Örebro University School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences 2010‐2012 A CRITICAL ANALYSIS ON MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION: THE CASE OF AL-AHRAM, AL-MASRY AL-YOUM, THE TELEGRAPH AND THE WASHINGTON POST MA Thesis Global Journalism Supervisor: Prof. Stig‐Arne Nohrstedt Author: Ahmed Magdy Youssef Word of Gratitude First of all, I would like to thank my university mentor, Stig-arne Nohrsted, as being the one who helped me in carrying out this thesis. Actually, I found succour in him during the thesis project. Not surbrisingly, he was replying back to my questions all the time, though, sometimes, he was very busy. Also, I would like to thank my loving wife Hend and my “naughty” son Hamza, whose boundless love keeps pushing me forward all the time. ii ABSTRACT The Egyptian protest movement which brought down the Egyptian regime headed by President Hosni Mubarak, not only gripped the minds and hearts of the Egyptians, but it captured the interest of the national and international media as well. The research aims at answering questions related to the kind of frames employed in four newspapers; namely, Al-Ahram, Al-Masry Al-Youm, The Telegraph and The Washington Post, in light of the protest paradigm, in addition to the way the same four newspapers tried to explore and identify the characteristics of war and peace journalism, according to Galtung’s dichotomous model, not to mention to trace how the four newspapers in hand depicted the protesters. To achieve this, two methods were applied in this study; notably, frame analysis, and critical discourse analysis. A sample of 60 news articles and editorial pieces was thoroughly examined and taken from the aforementioned four newspapers. The derived non-random samples were covering the events of the Egyptian Revolution from the eruption on January 25, till February 17, 2011; means one week after toppling the regime and the resignation of the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. The study revealed that the national newspapers; Al-Ahram and Al-Masry Al-Youm, were more prone to accentuate protesters’ acts of violence, albeit Al-Ahram showed a propensity toward using official sources at the expenses of voicing protesters, compared to Al-Masry Al-Youm. However, The Telegraph’s and The Washington Post’s coverage was more shifting away from the protest paradigm. Similarly, the national newspapers in hand, were leaning more towards war-reporting; resorting to victimizing language in addition to a language of good and bad dichotomous, not to mention to abstain from exposing the untruth of all parties involved. However, The Telegraph and The Washington Post were adhering to peace-reporting; using extensively people sources and exposing the black and whites of all parties in the problem, in addition to taking the side of protesters and depicting them positively. From the findings, the study may reach a conclusion that the more a newspaper’s coverage adheres to the protest paradigm, the more it inclines to iii war-reporting. On the other hand, the more a newspaper’s coverage shifting away from the protest paradigm, the more it conforms to peace journalism. Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................iii Table of contents .........................................................................................................................iv List of Tables...............................................................................................................................vi List of Figures .............................................................................................................................vi 1. Introduction ..............................................................................................................................1 1.1 Background ............................................................................................................................1 1.1.1 The Egyptian protest movement..........................................................................................2 1.1.2 Egyptian Press: A historical glimpse...................................................................................5 1.1.3 Al-Ahram and Al-Masry Al-Youm: A closer look..............................................................6 1.1.4 The Telegraph and The Washington Post: A brief background of political affiliation.......7 1.2 Statement of the problem .......................................................................................................8 1.3 Purpose..................................................................................................................................11 1.4 Research Questions ..............................................................................................................11 1.5 Significance of the study ......................................................................................................12 1.6 Scope of the Thesis ..............................................................................................................13 1.7 Limitations ...........................................................................................................................13 1.8 Thesis outline .......................................................................................................................14 2. Theoretical Framework and Previous Research ....................................................................16 2.1 Theoretical Approaches .......................................................................................................16 2.1.1 Media Framing ..................................................................................................................17 2.1.2 Critique of Media Framing ...............................................................................................20 2.1.3 Protest Paradigm ...............................................................................................................21 2.1.4 Critique of Protest Paradigm .............................................................................................27 2.1.5 Peace Journalism ...............................................................................................................29 2.1.6 Peace Journalism vs. War Journalism ...............................................................................30 2.1.7 Critique of Peace Journalism ............................................................................................34 2.2 Previous Research ................................................................................................................36 2.2.1 Media’s Impact on Social Movements ..............................................................................37 2.2.2 Covering the Egyptian Revolution ....................................................................................39 2.3 Summary and Conclusion ....................................................................................................43 3. Methods and Material ...........................................................................................................45 3.1 Material and sampling approach .........................................................................................45 3.1.1 Selecting news materials...................................................................................................47 3.1.2 Selecting Editorial Pieces .................................................................................................54 3.2 Methods and Eclecticism .....................................................................................................55 3.2.1 Frame Analysis .................................................................................................................56 3.2.2 Why Frame Analysis? ......................................................................................................57 3.2.3 Frame Analysis Phases ......................................................................................................58 3.2.4 Arriving at frames .............................................................................................................61 3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis ..................................................................................................61 3.3.1 CDA Phases ......................................................................................................................63 3.4 Limitations and Shortcomings of the Methods ....................................................................65 iv 3.5 Generalisability, Validity and Reliability ...........................................................................68 4. Results and Analysis ..............................................................................................................70 4.1 Frame Analysis: Condemning or praising protests? ............................................................70 4.1.1 Egypt’s Protests: A timeline of “unfinished revolution” ..................................................71 4.1.2 Covering the Spark of Events ...........................................................................................73 4.1.3 Protest as being disregarded and neglected .......................................................................75 4.1.4 Who started the violence? Who is to blame? (Protesters vs. Police) ................................76