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FINAL Completed Thesis The Localisation of International News Agency Reports in English Newspapers in the Middle East Author Mohamed, Ali Published 2014 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Languages and Linguistics DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/1462 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367979 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au The Localisation of International News Agency Reports in English Newspapers in the Middle East Ali Mohamed BA, English Language and Literature, University of Bahrain 2003 MA, Applied English Language Studies, University of Bahrain 2007 School of Languages and Linguistics Arts, Education and Law Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2013 Statement of Originality This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. _____________________________ Ali Mohamed Abstract This thesis investigates the process of producing localised news reports by English newspapers in the Middle East instead of them using the actual news articles that they obtain from the international news agencies. The production of English news in the Middle East is a subject that has hardly been studied so far and this study is an attempt to shed light into how English news is produced and received in this part of the world. Since most news articles about international events reach the Middle East through the various international news agencies, news editors in the English newspapers in the region are faced with the task of fending off the ideologies that contradict with the local interest. In doing so, they end up injecting the reports with their own ideologies that might represent the local ideologies, and this process of producing the new news report is what is referred to in this thesis as the localisation process. The thesis aims to find out how and why this process is undertaken. News reports on a number of topics from both the international news agencies and an English newspaper in the Middle East are analysed using a multidisciplinary analytical framework that is based mainly on aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis and pragmatics. The analysis of the news reports shows a number of strategies employed by the English newspaper to walk around the ideologies of the international news agencies and produce its own versions of news reports. Combining ethnography with the analytical framework in order to interview news producers and readers from the Middle East reveals various reasons for English newspapers producing their localised versions. iii Acknowledgment First and foremost, my thanks should be to Allah for all His blessings. Special and endless thanks go to my principal supervisor, Dr. Michael Haugh for all he has done for me throughout my journey in completing this PhD thesis. From the day he read my proposal until writing the last words of this thesis, his words of encouragement and support have helped me gain confidence in myself and continue to work as hard as I could to get things done. Special thanks are also due to my associate supervisor, Dr. Ben Fenton-Smith for his invaluable comments and feedback that helped me throughout the various stages of this thesis. I should also thank them both again for spending hours of their time in reading and rereading the various drafts of the thesis. I will always be indebted to both of them for everything they have done for me throughout my PhD candidature. Warm thanks are also extended to Dr. Susana Eisenchlas for all her support when she was part of the advisory team. Doing the PhD would not have been accomplished without the financial support of the University of Bahrain and I should thank them for granting me the scholarship that helped me achieve my dream. Many thanks go to all the people who accepted my invitations to participate in the interviews. Their input was of great importance to the completion of this thesis. Special thanks go to Ms. Diane Josey for copyediting the thesis according to the Australian Standards for Editing Practice (ASEP). iv I should also thank my wife here for being by my side and supporting me, as well as sharing all the moments I went through to complete the thesis. Warm thanks to my parents and my parents-in-law for their endless support and love. Last but not least, this thesis grew up at the same time as I was seeing my son grow up, so I dedicate this thesis to him. v Table of contents Statement of Originality ii Abstract iii Acknowledgment iv Table of Contents vi List of Tables ix List of Figures xi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 Topic overview 1 1.2 Significance of the study 3 1.3 Structure of the