concentrated on the importance of topic selection and presentation in the construction of media bias, using the ideological square for the purpose of presenting how Al Jazeera website identified its ingroup and outgroup members during the war in Yemen both before and after the Gulf Crisis.
The third one approach utilises Reyes (2011) strategies to explore the discursive practices employed in discourse to (de)legitimise the actions and ideologies of various social actors within a socio-political context. Reyes (2011: 782) described the act of legitimisation in the following terms: ‘Legitimization refers to the process by which speakers accredit or license a type of social behaviour. In this respect, legitimisation justifies a behaviour (mental or physical)’. Thus, while (de)legitimisation strategies predominantly rely on the categories originally proposed by van Leeuwen (2008), the current study is heavily reliant on Reyes’s (2011) five categories of legitimisation, which are legitimisation through emotions; through a hypothetical future; through rationality; through the voice of expertise; and through altruism. According to Reyes (2011), legitimising one position directly implies the (de)legitimisation of any opposing positions, suggesting that any such two positions are, in themselves, mutually exclusive. This study utilises this concept to calculate the number of and to otherwise analyse the de-legitimisation strategies applied in the periods considered, with a view to examining how Al Jazeera used these in their news reports to help construct meaning that de-legitimised the actions of various social actors, such as the coalition and Houthis, during the Yemen war, with a comparison of the strategies employed before and after the Gulf crisis. The three analytical methods from the different approaches to CDA are also symbiotically integrated in such a way that each level informs and draws on insights from the other.
Data collection
The corpus built for this study consisted of 32 news articles covering the periods prior to and following the Gulf Crisis. These were divided into two groups, with16 news articles covering the period before the Crisis and 16 articles covering the period following the onset of the crisis in order to compare the coverage of the Yemini war on Al Jazeera before and after 5 June 2017. This date was selected to ensure that a rigorous comparison was made with regard to the presentation of the ways in which social actors engaged in the struggle. In terms of initial data collection, the official Arabic Al Jazeera website (https://www.aljazeera.net/) was searched for coverage of the war in Yemen and the social actors engaged in this, namely the coalition and the Houthis. The timeframe was divided into two periods, the first period of which was prior to the Gulf crisis, from 26 March 2015, which marked the beginning of the war, to 4 June 2017, the day before the Gulf crisis began. The second period thus followed the eruption of the Gulf Crisis, stretching from 5 June 2017, the day the crisis emerged, to 31 December 2019. The collection of relevant news articles was done manually, as a number of headlines did not contain obvious keywords relating to Yemen’s socio-political situation such as Houthi, Houthis; Coalition; Saudi Arabia; UAE; and Yemen.
The most frequently noted topics were identified by the terms ‘Mecca’; ‘children’; ‘humanitarian’, which included discussions of impacts on civilians, aid and truces; ‘western support’; ‘Iran’; ‘UAE’; ‘saving Yemen from political ambitions’; ‘peace talks’; ‘Yemeni president’; ‘house arrest’; ‘freedom of journalism’; ‘Houthi stronghold’; ‘prison’; moving ‘from free places to occupied places’; and ‘use of arms’. Each topic occurring prior to the crisis was selected and paired with mentions of the same topic after the crisis. The chosen news reports were rated by the newsworthiness of the events described, which were mainly those subject to high news coverage, being mainly significant events covered by several globally renowned media outlets or grave concerns expressed by international organisations, alongside coverage of civilian issues and the statements of social actors regarding various events. These latter were often limited to the Al Jazeera news agency due to its role as the principal reporting source on the war in Yemen, which meant that other sources were excluded. In total, 32 articles matched the necessary criteria for analysis from the online publication across both periods. The compiled corpus thus consisted of 11,415 words across 32 articles, covering both periods, with the 16 articles written prior to the crisis containing 5149 words and the 16 articles written post-crisis containing 6266 words.
The lexical choices and their collocations contained in these corpora were then explored using Sketch Engine, an Internet-based analytical tool developed by Kilgarriff et al. (2004) that can be used for analysing corpora using key search terms, in this case ‘the coalition’ and ‘Houthis’. This software provides several functions that can be used to examine the behaviours of words in a text. The data analysis of the two corpora was thus done in two stages. First, frequency lists of social actors were generated and compared, as examining the relative frequency of such words and how they are used illustrates a valuable quantitative component of the corpus. Then, the collocation of other terms with mentions of social actors was targeted, as collocation analysis played a significant role in this study. Collocation is defined as ‘the phenomenon [whereby] certain words often co-occur with each other’ (Baker, 2006: 96), and collocations of a target word can thus provide valuable information about the semantic preferences attached to that word. In the current study, the collocations with mentions of both social actors were thus generated and calculated, and the results compared between the two periods of interest.
Results
Analysis of lexical choices
Analysing the lexical choices of the Al Jazeera newsgroup was done to allow identification of any notable differences between its representation of the various social actors and their actions pre- and post-crisis. The main inference that can be drawn from this analysis is that its lexical choices were driven by their ideology. Tables 1 to 3 demonstrate the frequency of the different lexical choices regarding social actors and the top collocations related to both the coalition and Houthis.
Frequencies of social actors’ mentions before and after the Gulf crisis.
Recurrent collocational features accompanying ‘the coalition’ before and after the Gulf crisis.
Recurrent collocational features accompanying ‘Houthis’ before and after the Gulf crisis.
