1
Arab Youth in The Media: A Journey
from “Change-Makers” to “Terrorists”
Samia Fitouri
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s program Communication Science
Erasmus Mundus Master in Journalism, Media & Globalization
Supervisor: Tom Powell
June 2017
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Abstract
This study aims to explore Arab youth’s portrayals in western media across two different periods of time: the two first years of the Arab Spring (late 2010-2012) and the period that followed the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) (2014-2016). Following a multimodal approach, in which textual and visual frames are examined, this study seeks to identify prominent and salient frames in Arab youth’s media representation. Drawing on data from an inductive-deductive content analysis, findings reveal the dominance of the youth empowerment master frame throughout the first period and the prominence of the youth problematization frame during the second period. Visual-textual framing consistency has also been found to be relatively high. The results are useful for future research employing multimodal framing analysis.
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Introduction
Since early 2011, the Arab world has been swept by a wave of socio-political changes. The flame of what is today known as “the Arab Spring” got first ignited in Tunisia when a 26-year street vendor set himself on fire over destitute social conditions (BBC,2011). His death marked the eruption of mass protests not only nationwide but more significantly across most of the Arab region which consequently led to changes of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt as well as to deep political conflicts in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and Iraq. Besides the striking similarity in terms of public demands that were loudly voiced throughout the region during that period, youth actors have stood out as a common galvanizer of change. Forming about 60% of the population in 2009 (YouthPolicy, 2009), Arab youth had scored a remarkable presence among dissenting movements which has inevitably grabbed media’s attention.
Their active participation did not only draw media coverage but it also attracted fascination. Headlines featuring Arab youth as “the Guardians of the revolution” (Ahmed,2011), “the drivers of revolts” (Kirkpatrick & Slackman, 2011) and “the Arab world’s agents of change” (Sachs, 2011) blossomed during the early days of the Arab Spring, drawing a relatively positive representation of youth. However, as political turmoil started to take shape in mid-2012 mainly with the assassination of the American ambassador to Libya in September 2012 (Economist, 2015) and as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) established itself as a threatening non-state actor in mid-2014, western media’s early euphoria about Arab youth’s role in the uprising started to gradually fade away, yielding to a clear shift of representation.
Capitalizing on media framing theories, this research seeks to grasp this observed shift in Arab youth representation particularly in western media, across two different periods of time: 17 December 2010 to11 September 2012 and July 5th, 2014 to April 15th, 2016. In this context, framing will represent a central concept in this study. It will be understood as a process by which certain aspects of a perceived reality are selected and made more salient in a communicating text (Entman,1993, p52). Similarly, frames refer to a set of “interpretations in media texts [that] shape stories” (Berbers et al., 2015, P 799) which were captured through drawing on a corpus of news articles published by three western media outlets: the American newspaper the New York Times, the German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle and the French daily Libération. Thus, this study aims to identify Arab youth portrayal frames in the two selected periods and it also seeks to measure their prevalence.
To reach these objectives, multimodality was chosen as a tool of analysis, meaning that not only will textual framing be considered but also visual framing as “each modality holds distinctive, mode-specific communicative potentials and limitations, and may fulfil different communicative functions.” (Baden & Geise, 2014).
The added value of this study resides in filling an acute research gap about Arab youth portrayal in the media. Up to date, there has not been a single study which comprehensively focused on the subject. Besides, the novelty of this study stems from the use of a multimodal analysis framework that explores the interplay of visuals and text in the production of meaning. Concretely, the framework will be crystalized through the setup of an umbrella framing scheme wherein both visual and textual frames will be treated equally.
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Literature review
Media Framing:
Despite the heavy presence of framing as a concept in the field of social sciences, its full conceptualization is deemed to be fragmented and incomplete (Entman 1993, Cacciatore, Scheufele & Iyengar 2016). The casual overuse of the word “frame” in non-scholarly settings, has probably affected the accuracy of its meaning. Robert M. Entman attempted to offer a synthesis of the different uses of framing in the purpose of consolidating a fully-fledged theory.
Entman believes in the role of framing as an empowering agent for a communicating text (Entman,1993,51). For him, it is what grants information the power of influence on receivers. The notions of “selection” and “salience” are intrinsically connected to the concept of framing as the process involves “the selection of some aspects of a perceived reality” and making them salient (Entman,1993, p52) in a given communicating text. Entman defines “salience” as a process of “making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to audiences” (Entman,1993, p53). Fiske and Taylor explain that the more salient a frame is in a communicating text, the more likely it is for audiences to store it in their memory (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Thus, salience of frames will constitute an important component of this research and will be later operationalized quantitively in the form of frequency of occurrence both within a single outlet and across all selected media.
