Al-Jazeera English: the Opinion and the Other Opinion. A comparison between ideologies in CNN International and Al-Jazeera English
Summary
Elite groups struggle to maintain existing power structures, and research reveals that the news media play an active role in maintaining these dominant ideologies. In the globalizing world, or the so-called ‘global village’, world mediascapes are mainly dominated by the West. Al-Jazeera, the Arabic version, started to oppose this hegemony from Qatar with the satellite station Al-Jazeera English in September 2006. The open (and many-facetted) question whether Al-Jazeera English produces a counter-ideology to oppose the dominated Western worldview in news was the main cause of this research. A comparative analysis between CNN International and Al-Jazeera English was undertaken. The news coverage concerning the withdrawal of the Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in August, 2005, of both network stations was subjected to CDA and it was, in addition, compared. Both CNN International and Al-Jazeera English were examined on lexicalization, predicational strategy, topicalization, intertextuality and framing.
The examined news coverage by Al-Jazeera English contains counter-ideological elements vis-à-vis the reporting by CNN International. Research shows in which linguistic structures this respectively dominant ideology and counter-ideology can be found. Some of these structures exhibit very explicitly the dominant ideology, such as the word ‘terrorism’ in CNN International, or the word ‘resistance’ in Al-Jazeera English. It appeared that both network stations have ingroup – outgroup polarization characteristics. In Al-Jazeera English’s news coverage, the ingroup is the Palestinian side and the outgroup is the Israeli side. The reverse is seen in CNN International, where the ingroup is the Israeli side and the outgroup, the Palestinian side. By using different strategies, both network stations represent the ingroup positively and the outgroups negatively. Moreover, CNN International often refers to the war on terrorism discourse of United States President Bush by framing the Palestinian side as consisting of terrorists. Indications are found that Al-Jazeera English attempts to ‘re-contextualize’ this discourse, i.e. the discourse of terrorism is moved to practices concerning Israeli violence and to Israel’s extreme political stance in the Middle East conflict.
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