Media discourse of Egyptian and British newspapers' websites and its influence on the formation of images of Muslims and Islam post 25th January 2011 revolution.

Abstract

Islamophobia is currently seen as a major and continuous threat to social cohesion in various Western societies. There is a significant body of research that explores media representations of Islam and Muslims in western media contexts. Only a handful of studies, however, have considered how Islam and Muslims are represented in Muslim-majority contexts. This thesis used a framing theory and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to compare and contrast news media framing of Islam and Muslims in online newspaper websites in the UK and Egypt, post the Egyptian Revolution 25th of January 2011 [1/25 hereinafter]. This research comparatively analysed two corpora from the British newspapers’ websites, namely The Guardian and The Times, and two from the Egyptian Arabic-Language newspapers’ websites, namely Al-Ahram and Al-Youm7 post 1/25. The analysis showed that Islam was represented differently in Muslim-majority media in comparison to western media outlets, with Islam represented first and foremost as a religion and common sense, i.e. a shared moral system and culture, in the Egyptian media; but often as a threat and a manipulative ideology in British media texts. There were, however, instances of positive depictions of Muslims in the sample of British media, as well as critical representations of Muslims in the Egyptian media, with regards to the political practices of Muslim groups. These findings suggest that the representation of Islam and Muslims will have some implications for political, cultural and societal affairs in both minority and majority contexts; in terms of national identity, multiculturalism and social cohesion in the UK; and media-political relations in both societies. To name but a few, these Muslim representations perpetuate Islamophobia and political discourse dominance regarding Islam in the studied British media; and safeguards the secular state and propagates national identity in Egypt.