Moreover, frames are far from being randomly used, they do fulfill several functions, most importantly the function of “moral evaluation” (Entman,1993, p52) which constitutes the conceptual ground for the analysis of Arab youth’s portrayal. Moral evaluation can be manifested in a variety of forms. It can be conveyed through the repetition of certain qualifying terms such as adjectives, the use of familiar resonating images or through the transmission of a set of facts or judgments (Entman,1993, p52).
Understanding the moral evaluation frame functionality and the way it operates in a media text is essential in the context of content analysis. In fact, Entman criticized coders who tend to associate the mere appearance of certain negative or positive words with meaning and consequently draw unreliable conclusions (Entman,1993, p57). He rather recommended to measure salience of frames while examining the relationship between different sets of dominant frames within the same text (Entman,1993, p57).
Textual/ linguistic framing versus visual framing and the value of multimodality:
Scholarly research on framing theories has extensively focused on textual or linguistic framing with little attention given to visual devices (Geise & Baden, 2014). Visual framing theories have rather emerged within the field of visual communication to be often examined outside the mainstream scope of linguistic framing (Geise & Baden 2014, Ojala,Pantti & Kangas, 2017). However, given the multiple parallelisms that can be drawn between visual and textual framing processes, an integrated model that grasps framing as a multimodal process is needed (Ojala,Pantti & Kangas, 2017).
Geise and Baden consider that regardless of the modality used (e.g., text or image), the stream of information processing is sequential. In other words, both visual and textual framing rely on a “selective structuring of information” and the establishment of meaningful linkages (Geise & Baden, ,2014, p47). Although visual and textual framing processes differ in the devices used to suggest these meaningful
5 linkages, they do ultimately converge in the suggestion of a “coherent interpretation” (Geise & Baden, ,2014, p47). Entman has also never restricted framing devices to solely text. He rather explained that the process of frames detection starts with the “probing for particular words and visual images that consistently appear in a narrative and convey thematically consonant meanings across media and time. (Entman, 1991, p.7).
Thus, limiting framing analysis to one single modality prevents a deep exploration of intertwined meanings conveyed through multimodal “framing packages” (Baden & Geise, 2014). Conflict stories offer a good example of the added value of multimodality. In fact, narrating conflict stories by verbally and eloquently describing the depth of sorrow and grief that a certain nation has to endure, is likely to attract audiences’ attention but annexing images to text brings about another significant dimension which is the orientation of audiences’ understanding of the conflict in terms of causes and implications (Ojala,Pantti & Kangas, 2017).
Multimodality, therefore, stands out as a pertinent methodological choice for this study for its deemed efficiency in grasping “the communicative interaction of meaning coded in different modalities “(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Levine & Scollon, 2004, Ojala,Pantti & Kangas, 2017). One of the ways multimodality has been operationalized in this study is through the setup of a unifying framing typology under which both pictures and text have been coded equally.
Episodic versus Thematic Framing:
To give more depth to framing analysis, we can distinguish between two types of framing in news media: episodic versus thematic framing. Episodic frames are incorporated in news media in the form of concrete cases with a focus on “an individual or a single event” (Benjamin,2007). A good example of that would be the focus on a person’s inner thoughts or an analysis of their behaviors. Thematic framing is rather issue-focused, meaning that individuals are placed within a broader context and thus they do not represent the central focus of a news story (Benjamin,2007). The journalistic choice of either episodic or thematic framing has an influence on the way audiences deal with the reported issue. Episodic framing tends to lay the responsibility of the issue on the individual while thematic framing holds society responsible and prompts a public debate where institutions are expected to tackle the issue at hand (Iyengar, 1990). For example, the subject of youth radicalization can be dealt with in a journalistic story in two contrasting ways. An episodic framing would typically focus on a single case of a radicalized young individual while thematic framing would tackle the topic by focusing on influencing trends such as socio-economic hardships or mental health (Benjamin,2007, p2).