Prior to the Gulf crisis, there was a huge focus on the Houthis as compared to the coalition, with the former mentioned nearly 103 (2%) times, while the latter was referred to just 39 (0.75%) times. Following the Gulf crisis, despite an increase in the sample of about 20%, the Al Jazeera coverage remained predominantly focused on the Houthis, with the number of mentions for that group being higher than those for the coalition. Al Jazeera news reports focused on the coalition approximately 54 (0.86%) times as compared to the 90 (1.43%) mentions of the Houthis. Examining overall frequencies between the two periods, despite the increasing coverage of the coalition, from 39 (0.75%) to 54 (0.86%) mentions, and a similar decrease in mentions of the Houthis from between 103 (2%) and 90 (1.43%), statistically speaking, the coverage of the social actors was, to a reasonable extent, the same. As Table 1 below shows the frequencies of social actors’ mentions before and after the Gulf crisis.
Recurrent collocation analysis was used to provide more insight into whether Al Jazeera represented the key social actors ‘the coalition’ and ‘the Houthis’ positively or negatively both before and after the crisis. Tables 2 and 3 compare the top three collocations across ‘the coalition’ and ‘the Houthis’ before and after the Gulf crisis. Prior to the Gulf crisis, the most common collocations for ‘the Houthis’ were ‘Militia’, ‘gunmen’ and ‘group’, at 16, 12 and 13 times, respectively. This repeated associating the Houthis with negative referential strategies, implicitly shows the position of the writer: in particular, these collocations imply Al Jazeera’s ideological motivations as being anti-Houthis, as these terms align with the coalition’s perspective of blaming the Houthis. They are also negatively portrayed as a rogue group by the use of discursive representations associating the Houthis with destructive and inhumane actions:
- Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the invasion of
- Children and women have become a target for
- The coalition will respond to any breach of the truce by
- The raids launched by 10 countries under the name ‘Operation Decisive Storm’ in Yemen targeted the sites of the
However, the most recurrent collocations with ‘the coalition’ were ‘Arab’, ‘forces’ and ‘planes’ at 10, 8 and 5 times, respectively. These neutrally represent the coalition by ideologically postmodifying the idea of Arab to allow representation of coalition issues as Arabic issues. Examining the discursive area, in which the ideological construction of social actors is interpreted through the activation processes, activation happens when the social actors are represented as active in any activity (van Leeuwen, 1996). The way social actors are portrayed in sentences regarding their actions is thus linked to helping create narrative scripts in which the us-group is portrayed positively, while another group is portrayed negatively. As shown in the examples below, the coalition was foregrounded and coded as actor in a positive manner at that time:
- On Saturday,
-
- The same source added that
Following the Gulf crisis, the collocations with the selected keywords were entirely different. With regards to the term ‘Houthis’, the most recurrent collocations became ‘group’, ‘delegation’ and ‘Malik’ at 17, 8 and 3 times, respectively, where ‘Malik’ is the name of the Houthi leader. This shows a mitigation of the prior negative tone regarding the Houthis, with Al Jazeera referring to them as a civic and political group. Al Jazeera thus clearly no longer considered the Houthis to be terrorists, a stance reflected in representing them positively by portraying them as a counterpart to the coalition:
-
-
- The leader of the Houthis, Abdul-
The most recurrent collocations with ‘the coalition’ were ‘Saudi’, ‘Emirati’ and ‘Arab’, at 15, 13 and 6 times, respectively. The two top collocations were thus contextualised ideologically, and these were found to negatively represent the coalition by referring to the coalition as being a limited number of countries led by two discredited key members, Saudi Arabia and UAE. This implied that the coalition was associated with Saudi and UAE despite them being only parts of the coalition rather than leading it. The war was thus represented as Saudi and UAE issue, and not related to the full group of Arab nations, as a way to minimise its positive aspects. Further, although the term ‘Arab’ appeared at a lower rate, it was also used establish a negative image of the coalition by casting doubt on its credibility and aggressively implying the performance of inhuman deeds and attempts evade these:
-
- A spokesman for
- The price of fuel rose immediately after
To discuss the lexical choices associated with social actors, a historical approach (DHA) (Reisigl and Wodak, 2016), which applies discursive strategies (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009) described as ‘positive self-representation’ and ‘negative other-presentation’ is used in this work. As is apparent from Al Jazeera’s lexical choices, its stance on social actors varied prior to and after the crisis. For instance, before the crisis, the Houthis were repeatedly associated with negative groups (‘militia’; ‘gunmen’) in a way that created a ‘knowledge or belief schema’ (Van Dijk, 1993: 39) wherein the Houthis were associated with extremism, allowing Al Jazeera to portray the Houthis as a rogue group using ‘negative other-presentation’. As the online Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries (n.d.), noted ‘militia’ refers to a rebel force acting in opposition to a regular army. At the same time, the coalition, subject to positive self-representation, became associated with positive attributes such as the use of the word ‘forces’, implying trained people seeking to protect others using weapons, thus denoting that the coalition had a right to utilise weapons to protect and save the Yemeni people from the rogue armed group of Houthis (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries (n.d.). Following the Gulf crisis, however, the coalition was represented using a ‘negative other-presentation’ with Al Jazeera changing the coalition’s descriptor from ‘Arab’ to ‘Saudi’ and thence ‘UAE’. According to van Leeuwen (2008: 37), referring to social actors as a group is called ‘assimilation’ and there are two methods of such aggregation: ‘using specific numbers or quantifiers before the group’ and collectivization, creating a ‘plurality of individualization’. Representing the coalition as ‘Arab’ collectivises the area strongly and supportively, generating sympathy with all Arab nations.
In terms of the Houthis, the highest collocations after the crisis were in ‘group’ and ‘delegation’ words with multiple positive connotations that convey the idea of a peaceful civil group; this compares starkly to the top trending term used before the crisis, ‘militias’. Using these words after the crisis suggests that Al Jazeera desires positive self-representation of the Houthis; as Reisigle and Wodak (2001) illustrated referential strategies identify ingroups and outgroups through membership categorisation devices.