thesis 4 Chapter 2: Media in the Middle East 8 2.1 Introduction 8 2.2 Newspapers in the Middle East 11 2.2.1 The mobilising press 15 2.2.2 The loyalist press 18 2.2.3 The diverse press 22 2.2.4 The transitional press 25 2.3 Radio in the Middle East 30 2.4 Television in the Middle East and the phenomenon of Al Jazeera 31 2.5 Internet and online censorship in the Middle East 35 2.6 Politics and media in Bahrain 43 2.6.1 Bahrain’s foreign relationships 45 2.6.2 Media in Bahrain 51 2.7 Concluding remarks: media in the Middle East between globalisation and localisation 56 Chapter 3: Literature Review 58 3.1 Media Discourse 58 3.1.1 The genre of newspaper news reports 60 3.2 Discourse analytic methods for studying media discourse 62 3.2.1 Text linguistics and SFG 63 3.2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 65 3.2.2.1 The roots of CDA 66 3.2.2.2 Critiques of CDA 74 3.2.2.3 Attempts to broaden the scope of CDA 77 3.2.2.4 Studies analysing media discourse using multidisciplinary approaches 82 3.3 Media discourse analysis and ethnography 85 vi 3.3.1 What is ethnography? 87 3.3.2 The emic – etic distinction 90 3.3.3 Combining CDA and ethnography 91 3.3.4 Studies combining discourse analysis and ethnography to analyse media discourse 93 3.4 Media discourse and ideology 96 3.4.1 Thompson’s concept of ideology 97 3.4.2 Fairclough’s concept of ideology 98 3.4.3 Van Dijk’s concept of ideology 101 3.4.4 Ideology in the current thesis 103 3.5 The localisation of news media 104 3.6 Research questions 110 Chapter 4: Methodology 112 4.1 Data 112 4.1.1 News sources 112 4.1.2 News topics 115 4.2 The multidisciplinary approach 118 4.2.1 Overview of the preliminary study 119 4.2.2 The discourse analytical framework 120 4.2.2.1 Word frequency analysis 121 4.2.2.2 Naming analysis 121 4.2.2.3 Quotation analysis 121 4.2.2.4 Participation analysis 124 4.2.2.5 Grounding and Theme 125 4.2.3 Interviews: why localisation is done 126 4.3 Concluding remarks 129 Chapter 5 Localisation of News Reports 130 5.1 Case study 1: Gaza flotilla raid 130 5.2 Case study 2: Obama’s speech in Cairo 152 5.3 Case study 3: Bush shoed at in Iraq 175 5.4 The three case studies: interpreting the results of the analysis 189 5.5 Hidden ideologies exposed 190 5.6 Localisation strategies 195 5.6.1 Holistic localisation strategies 195 5.6.2 Sentence-level localisation strategies 201 5.6.3 Word-level localisation strategies 204 5.7 A framework for analysing the localisation of English news in the Middle East 206 5.7.1 Ideologies 206 5.7.2 Business aims 207 5.7.3 Editorial lines 208 5.7.4 Societal discourses 209 5.7.5 Government policy line 210 5.7.6 Local common knowledge 211 Chapter 6: Globalisation of news reports: (Mis)reporting the Events in Bahrain in the Arab Spring 213 vii 6.1 Introduction 213 6.2 A history of division leading to the 2011 uprisings 216 6.3 The events of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain: peaceful protests or terrorist acts? 219 6.4 Reporting the 2012 Formula One in Bahrain: biased reporting? 225 6.4.1 The Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix race: a background 225 6.4.2 Analysing the reports on the 2012 Bahrain Formula One race 226 6.5 Concluding remarks 236 Chapter 7 Conclusions 239 7.1 Summary of the thesis 239 7.2 Research questions revisited 241 7.3 Limitations of study and suggestions for future research 243 Appendix 1: Preliminary study: a case study of the Pope’s 2006 controversy 245 Appendix 2: News reports on the flotilla event 280 Appendix 3: News reports on the Obama’s speech in Cairo 293 Appendix 4: News reports on the Bush shoe event in Iraq 306 Appendix 5: Interviews with news editors and reporters 314 Appendix 6: Readers’ response interviews 326 Appendix 7: News reports on the 2012 Formula One race in Bahrain 333 References 342 viii List of Tables Table 2-1: Arab world population and GDP 11 Table 3-1: Describing/attributing positive action 103 Table 5-1: Total number of words of each news reports 131 Table 5-2: Top 10 words in the news reports 132 Table 5-3: Quotations percentage in each news report 136 Table 5-4: Types of quoting used in each news report 136 Table 5-5: Incidence and percentage of the quoting verbs in all the news reports 138 Table 5-6: Incidence of the quoting verbs in each of the news reports 139 Table 5-7: Quoting verbs used in the news reports 142 Table 5-8: Types of attribution in the news reports 144 Table 5-9: The sources of quotes used in the news reports 146 Table 5-10: Total number of words of each news reports 153 Table 5-11: Top 10 words in the news report 154 Table 5-12: Quotations percentage in each news report 160 Table 5-13: Types of quoting used in
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