Youth Representation:
Representations can be defined as “communicated bodies of knowledge that are shared among society” (Stoyanova, 2012, p50). Youth’s social perceptions get substantially shaped by the images media draw and disseminate about them (Johnson, 2006) which consequently constructs society’s perceptions and attitudes about/toward the group (Stoyanova, 2012). As previously mentioned, no previous scholarly research has been exclusively conducted on the media framing of Arab youth. However, studies on the portrayal of ethnic youth in several western countries can be found along with studies on typical media depictions of youth. This section will outline the main findings of research projects on youth media representations in the United States, Bulgaria and Australia. It will then touch on the existing literature on ethnic youth’s media coverage in the Netherlands and Sweden while drawing a linkage to the concept of
6 Arabs’ othering in western media. Lastly, this section will provide a brief outline of youth’s portrayals in revolutionary contexts as well as media coverage of youth radicalization.
Typical Youth Media Representations:
The findings of a content analysis of news media representations of young people in the US revealed that young adults are frequently depicted in the media as “troubled, troubling, and dangerous” (Bernier,2011, p158). Youth in rural and urban areas alike seem to be routinely portrayed in a negative light (Aitken & Marchant,2003). A content analysis of 327 stories in the Los Angeles Times in 1997, showed that topics within which youth had been frequently featured included homicide, crime and violence stories in general (Bernier,2011, p159). The reporting style of youth in the US has been described as “racist, sexist and classist” (Aitken & Marchant,2003, p151). Such negative portrayals are deemed to significantly shape audiences’ perception of youth as a demographic group that is “problematic at best” (Bernier,2011, p161).
The situation in Bulgarian media is not very different. In fact, Bulgarian youth have been routinely framed as “violent” and “aggressive” (Stoyanova, 2012). A content analysis of two Bulgarian newspapers recorded more negative than neutral or positive adults’ attitudes toward young people within the topic of youth violence (Stoyanova, 2012, p 64). Similarly, a multimethod study on the community’s perceptions of Australian youth revealed that most respondents viewed youth as a problematic demographic group. Media reports have been detected as one of the most significant influencing factors of such perceptions (Bolzan, 2003).
Despite the difference of contexts, the three different cases point to a general pattern of youth representations in media that is characterized with a significant level of negativity and stereotyping. Such portrayals tend to substantially contribute to the problematization of youth as a demographic group in society.
Media Representation of Ethnic Youth:
Studies conducted on the media representation of ethnic youth in the Netherlands, Sweden and Australia suggest that non-native youth are often framed in media reports as “criminals” or “perpetrators” (Kabir, 2008, Lindgren,2009, Lepianka,2015). Australian Arab Youth have often been depicted in the media as potential terrorists following 9/11 (Kabir,2008) and ethnic youth in Swedish media are deemed to be overrepresented in crimes stories (Lindgren,2009). The analysis of 310 news items from national news media in the Netherlands, has revealed a high degree of homogeneity (or generalization) as well as a significant level of negativity in the representation of non-native youth (Lepianka,2015, p288).
Although, media representation of ethnic youth seems to share the same level of negativity noted in the previous section on general youth depictions, there is a new important aspect that can further heighten this negativity: the covert use of racist discourse in the depiction of ethnic youth (Lindgren, 2009). A racist discourse in this context can be defined as “patterns of representation that contribute to a binary construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’” within the dichotomy of “belonging’ and “otherness” (Lindgren, 2009, p66). The concept of otherness is integral to the orientalism frame of thought developed by Edward Said which is a characterization of a Western discourse that incorrectly splits the world into West and East (Said,2003). Said’s perspective on the West-East power relations is based on colonial history which he believes has granted the West a superior status over the East (Nurullah,2010, p1023) to eventually build the “Us versus Them” divide. This divide is the incarnation of the concept of otherness, whereby “Us” symbolizes belonging and togetherness and “Them” danger and threat. Along this line, western media portrayals of Arabs have been channeled through routine stereotyping in all platforms, where Muslims are typically depicted as the “alien other” (Nurullah,2010, p1025) who poses a continual threat to Western democracy
7 (Said, 1981, p26). Homogenization of Muslims depiction as one single group in Western media is also another important aspect of the “othering” process (Nurullah,2010).
In short, western media representation of ethnic youth seems to be in line with the general pattern of negative portraying noted in the previous section. This negativity gets further intensified when positioned within the conceptual framework of othering which will be recaptured in the following sections.