In addition, it is obvious from these effects that the discursive construction used by Al Jazeera sought to create opposing subjective mental models based on two parallel discourses across these periods. One was that the coalition was compelled to take protective actions against the Houthis, who at that time were described as rebels seeking to destabilise Yemen or even the whole region, while the other took the reverse position after the crisis, suggesting that all coalition intervention was destructive and against the interests of the Yemeni people. In the latter scenario, the Houthis were portrayed as a powerful group that holds as much power as the coalition. Wodak and Meyer (2001) affirmed that discursive practices can have significant ideological effects, helping produce and reproduce imbalance in power relations between social classes based on the ways in which they represent things and position people. Reflecting this, different predication strategies were employed in both periods to case the coalition in a positive light of and the Houthis in a negative light pre-crisis, while after the crisis, the tone regarding these social actors was completely reversed.
Analysis of ideological square news headlines
As a result of their potential to hook readers into a story, headlines are often considered to be the most important part of a news report. Due to their brevity and the fact that they are often the first aspect of the page seen, they must allow readers to obtain a general overview of the news report rapidly. van Dijk (2015) claimed that the part of a news report that is most easy for readers to remember is the headline, as opposed to the details within the report, leading to a significant influence from headlines upon readers’ interpretations regarding specific events. The important and influential nature of headlines means that they are often used to allow the featuring of an editor’s ideological position, which in itself has implications for news outlets highlighting what they believe to be the most important information about a news event in accordance with the editorial policies of their media institutions (van Dijk, 2015). The value of a news event is thus relative, based on the editorial policy of media institutions with respect to news selection. While one media institution may deem an event important, another may not necessarily come to the same conclusion; differing ideologies dictate the selection criteria across such institutions (Fowler, 2013).
After assessing all 36 news headlines as shown in Table 4, it is evident that Al Jazeera’s headlines initially conveyed a positive depiction of the coalition’s role, consolidating the positive image of the coalition through lexical choices, implying Al Jazeera’s bias towards the coalition through their presentation of it as the ingroup (‘us’). This can thus be contrasted with Al Jazeera’s negative presentation of the Houthis, as demonstrated by the selection of news topics and the lexical choices made when referring to Houthis, with the group presented as the outgroup (‘them’) prior to the crisis. Following the eruption of the Gulf crisis, however, there were noticeable changes regarding the depiction of both these social actors and their actions. Al Jazeera’s headlines then conveyed a negative image of the coalition’s role, presenting the coalition as the outgroup (‘them’), while positively depicting the Houthis with a sense of appreciation, thus presenting them as the in group (‘us’). Table 4 sorts the Al Jazeera news headlines during the periods preceding and following the Gulf crisis by topic.
News headlines before and after the Gulf crisis.
As Table 4 shows, the same topics are represented differently during both periods. Before the crisis, using the topic of Mecca as an example, Al Jazeera (28/10/2016) represented the Houthis in a highly negative way by using predication strategies to cast a negative light on the group, portray it as the agent of negative predicates such as targeting Mecca (the city of the holy mosque), with this putative atrocity intensified and magnified by the use of the verb ‘continues’. This implied risk to a significant ideological Islamic structure was intended to cause Muslims to show solidarity against the Houthis’ aggressive actions by encouraging them to imagine these being directed towards their sacred place. According to Souza (1995), the outgroup (‘them’) is presented negatively using techniques such as hyperbole and demonisation in speech acts that include blaming, accusing and condemning. However, following the crisis, the same topic (20/5/2019) is represented in a vastly different way, with expressions of doubt and uncertainty regarding the Houthi actions at the beginning of the headline implying that the Houthi’s aggressive actions targeting Mecca have already eased, thus mitigating and lessening the severity of their actions.
Furthermore, Al Jazeera (21/5/2015) initially depicted the Houthis in a negative light, referring to them as a rogue group and stating that, prior to the crisis, they had deliberately targeted hospitals and killed civilians. After the crisis, however, the coalition was represented as merciless and ferocious for targeting civilian families. Al Jazeera’s later report (23/9/2019) thus highlighted the coalition’s tendency to destruction by specifying the number of casualties, and emphasising that this number included an entire family killed during a coalition raid. Prior to the crisis, Al Jazeera’s report (30/9/2015) on ‘Iran’ negatively represented the country as an enemy that illegally supported the Houthis by providing weapons, with reports of the group receiving external support from Iran being used to tarnish its image by connecting it with the unpopular country. Following the crisis, however, the tone towards Houthis and Iran altered drastically, with Al Jazeera (27/10/2019) depicting Iran in a positive light, describing it as a country keen to reinstate stability within Yemen, signalled by neutral lexical choices such as ‘political solution’ and the use of positive terms such as ‘Houthi official’ to legitimise the movement.
Analysis of (de)legitimisation strategies
In this study, Reyes’s (2011) strategies of legitimisation were used to investigate Al Jazeera’s attempts to use discursive strategies with regard to the presentation of social actors, particularly for the purpose of legitimising the positions and actions of the current ingroup (‘us’) and delegitimising the positions and actions of the outgroup (‘them’) as a way to persuade its audience to favour its chosen position.
The five (de)legitimisation strategies include the use of emotions, applied through the expression of emotions such as fear, by the producers of texts in an attempt to control the opinions and emotions of readers regarding specific matters. This is achieved through the negative representation of particular social actions to generate emotions of dissatisfaction or anger, or by positive representations designed to gain approval or sympathy. The hypothetical future is another commonly used strategy, which is enacted when writers or speakers posit potential threats or troubles that may, however, be avoided if immediate action is taken; this is used to justify various actions by incorporating specific linguistic choices and structures, such as conditional sentences, into the discourse. Rationality is another such strategy, created when writers or speakers render the legitimisation process as being based on decisions formed following a thoughtful evaluation process, which are then used to justify specific actions. The voice of the expert strategy similarly relies on a sense of authorisation (van Leeuwen, 2008) enacted when writers or speakers present arguments within their discourse in a manner that persuades their audience that experts and relevant organisations support those arguments, using wither direct or indirect speech, providing a veil of credibility to the resulting media discourse. Finally, the altruism strategy is demonstrated when writers or speakers position themselves as people who care for and serve others, positively contributing to society. Politicians usually use this to imply that their actions are not merely a result of their own interests but are, in fact, beneficial for all (Reyes, 2011).
