Political Communication and the Media in Kurdistan GHARIB, Ahmed Hama Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/11820/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/11820/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. Political Communication and the Media in Kurdistan Ahmed Hama Gharib Abdullah Omar Bali A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media and communication (Ph.D) January 2016 1 Abstract This thesis examines how the Kurdish media communicate political issues in relation to corruption, reform, government performance, and citizens' trust. In particular it investigates how young people understand and respond to political issues across the media and how their social and political backgrounds affect their evaluation of the government’s performance and the role of elections in the political process. This investigation is combined with how media professionals view editorial policy of news coverage of political issues and freedom to access the public sector. This thesis employs a combination of methods: content and framing analysis to examine five media platforms; focus groups, interviews and semi-structured interviews to elicit the views of young people and media editors; a thematic analysis is employed to assess the data gathered from both young people and media editors. Overall, the findings indicated that both the ruling party’s media and the opposition media, particularly the television channels, focus on using magnifying frames and localising frames in their coverage of the political issues with varying degrees. Each of them reflects the same reality differently which in turn leads to the viewers and readers become divided into two categories. This diversity of framing news coverage is due to the media discourse of the ruling party and opposition media and the political background of the young people as well. This research has revealed the need, especially from young people, for the establishment of a national media that strike a balance between the opposition and ruling parties and offer coverage of political issues without the direct influence of political parties. 2 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to pay my sincere gratitude to the director of my research project Rinella Cere. She provided me with excellent academic guidance during her three years’ supervision and it must have been really tiring for her because my thesis was not supervised by any other supervisors, unlike other PhD students who are usually allocated to a team of supervisors. Special thanks goes to the Kurdistan Regional Government for its great initiative in sending me amongst other students to complete their studies abroad with the avowed aim of building a Kurdish society that has received little attention throughout the period of the Iraqi regimes. Since the announcement of my name on the list of the mission scholarships, I have felt a special responsibility to learn more in order to serve the people of my country to the best of my abilities. I would like to thank my friend Nicholas Mackey a lecturer in English language in Leicester for his help with the linguistic correction and proof reading of the research project. During the research project I have improved in the process of academic writing due to his guidance. Also a special thanks to the participants of the research project in the focus groups, in depth interviews and semi-structured interviews. In addition I really wish to thank Dr Sabir Bokani the Head of Media Studies at the University of Sulaymaniyah and Dr Anwar Mohamed the Dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Science. Both of them have appreciated my research and offered me support in conducting the focus groups. In this regards, I want to thank the lecturers and administrative staff at the University of Sulaymaniyah who helped to organise the participants in the research. Additional thanks go to my family, particularly my brother Dr Kanaan, who always listens to me and supports me. He has really taken the role of a parent and without him I could not imagine being in this position as he always asks me to do my best. Once again I thank my parents for my wonderful upbringing along with my brothers and sisters, who constantly make me feel their tenderness, love and respect. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my wife for her wholehearted support and encouragement to enable me to complete this research perfectly. 3 Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................... 3 Contents .................................................................................................................. 4 List of acronyms and abbreviations .......................................................................... 7 List of Tables............................................................................................................ 8 Chapter one ............................................................................................................. 9 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Political Contexts ........................................................................................ 9 1.2 The Rationale of the Research Project ..................................................... 12 1.3 Objectives of the Research ....................................................................... 13 1.4 The Research Questions .......................................................................... 15 1.5 Research Motivation and Significance ...................................................... 16 1.6 Chapter Outline ......................................................................................... 18 Chapter Two .......................................................................................................... 21 2. The theoretical and conceptual framework in the literature review ................. 21 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 21 2.2 Framing Analysis ...................................................................................... 21 2.3 Active Audience Theory ............................................................................ 26 2.4 Young people and political news .............................................................. 33 2.5 Clientelism Model ..................................................................................... 37 2.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 44 Chapter Three ........................................................................................................ 45 3. Methodology ................................................................................................... 45 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 45 3.2 Case study ................................................................................................ 46 3.3 Content analysis of political news ............................................................. 49 3.4 Conducting focus group, in-depth interviews and semi-structured interviews with young people. ......................................................................... 56 3.5 Conducting in-depth interviews with media professionals ......................... 69 3.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 72 Chapter Four .......................................................................................................... 74 4. The living condition of young people and the media in Kurdistan ................... 74 4 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 74 4.2 The living condition of young people in Kurdistan ..................................... 74 4.3 A Brief history of the Kurdish media and the media selected .................... 84 4.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 92 Chapter Five .......................................................................................................... 94 5. Political Issues across the Kurdish Media and Editorial Policies .................... 94 5.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 94 5.2 The News Coverage and Values Used Across the Kurdish Media ........... 95 5.3 The Frames Used and the Nature of News Coverage across the Kurdish Media ............................................................................................................ 107 5.4 The Attitude of Media Professionals towards the