Youth Frames in Revolutionary Contexts:
Scholarly research published on youth mobilization during the “Color Revolutions” that swept several post-Soviet nations in the early 2000s (Mitchell, 2013), depict youth as peace activists who managed to capitalize on advances in communication technology to spread their vision of change (Nikolayenko,2007). The “Peace activist” and “Change maker” frames are therefore prominent in the depiction of Ukrainian, Serbian and Georgian youth within that period.
In the context of the Arab Spring, there has not been any scholarly research focusing on youth media framing. However, some literature on American media representation of Egyptian protesters (including youth) can be tracked (Guzman,2016). Guzman took previous findings on US coverage of the Middle East and North Africa as his point of departure to conclude that the orientalist media discourse of “Us” versus “Them” is still applicable when looking at the way Egyptian protesters have been classified in American media reports (CNN and Fox News precisely) (Guzman,2016, P 83). The classification was needed to make the relevance of a particular group of protesters clearer to an American audience by employing the “US friend/US enemy” frame (Guzman,2016, P 87). For instance, protesters affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood have been framed as a rather potential enemy to the US (Guzman,2016, P 87). On the other hand, Egyptian liberal anti-government youth have been portrayed as “rational”, “non-violent” “educated” and “leaderless” (Guzman,2016, P 90) and thus aligning with the “US friend” frame. Overall, CNN and Fox News coverage of Egyptian protesters during the Arab Spring echoes Said’s concept of orientalism that is based on the othering of the East by the West which leads us to infer that youth portrayals during revolutionary political events tend to be generally positive through the promotion of the “peaceful non-violent changer maker” frame.
Problematization of Radicalized Youth:
A cross-national study examined the portrayal of young Flemish and Dutch citizens who had decided to join the fighting in Syria. Five salient frames have been identified during the analysis of a selection of national Flemish and Dutch newspapers: “The ‘terrorist’ frame, the ‘victim’ frame, the ‘martyr’ frame, the ‘Don Quixote’ frame, and the ‘adventurer’ frame (Berbers et al., 2015). The “Terrorist” and “Victim” frames were “problematizing” while the rest of the frames shaped the issue as “an individual choice” and rather “unproblematic” (Berbers et al., 2015, p806). The results of the research show that the problematizing frames were used more frequently than the other frames while recording a high salience of the “terrorist” frame (Berbers et al., 2015, p 813). This frame includes issues such as youth radicalization and terror attacks prevention. Syria fighters within this frame have been mostly described as non-loyal to democratic values (Berbers et al., 2015, p 806).
Summary, Hypotheses & Sub-research Questions:
All in all, this brief literature review on youth depictions in media has demonstrated a pattern of representation that seems to vary according to the context. In fact, youth seem to be framed in general contexts as problematic and a source of trouble. Conversely, in revolutionary contexts such as the case of
8 the “Color Revolutions” and the Arab Spring, youth have rather been depicted as change agents and have consequently been “empowered” by the media. The last outlined case of young fighters in Syria suggests that the terrorist frame is prominent when placing youth in radicalized contexts. Based on the key observations collected from previous literature above, one can hypothesize the following with respect to this study:
Hypothesis 1: The youth empowerment master frame would dominate the portrayal of Arab youth during the Arab Spring period both visually and textually while the youth problematization frame would be highly visible during the second period.
Hypothesis 2: Moral evaluation of Arab youth during the first period would be positive and it would shift to negativity as the transition to the second period of analysis occurs.
Additionally, it is pertinent to pose the following two sub-research questions:
Sub-research question 1: Is thematic framing that often serves to hold society accountable for the issues youth are facing, used heavily during the first period and is episodic framing, which would hold youth themselves responsible, more noticeable in the second period?
Sub-research question 2: How can visual-textual framing consistency be characterized in both periods?
Methodology
Approach:
This study employs an inductive and deductive content analysis. 103 news articles, including 113 photos, published by the New York Times (NYT), Deutsche Welle (DW) and Libération were inductively analyzed to identify dominant frames in Arab youth representation across two periods of time: Mid-December 2010 through mid-September 2012 and early July 2014 through mid-April 2016. A full justification of the time frame and the skipped period will follow in the next section. A deductive approach was used by considering youth empowerment and youth problematization-related frames identified by previous literature. The combination of both approaches resulted in the generation of a frame typology encompassing six thematic frames. A content analysis was then carried out with the objective of establishing a link between “the abstract frame and the pattern of elements in the news text [as well as in the accompanying visuals]” (Van Gorp, 2010, p90).