Following quantitative analysis of the delegitimisation strategies, the numbers of times that such strategies were used in both periods were calculated. Each strategy is discussed in detail with relevant examples provided in the next section; however, from Table 5, it is clear that prior to the crisis Al Jazeera concentrated on the Houthis’ actions more than those of the coalition, specifically utilising the emotional strategy to delegitimise these actions, while following the crisis, Al Jazeera concentrated on the coalition’s actions more than those of the Houthis, commonly utilising the voices of experts to delegitimise these.
De-legitimisation strategies before and after the Gulf crisis.
The following will discuss linguistically achieving discursive de-legitimisation strategies of the various social actors in describing their actions before and after the Gulf crisis.
Emotion
Before the crisis, Al Jazeera utilised a de-legitimisation emotion strategy once in their depiction of events regarding the conflict in Yemen to legitimise the coalition’s actions and five times to delegitimise the actions of the Houthis. After the crisis, delegitimisation strategies can be identified on six separate occasions, with emotion again used as the primary tool. At that point, Al Jazeera used the emotion strategy to delegitimise the coalition’s actions four times, while it was used to legitimise those of the Houthis twice.
News stories before and after the crisis:
Pre-crisis The
Post
Analysis
In its pre-crisis news articles, Al Jazeera emphasised the positive action of the coalition with respect to truces, with several lexical choices utilised in this reporting to infer positive connotations, including ‘humanitarian truce’ and ‘the Restoration of Hope in Yemen’. Both of these phrases further exemplify Al Jazeera’s positivity towards the coalition prior to the crisis in that they use emotional language evoking sympathy and compassion for the Yemeni people to illustrate the benevolence of the coalition’s actions. Al Jazeera also used a lexical choice within the structure of the sentence ‘decided by the coalition’, which has positive connotations in that it implies that measured choices occurred only after a period of deep consideration of all available options, thus suggesting that this action was taken by a body that cares about humanity and Yemini people. In contrast, Al Jazeera emphasised the negative actions of the Houthis at that time by portraying them as attempting to derail the ‘humanitarian truce’, in addition to stating that the ‘Houthis shelled residential areas’, thus delegitimising the group’s actions by highlighting brutality aimed at innocent residents prior to noting that they also shelled resistance positions. The effect of this, in terms of the language used and the presentation order, ensures that the statement, ‘Houthis shelled residential areas’, remains prominent in readers’ minds, thus vilifying the Houthi’s actions. Throughout the report, Al Jazeera used one of the ideologically discursive strategies posited by van Leeuwen (2008), commonly referred to as norm and value violation, to imply that the ingroup ‘coalition’ held positive norms and values, while the outgroup ‘Houthis’ violated these values. This method establishes a firm distinction between the ingroup and outgroup, emphasising the outgroup’s hostile actions and highlighting the ingroup’s seemingly positive ones.
In the post-crisis reports, the emphasis is on the positive actions of Houthis, as portrayed by the description of the group taking the initiative for peace: the ‘Houthi group called [for an] effective truce’. Moreover, from the same excerpt, by using a description of ‘the Sacred Mosque, which obliges everyone on all fronts not to fight, lift the siege and allow Yemenis to perform the Hajj until these sacred months are over’, Al Jazeera employs presuppositions, such as that lifting the siege to allow Yemenis to perform the Hajj is a positive thing, to insinuate that coalition blockades on Yemen are otherwise preventing Yemeni people from performing Hajj, projecting the notion that the Houthis sympathise with Yemeni citizens and their sacred religious traditions and that they can speak on behalf of the Yemeni people. This legitimises the Houthis’ actions by weaving an emotional narrative based on politicised religious discourse in order to trigger the emotions of Muslims in particular. The emphasis further stresses the importance they place on Islamic doctrines such as no fighting in holy months, the primacy of performing Hajj, and the signing of accords in the Sacred Mosque. The tone of the lexical choices is significant, with the term ‘president’ and ‘called’ being used to refer to the leader of the Houthi group. The word ‘president’ assigns high legitimacy to the role of the Houthi leader, with this title being more commonly used for elected leaders in high positions, as opposed to the leader of a group fighting a legitimate government. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the term ‘called’ suggests that the group leader is in a legal position to request the cessation of action on behalf of the Yemeni people, as well as implying an element of calm and measured authority.
Hypothetical future
Before the crisis, the legitimisation strategy was only used on two occasions by Al Jazeera, with a hypothetical future utilised to legitimise the actions of the coalition; in contrast, no legitimisation tactics were used to discuss the Houthis’ actions. After the crisis, legitimisation strategies were again only used twice, through the depiction of a hypothetical future that legitimised the Houthis’ actions.
News stories before and after the crisis:
Pre-crisis Saudi TV stated that the coalition forces had
Post-crisis The leader of the Houthis said that the
Analysis
In its pre-crisis reports, Al Jazeera emphasised the positive actions of the coalition by means of lexical choices such as ‘cleared’, with positive connotations: ‘cleared’ suggests something has been removed or freed due to the risk of potential danger, being made safe. The lexical choice ‘store and smuggle weapons’ further implied that the Houthis were stockpiling weapons that had been illegally obtained, attaching multiple negative connotations to their actions. The actions of the coalition were thus legitimised through the suggestion of a hypothetical future, with the report depicting the period as requiring crucial decisions regarding action to which the coalition had been forced to respond immediately. In particular, the relevant news report presented the idea of an important strategic position that could potentially be utilised by Houthi militia for future terrorist activities, with the coalition thus depicted as successfully moving quickly to prevent future threats in the largest Yemini port on the Red Sea.
Conversely, in post-crisis reports, Al Jazeera painted the actions of the Houthis as a reaction to the coalition’s attacks. Their actions were thus suggested to be a consequence of coalition aggression, and thus potentially likely to worsen if the aggressor, ‘The Saudi-Emirati coalition’, continued its attacks. This excerpt shows Al Jazeera trying to legitimise present and future states (Houthis’ attack) by means of a hypothetical future. Common linguistic structures to facilitate this include conditional sentences of the type ‘[apodosis] will + infinitive without to → [protasis] If + present’ (Reyes, 2011). The apodosis of the conditional sentence ‘the army and the popular committees will continue the strikes they are directing to’ points to the consequences to the protasis ‘if the Saudi-Emirati coalition does not stop their aggression, bombing and siege’. Thus, the apodosis clauses of these conditional constructions are employed to express the consequences of current actions and to specify the consequences of not following the demands of the Houthis. This excerpt exemplifies the strategy of hypothetical association of cause–consequence as exploited in discourse to paint a decision as natural, necessary and, potentially, the only way to proceed. In brief, Al Jazeera appeared to employ this important strategy to achieve its political goals by presenting hypothetical assumptions as factual reality, utilising the resulting convincing report to legitimise the Houthis’ actions and delegitimise the coalition’s actions.
Rationality
In the period preceding the crisis, Al Jazeera utilised the legitimisation strategy of rationality once on behalf of the coalition and twice to delegitimise the actions of the Houthis. However, after the crisis erupted, this strategy was used twice to delegitimise the actions of the coalition and once to legitimise the action of Houthis.
News stories before and after the crisis:
Pre-crisis The Saudi forces
Post-crisis
Analysis
In its pre-crisis reports, Al Jazeera emphasised the negative actions of the Houthis by incorporating the lexical choices ‘attack’, ‘militia’ and ‘ousted’ to deliver a negative image of the group as aggressive, prone attacking countries such as Saudi Arabia, and lacking in commitment to might be considered international norms. Moreover, Al Jazeera depicted the coalition’s actions as arising in reaction to the Houthis’ attack, framing the rebels as the aggressors and thus absolving the coalition of deliberate wrongdoing, as its actions could then be portrayed as justified in the name of self-defence.
According to Thompson (2013), a verbal process can denotes legitimisation through rationality. In this case, the verbal process ‘announced’ was used to legitimise the coalition, rationalising its actions as protection of the Yemeni border.
In post-crisis reports, Al Jazeera reported on the presence of the coalition as a violation of Yemen’s independence, applying the lexical choices ‘rejection’ and ‘violation of national sovereignty’ to delegitimise their actions, as well as referring to their troops as ‘Saudi forces’ to intensify the level of threat ascribed to them. It also withheld important information regarding the existence of the coalition, placing potentially excessive emphasis on the role of Saudi Arabia. The phrases ‘politician parties’ and ‘sit-in committee’ were further used to imply that the thoughts and decisions of the politicians rejecting the coalition’s actions were made only after thoughtful procedure, thus rendering those decision as considered and rational, and to be heeded. The coalition’s actions were, therefore, delegitimised through the lens of rationality.
Voice of expertise
Prior to the crisis, Al Jazeera utilised the legitimisation strategy referred to as the voice of expertise twice to legitimise the coalition’s actions and three times to delegitimise the Houthis’ actions. In contrast, after the crisis, Al Jazeera utilised the voice of expertise on nine separate occasions to delegitimise the actions of the coalition, avoiding this strategy altogether when discussing the actions of the Houthis.
News stories pre- and post-crisis
Before
After - -
Analysis
Pre-crisis reports by Al Jazeera emphasised the negative actions of the Houthis, such as preventing aid from entering the region and being appropriately disseminated to residents. They employ the delegitimisation tactic of the voice of expertise with reference to Amnesty International, lending a sense of reliability and authority to the report by incorporating the voice of an expert institution. The outlet also utilised hyperbole to magnify the tragic nature of the framing, describing the blocked aid as ‘essential’, and thus as a life or death matter, thereby delegitimising the Houthis’ actions by portraying them as endangering lives of innocent citizens. A verbatim quote from Amnesty International, denoted as an official quote through the use of quotation marks, was also used; such direct quotation can be considered a powerful strategy to support and give validity to a report, whilst simultaneously increasing readers’ confidence in the report (Garretson and Ädel, 2008).
Post-crisis reports by Al Jazeera instead emphasise the coalition’s negative actions in terms of blockading Yemen, using the term ‘killing and maiming of children’ to maximise their actions, as well as by referencing quotes from the UN and other international organisations. The outlet also implied that these organisations had already made the same calls multiple times, yet had been ignored by the coalition, based on incorporating lexical choices such as ‘frequent warnings’. This use of expert voices was intended to delegitimise the coalition’s actions, as well as to suggest that coalition participants ignored international warnings to take full responsibility for Yemeni lives. According to Garretson and Ädel (2008), when a reporter presents information alongside the source of said information, an element of persuasiveness is added to the resulting report through the inclusion of valid evidence. Al Jazeera also, however, employed the delegitimisation strategy of emotional manipulation, portraying the coalition as ruthless due to their overlooking the consequences of their actions for the Yemeni people, thus generating a widespread humanitarian crisis, with disease affecting millions of Yemenis and dozens of children being killed or wounded. By emphasising the number of victims and breaking down the overall term ‘humanitarian crisis’ into its separate constituents ‘famine and diseases’, the coalition’s impact was also exaggerated by means of ‘Explicit Emotional Enumeration’ (Reyes-Rodríguez, 2008). Al Jazeera nevertheless mainly used the voice of expertise to delegitimise the coalition’s actions and tarnish its image, creating reports that depend on authoritative sources and speech to show the audience that its is an authoritative sources; as Philips (2004) claims, such evidencing ensures that the report is both more persuasive and more attended to.