Sample:
It was intentional to select a French and a German news source because Germany and France have witnessed since 2014 major terror events carried out by young individuals of Arab descent and thus examining the frames used by DW and Libération in the aftermath of those events would be interesting. The selection of the NYT was meant to expand the concept of “Western media” beyond the European borders.
9 In the context of this study, Arab youth will be referred to as youth pertaining to countries where movements of the Arab Spring had taken place, namely: Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and Iraq. Since Syria has been heavily linked to the refugee crisis in Europe, I have chosen to discard it in this study to avoid the dominance of the refugee frame in the selected media outlets, which has been characterized by specific attributes that do not constitute the central focus of this study.
Regarding the chosen time frame of both periods, significant events played a key role in determining reference points in time. The self-immolation of the young Tunisian street vendor on the 17th of December 2010 has represented the symbolic event that ignited the Arab uprisings. Demonstrations started shortly after. Thus, it was meaningful to set the 17th of December as the start date of the first selected period. Then, the assassination of the US ambassador in Libya in September 11th, 2012 marked the beginning of transitional failures (at least from a western perspective) as several western governments called their diplomats to leave the country (Economist, 2015). Thus, September 11th marks the end date of the first selected period.
Regarding the second chosen period, the 5th of July 2014 marked the first and so far, only public appearance of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the figurehead of the so-called ISIS (BBC, 2014). To even out periods of media coverage (21 months and a half of coverage), the end of the second period was set to the 15th of April 2016.
The period May 2012-July 2014 which lies between the two selected periods of analysis, has been skipped for the following reasons: To start with, all 6 target countries witnessed throughout that period significant hurdles that impeded any possible democratic transition which symbolically meant the end of the Arab Spring euphoria. Besides the assassination of the American ambassador Chris Stevens and three US citizens in Libya in September 2012 (Economist,2015), Egypt entered a phase of deep political mistrust upon the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in the elections in December 2012. Early 2013 marked a new wave of anti-government protests (Fanack,2015). In Bahrain, Shiite opposition groups rejected the King’s constitutional amendments and the regime continued to repress protests from May 2012 onwards (Fanack,2017). In Tunisia, the American embassy and the American school in Tunis were attacked in September 2012 by a group of Islamic fundamentalists which signaled the growing threat of Salafism under the newly-appointed Islamist prime minister (Fanack,2014). Regional conflicts in Southern Yemen started to erupt and continued to fuel up till the outbreak of the civil war in 2014 (Fanack,2014) and finally sectarian tensions in Iraq escalated in December 2012 following a big wave of protests against the marginalization of the Sunnis by the Shia-led government (Guardian,2012).
All in all, these significant events mark the symbolic end of optimism over the democratic promises entailed by the Arab Spring. The objective of this study is to look at the aftermath of the emergence of ISIS and its impact on the evolution of youth portrayals in western media which justifies the decision of skipping this time period.
Articles Selection:
As LexisNexis did not offer any consistent data set for the selected media outlets, DW and NYT articles were accessed from the news outlets’ websites using the following keywords: “Arab Youth-Youth-Young-Arab and- Tunisia-and/or-Libya-and/or-Yemen-and/or-Bahrain-and/or-Egypt-and/or-Iraq”. Liberation did not offer any searchable online archives and so articles collection was carried out on Google news by customizing publication dates using the same keyword search. There is a well-known drawback to this method of data retrieval, it is hard to confirm with full confidence that all relevant articles were made
10 available (Guzman,2016). Nevertheless, to go beyond this imperfection, all articles that focused primarily on Arab youth have been retained for analysis.