Altruism
Before the crisis, Al Jazeera utilised the legitimisation strategy of altruism on three occasions in order to legitimise the actions of the coalition. After the crisis, however, this legitimisation strategy was absent, and it was not used to legitimise or delegitimise the actions of either party after that time. The example shown below is thus only based on publication prior to the crisis, and it is included merely to demonstrate how the news outlet utilised the altruism strategy at that stage.
News stories before the crisis
Example The Saudi Council of Ministers confirmed in its meeting today (Monday) headed by King Salman bin Abdulaziz, that the Kingdom is not an advocate of war, and that Operation Decisive Storm against the
Analysis
In pre-crisis reports, Al Jazeera emphasised the positive actions of the coalition by projecting an altruistic motivation, as opposed to a self-serving one, onto their protection of vulnerable Yemeni people, thus legitimising the coalition’s actions. To increase readers’ level of confidence in the report and to assign a higher level of validity to it (Garretson and Ädel, 2008), the news outlet directly quoted the King’s words and presented these action in terms of both their religious and Arabic dimensions. Words and phrases with positive ideological connotations were thus selected, including ‘neighbouring country and a grieving people’, to suggest that the coalition’s actions reflected selfless concern and dedication for their embattled neighbours, who in turn are portrayed as repressed and innocent. Within this story, Al Jazeera thus paints this as an action beneficial to others, especially the poor and helpless, thus consolidating the image of the coalition, and by extension the outlet, as part of the ‘in’ group, as the heroes and Houthis as the villains. The coalition is portrayed as committing to the possible sacrifice of people’s lives for the purpose of defeating the villainous ‘Houthi group’ and the liberation of the identified victims, the ‘Yemeni people’.
Discussion
To answer the research questions put forward in this study, Al Jazeera’s news coverage of the war in Yemen before and after the Gulf crisis was compared. It is evident that discourse is a part of the socio-political process, thus itself being a socio-political practice. Answering these questions should thus reveal how ideology shapes discourse, based on the employment of linguistics devices, as well as revealing the impact ideologically loaded discursive orders and structures have on socio-political orders. van Dijk (2006) explained various ideologies from a socio-cognitive perspective as being shared representations of social groups, and thus as affecting people’s abilities to comprehend and interpret social realities. News discourse is an important and unique ideological instrument as applied by news organisations and the powerful groups that support them, and this is used effectively in many cases to influence people’s perceptions and beliefs (Herman and Chomsky, 2010). This process is accomplished by them producing and spreading what van Dijk (2006) called ‘biased mental models’ based on ‘social cognitions’ (p. 359). These models are, in turn, employed as legitimate interpretive frameworks for the comprehension of speech and the creation of social identities repetition and adoption into the group’s shared sociocultural knowledge. Such developments in ideologies appear most commonly during wars and crises, when several frequently contradictory accounts of an event may compete to support the construction of hegemonic discourses about a particular event. By theorising ideology in terms of news discourse, it is thus possible to explore the underlying ideologies of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war in Yemen both before and after the Gulf crisis.
The results in this work clearly indicate that Al Jazeera modified its stance towards the social actors involved in the Gulf crisis and reflected this adjusted ideology in the linguistic elements used to portray their actions and various related events. Prior to the Gulf crisis, Al Jazeera had supported the coalition, as expressed in its positive representation of the coalition and its actions, while the Houthis were represented negatively in its news reports. After the crisis, however, the coalition was depicted negatively, while the Houthis were represented positively in Al Jazeera’s news reports.
This analysis of the lexical choices illustrates that certain word choices were made to represent the idea that attitudes towards social actors and actions are both explicit and by no means arbitrary. Statistical analysis in particular suggests that the coverage of the relevant social actors remained similar in quantity throughout the two periods, with the frequency of references to the Houthis decreasing only a little, while references to the coalition increased slightly in number. In terms of recurrent collocation analysis, before the crisis, the coalition was generally represented with positive value-laden references such as the ‘Arab Coalition’ and ‘Arab Coalition Forces’, which have generally positive connotations, while the Houthis were represented negatively as a terrorist group, based on lexical choices such as ‘Houthi Militia’ and ‘Houthi gunmen’, which are terminological items with entirely negative implications. However, once the crisis erupted, the tones adopted concerning these social actors changed in a distinct and discernible fashion. After that point, the coalition was represented more negatively and in a restricted frame as the ‘Saudi-UAE coalition’, which represents an attempt to derogate and minimise the value of the coalition. In terms of the representation of the Houthis, the tone utilised was both altered and moderated, with the most frequent designation used to denote the Houthis becoming ‘the Houthi group’, suggesting that Al Jazeera no longer considered them to be solely terrorists.
These findings regarding lexical choices verify other significant studies in this field (Hamborg et al., 2019; Qayyum et al., 2018) that suggested that the representation of social actors is a technique used in biased media, with the implementation of positive or negative lexical choices to refer to social actors intentionally applied to influence opinion. Moreover, this accords with De Saussure’s (2005) explanation of how specific tools can be applied to achieve manipulation in media discourse based on the employment of words with particular connotations and denotations. This was eloquently discussed by Kress (1983), who demonstrated that no two words have exactly the same meanings or connotations, while Richardson’s (2017) conclusions referenced several strategies of lexicalisation utilised in media discourse that can be adapted to refer to social actors in a style that denotes the nature of the relationship between the namer and the named. Based on the conceptualisation that collocation is inseparable from ideology, this creates textual space for ‘ideological collocation’ (Salama, 2011) that can be considered to be a useful tool for detecting underlying ideological representations, as shown in van Leeuwen’s (2008, 1996) theory of the discursive representation of social actors. These social actors, being constitutive elements of discourse, are thus ‘semantically involved in a social practice’ (Salama, 2014: 131), and the social actors in the current study were similarly shown to be presented in different collocations in the textual practice in a way that reflected Al Jazeera’s discourse ideology.
The ideological square used in Al Jazeera’s headlines also notably demonstrated a shift in the representation of different social actors across the two periods of interest. Prior to the crisis, the coalition’s role was conveyed in a positive light, based on the consolidation of positive images of the coalition achieved by deploying positive words in both headlines and framing events. At this stage, the coalition was represented as the ingroup (‘us’), while the role played by the Houthis was conveyed in a negative manner, serving to consolidate the negative image of the Houthis. This was achieved by the selection of news reports and lexical choices in headlines that served to frame the Houthis negatively, and by representing the group as the outgroup (‘them’). However, in the period following the eruption of the crisis, the tone of Al Jazeera’s news headlines with respect to the relevant social actors was completely inverted. The selection of headlines then became biased towards the Houthis, either seeking to mitigate their negative actions or describing the Houthis in positive ways. Additional headlines began to convey negative images of the coalition, exaggerating any potentially negative actions or simply describing the coalition negatively. This represented a clear shift in the ideological square, wherein the coalition became the outgroup (‘them’), and the Houthis thus emerged as the new ingroup (‘us’).
The ideological bias in Al Jazeera’s headlines as demonstrated above was further employed to emphasise the positive attributes of the ingroup (‘us’) while accentuating the negative attributes of the outgroup (‘them’). At all levels of analysis, a top-down form of ‘discursive influence’ (van Dijk, 2006: 360) can be observed in which the network consistently attempts to create a subjective context model to guide its audience’s understanding of the war in Yemen that is consistent with the political and ideological interests of the ingroup (‘us’). This has been done through the construction of subjective mental models based on two parallel discourses across the periods of interest. This evidence of polarised discourse accords with van Dijk’s (1998) ideological dichotomy of the positive presentation of the ingroup (‘us’) and negative presentation of outgroup (‘them’), with Al Jazeera demonstrating clear, though shifting, bias in its news headlines. This is also in accordance with the findings of several other significant studies (Fowler, 2013; Herman and Chomsky, 2010; Van Dijk, 1995) that have suggested that the value of a news event is relative, and thus far from objective, with such value depending on the editorial policy of the relevant media institution. The importance of the influential nature of headlines therefore centres on the fact that they are, in essence, tools that can be utilised to allow the editor’s ideological position to shape the news item. News outlets thus highlight what they consider to be the most important information about a news event based on their editorial policies. Such news headlines may thus be considered a critical method, for both editors and readers; of identifying the preferred framing of participants and the identification of processes that might be ideologically significant and supporting specific viewpoints. This is supported by nature of headlines, including their brevity and positioning at the top of articles, thus representing the overall tone of the news report in an accessible manner (Fairclough, 2013b).
In terms of (de)legitimisation strategies, Al Jazeera took conscious advantage of these by amending its reportage of the actions of social actors in the periods both before and after the beginning of the Gulf crisis. Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) suggested that (de)legitimisation strategies are constructed through various forms of discourse, with texts not only representing socio-political practices but also demonstrating (de)legitimisation practices in various additional ways based on recontextualisation. In advance of the crisis, Al Jazeera explicitly utilised discursive efforts to both legitimise the coalition’s actions and delegitimise the actions of the Houthis, with no delegitimisation approaches applied to the coalition or legitimisation approaches applied to the actions of the Houthis. The strategy most commonly and repeatedly utilised in relation to the coalition was the legitimisation through altruism strategy, while the Houthis were delegitimised using a strategy that relied upon emotions.
After the crisis erupted, however, the utilisation of (de)legitimisation strategies was entirely reversed in relation to the actions of the relevant social actors. In particular, Al Jazeera markedly used several new delegitimisation strategies in its treatment of the coalition, with corresponding novel legitimisation strategies adopted to represent the Houthis in almost all instances. The exception to this was the one occasion on which Al Jazeera used legitimation through rationality in relation to the coalition. Interestingly, the delegitimisation strategy which Al Jazeera most noticeably employed with respect to the coalition featured the use of expert voices, while in relation to the Houthis, the most commonly used strategy was legitimisation through emotion and the development of hypothetical future strategies.
Examining the noticeable change in (de)legitimisation strategies in this case highlights that the representation of actions and social actors in the news does not directly reflect reality, but instead depends on underlying values of the editorial policy of the media institution that features in the news item; this is in accord with the findings of Bednarek and Caple (2012) and Berger and Luckmann (1991), and it is also noticeable that particular voices of expertise are frequently evoked in discourse to distance and justify ideological positioning and to untimely condemn or justify the social actor in question, depending on an official angle, by implicitly presenting the version of the events offered as both truthful and credible (Rojo and van Dijk, 1997). This confirms the work of Fairclough (1992) and Fowler (2013), who suggested that ideology is implicitly legitimised and interlinked with social actors’ actions and roles within a specific context, allowing it to be comprehended as a complex discursive practice from a discoursal viewpoint. Within this context, many news institutions produce content in accordance with multiple factors that include yet exceed the political or social influences that play a vital role in shaping the relevant social actors and their actions. This is supported by van Leeuwen (2008) and Reyes (2011), who found that the legitimisation of one position directly implies the delegitimisation of any directly opposing position, as such stances must be assumed to be mutually exclusive. As a result, media outlets simultaneously criticise and attack a chosen outgroup, in this case the Houthis pre-crisis and the coalition post-crisis, while supporting or mitigating the selected ingroup, in this case the coalition pre-crisis and the Houthis post-crisis, achieving this by means of the linguistic methods employed.