The search yielded the following number of hits: Table 1
Number of initial hits per period across all three media outlets
Period 1 Period 2
New York Times 901 105
Deutsche Welle: 876 89
Liberation: 220 80
A thorough scan of the results has been applied to check for relevance. Irrelevant and articles with low relevance were discarded. Articles where Arab youth did not constitute the central subject were also eliminated. All remaining relevant articles have been retained as demonstrated in the second table: Table 2 Number of selected articles per period per medium Total Number of articles Total number of pictures Period 1 Period 2 Period 1 Period 2 The New York Times 26 11 34 4
Liberation 19 14 7 6
Deutsche Welle 23 10 48 14
Total 68 35 89 24
Coding Protocols Textual coding:
A mixed method of content analysis was used that included a pre-defined list of frames collected from literature research and an inductive process of identifying frames. The first coding step was to read through all articles, record basic information such as headlines, publication dates and authors. Visuals were also
11 assembled on a different coding sheet with their corresponding captions. The second step was to identify frames that were detectable in both text and pictures. This step was guided by Entman’s framing function “moral evaluation” as outlined in the literature review above. And which has been understood in the context of this study as the way the three-selected media defined, described and characterized Arab youth in terms of psychology, behavior and actions. For example, the adjectives “connected” and “brave” dominated the description of young activists during the reporting of the Color Revolution. Therefore, moral evaluation will be conceptualized through addressing the following question: How have Arab youth been judged/ evaluated? Thus, this function has been operationalized in the collection of explicit cues such as qualifying adjectives and textual expressions that were employed to draw a portrayal of Arab youth. The final step was the creation of a coherent set of frames or a framing typology that combined a deductively-generated list of prominent frames with an inductively-identified series.
The following frames have been inductively-deductively identified:
Table 3
Inductively-deductively identified frames
Period 1 Period 2 Deductively generated frames “Activist” frame
“Tech-savvy” frame
“Rational and organized” frame
Generation gap frame
“Radicalized” frame Terrorism-Perpetrator “Victim” frame Victim
“Allegiance to the Islamic State (IS)” Peace activist “Artist” frame
Both lists were merged to generate the following typology:
1. Activist/Rebellious frame: wherein youth are depicted in the role of activists such as leading protests and sit-ins.
2. Tech-savvy/organized frame: wherein youth are portrayed as technology geeks mastering social media dissemination strategies.
3. Generation gap frame: This frame typically gives voice to youth to denounce the silence of older generations and showcase their revolutionary vision. Reversely, older people are depicted as disconnected from youth’s ideals and concerns.
4. Victim frame: including victim of tough economic situations, extremists’ manipulation, police violence.
5. Radicalized/ terrorist/perpetrator frame: wherein youth are depicted as actors of terror attacks, criminals, aggressive and prone to Islamic radicalization.
12 As the identified frames share several common features, it was pertinent to come up with a broader structure to facilitate their categorization in the two modalities. Thus, they have been placed within three overarching “master frames” as follows:
Table 3
Master frames generated through the combination of deductively/inductively-identified frames
Youth Empowerment Youth Problematization Neutral
Activist/Rebellious frame Victim frame Generation gap frame Tech-savvy/organized frame Radicalized/ terrorist/perpetrator frame
Artist frame
Salience of frames:
Salience has been operationalized through the counting of the number of times a frame has reoccurred within the same article and within the same outlet. In addition, salience has been measured by the number of paragraphs dedicated to each frame per outlet.
Episodic versus thematic framing:
The presence of episodic and thematic framing has been quantified following these steps: counting the total number of paragraphs per article, counting the number of thematically framed paragraphs, counting the number of episodically framed paragraphs, deriving a percentage per article and finally summarizing percentages per medium.
Visual coding:
Pictures have undergone the same process of frame identification as the text. They were coded along the six-frame typology including a detailed description of the content displayed (subject, photographic elements such as camera angles) Additionally, a percentage of repeated photographs under the same frame was eventually generated. It is important to emphasize that visuals have also been coded into the three master frames: youth empowerment-youth problematization-neutral. Coding both visuals and texts within a unified structure facilitated accounting for consistency later.
Media use of photographs as “non-verbal cues” to convey communicative messages to the audience and consequently alter or shape their power perceptions, has been conventionally studied from a picture angle perspective. Typically, powerful subjects are captured from a low angle whereas powerless individuals are depicted from a high angle (Giessner, Ryan, Schubert & Quaquebeke, 2011).
Camera angles and their corresponding meanings have been retrieved from the United Nations Alliance of Civilization (UNAOC)’s chart and used to code photos. Below is a list of camera angles abbreviations, meanings, description and effect (UNAOC, 2017). They have been divided into three main thematic categories (as outlined above):
13 Shots and angles aspiring youth
empowerment
Shots and angles aspiring youth problematization
Neutral shots and angles
Close-up (CU): intimacy
Low angle (LA): camera looks up – subject looks large – creates an impression of power
Extreme Close-up (ECU) of eyes/face: aggression, discomfort
High angle (HA): camera looks down-subject appears small-creates an impression of weakness
Normal or straight angle (SA): camera looks at the subject from eye-level – subject looks neutral
Other important visual elements include gender of actors depicted (Parry, 2011) Gender:
Gender of subjects depicted in pictures was coded along the following three categories: Male/Female/Male-Female. The latter refers to photos where a mixed group of male and female individuals are depicted.