Conclusion and limitations
This research determined that changes in the tone and angle of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war in Yemen coincided with the onset of the Gulf crisis. More specifically, these modifications appear to correspond with the precise moment at which Qatar was excluded from the coalition, suggesting that the change in the political relationship between Saudi Arabia and Qatar may have been a precipitating cause of Al Jazeera’s change in coverage. This notion of biased coverage was explored by Hall (2005), who views representation as differing from reflection, with such work in no way limited to directly mirroring the final meaning. Instead, representation extends beyond the limitations of pure fact to produce meaningful stories, allowing elites to use the media to sustain their power through the production and reproduction of their narratives and their chosen portrayals of various groups in society. Both people and media institutions can thus exploit the power of discourse to construct a regime of discursive hegemony (Gramsci, 1971) or dominance (van Dijk, 1993b) over various discursive fields, including those related to war.
Such notions explain that the control over people is not dependent solely on force; it is he use of ideas at the same level that allow the establishment of the ideology of domination to influence individuals’ attitudes and minds (Bates, 1975; Van Dijk, 2000). Al Jazeera recognises its own influence as well as acknowledging the power of ideas in terms of regional and global public opinion; it thus strategically employs manipulation tactics within its news reports on the war in Yemen. While media coverage of Yemen’s war and the catastrophic crisis has been limited, at least in part because of overt censorship by the Saudis (Khalidi, 2017), Al Jazeera, being state-sponsored by Qatar, has taken advantage of this event to embarrass the coalition, and, in particular, Saudi Arabia, worldwide. This includes encouraging audiences to put pressure on and question Saudi’s narratives, painting Saudi as a rogue state to its neighbours, Yemen and Qatar. It is clear that, when Qatar was part of the coalition, and its relationship with other countries was generally positive, the coalition was represented positively, and the dangers of the Houthis were emphasised. However, once Qatar was excluded from the coalition, Al Jazeera modified its coverage, offering more negative representations of the coalition based on depicting the catastrophe caused by the coalition’s failure to achieve its goals. Textual and socio-political analysis of the coverage of Al Jazeera before and after that point thus shows that the platform employed what Herman and Chomsky (2010) call a ‘dual standard’, otherwise known as propaganda-oriented coverage. The Al Jazeera website thus did not display impartiality at that time, portraying the social actors involved in the war in Yemen in accordance with the interests of Qatar rather than from any objective perspective.
The analysis of lexical choices representing social actors, the choices of topics covered, and the (de)legitimisation strategies used by Al Jazeera’s online coverage of the war in Yemen further indicated that the policy of the news channel changed in a significant manner, apparently based on the adage that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Al Jazeera certainly changed its media coverage of the war in Yemen over time, and similar observations have been made in the context of other research that support the idea that as Al Jazeera functions to serve the interests of Qatar (Abdul-Nabi, 2022b; Al Khalifa, 2019; Gasim, 2018; Kharbach, 2020; Mejalli, 2019; Naier, 2021; Samuel-Azran and Pecht, 2014), its approach will change as these interests shift. The findings of the current study particularly strongly support the conclusions of Abdul-Nabi (2022b) and Satti (2020), whose studies were conducted in countries that are not considered to be major participants in the Gulf crisis, as in this study. However, Samuel-Azran (2013) stated that the credibility of Al Jazeera has been acquired through its coverage of issues in which Qatar’s interests are not directly implicated. Al Jazeera’s coverage of the uprising in Bahrain and political events in Egypt appeared to depend entirely on these regions’ diplomatic relationships with Qatar, being wholly consistent with Qatar’s foreign policy. This study was thus also in line with Abdul-Nabi (2017), Figenschou (2013) and Naier (2021), who suggested that Al Jazeera can be considered a tool to generate soft power for Qatar, which it uses as an important national weapon to defend state interests, exerting pressure on its rivals, as well as it being a bargaining tool used to repair relationships with other countries.
Samuel-Azran et al. (2016) and Samuel-Azran and Pecht (2014) agreed with Satti (2020) that Al-Jazeera’s Arabic output is clearly the most highly biased in terms of supporting Qatari interests, particularly as compared to its English counterpart, Al Jazeera English. The observable change in perspective adopted by Al Jazeera over the Gulf crisis offers evidence of Qatar’s involvement in the media narrative generated by Al Jazeera, with the media channel acting as a public diplomacy tool for the furtherance of Qatari foreign policy. Thus, Al Jazeera’s claims to be an independent media institution must be seen as questionable.
Combining the textual analytic tools of CDA with the socio-political framework conceptualised by Reisigl and Wodak in their discourse-historical approach (DHA), van Dijk’s Ideological Square model and Reyes’s strategies of (de)legitimisation, this study revealed the ideological construction of the presentation of social actors in the Yemeni war across the AJA news website both before and after the beginning of the Gulf crisis. Additionally, it emphasised the analytical significance of CDA in terms of analysing media discourse. CDA is a liberatory initiative that seeks to free people from the chains of repressive ideological and discursive regimes: by adopting its strictures, this research offers a moderate move in that direction, potentially acting as a spark for other CDA studies on Arab media discourse in the future.
One limitation of this study is that it analysed only Al Jazeera Arabic, leaving an open horizon for future research offering a comparative analysis of the Arabic and English sites or developing comparisons with other Arabic or international media to reveal and compare their underlying ideologies. Furthermore, due to the rising popularity of social media platforms, any future research would potentially benefit from investigating the ideologies displayed and shared on media platforms in English and Arabic, such as Twitter. Additionally, if and when the Gulf crisis ends in future, it is likely to be interesting to study changes in how Al Jazeera refers to all social actors before, during and after the crisis.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.