Results
A total of 103 articles and 113 visuals from Liberation, DW and the NYT were analyzed. As a first stage, frames appearing in texts and frames depicted in photographs were analyzed separately in terms of frequency and salience. Then articles that do not include photographs have been discarded to analyze visual-textual consistency. H1 predicted that the youth empowerment master frame (encompassing frames 1,2 and 6) would be prominent across the first selected period while the youth problematization master frame (encompassing frames 4 and 5) would dominate the second period. As shown in table 4, salience of youth empowerment frames is acute during the first period except for the Artist frame (F6) in Liberation and the NYT where one can notice a higher presence in the second period.
Table 4
Average of textual frames occurrences per medium/per period
Medium Activist/Rebellious (F1) Tech-savvy/ organized (F2) Generation Gap (F3) Victim (F4) Radicalized/terrorist (F5) Artist (F6) Period 1 Period 2 Period 1 Period 2 Period 1 Period 2 Period 1 Period 2 Period 1 Period 2 Period 1 Period 2 NYT
5.24
1.55
1.47
0.82
0.47
0.1
1.08
0.73
0.27
2.73
0.08
0.10
DW3.83
1.2
0.70
0
0.05
0.3
0.66
2.1
0.09
3.4
0.48
0
14 *Numbers displayed in the table refer to the number of times frames have occurred in a media text on average. Thus, figures can only be positive.
Likewise, and as clearly demonstrated in Table 5, the youth demonization frame (encompassing the victim and terrorist frames F4 and F5) scores high in salience in the second period. These two observations can solidly confirm H1.
Table 5
Number of times a frame is repeated within the same outlet
Medium Activist Rebellious F1 Tech-savvy Organized F2 Generation Gap F3 Victim F4 Radicalized Terrorist F5 Artist F6 First Period Second Period First Period Second Period First Period Second Period First Period Second Period First Period Second Period First Period Second Period NYT
23
6
14
5
9
1
10
4
2
7
1
2
DW21
4
7
0
1
1
9
7
1
7
2
0
Liberation17
1
10
1
2
2
7
5
1
11
4
2
The number of paragraphs dedicated to each frame per medium, across the two periods, has also been tracked. Results show that the highest number of paragraphs corresponds to the Activist frame in the first period (pertaining to the youth empowerment master frame) and to the Terrorist frame in the second period (corresponding to the youth demonization master frame) (see appendix 3).
Moral Evaluation:
H2 anticipated that moral evaluation of Arab youth during the first period would be positive and that it would shift to negativity as the transition to the second period of analysis occurs.
Informed by Entman’s framing functionality “moral evaluation”, adjectives used by journalists to judge or qualify Arab youth across the two selected periods have been collected. The following word map showcases the dominance of the adjectives “Educated, Rebellious, Unemployed and Connected” throughout the first period of analysis which reinforces the prominence of the youth empowerment master frame.
Figure 1
Word map showcasing the most recurrent qualifying adjectives of Arab youth during the first period of analysis
Liberati on
15 The second word map highlights the salience of the youth problematization master frame through the remarkable dominance of the adjectives: “Radicalized and Jobless” across the second period of analysis. Figure 2
Word map showcasing the most recurrent qualifying adjectives of Arab youth during the second period of analysis
16 Episodic Versus Thematic:
Sub-research question 1 inquired into the use of thematic and episodic framing across the two periods. The results below can partially confirm that thematic framing has been heavily employed as its percentage across two out of three outlets (NYT and DW) in both periods, has been higher than episodic framing. Figure 3
Percentage of episodic versus thematic framing in period 1 and period 1 (DW)
27.02% 39.25% 72.98% 60.75% 0.00% 20.00% 40.00% 60.00% 80.00% 100.00% Period 1 Period 2
DW
Episodic Thematic17 Figure 4
Percentage of episodic versus thematic framing in period 1 and period 1 (NYT)
Figure 5
Percentage of episodic versus thematic framing in period 1 and period 1 (Liberation)
18 As outlined in the following table, the first period of analysis across all media outlets, has been visually dominated by the youth empowerment master frame and more precisely by the Activist frame (F1). Images such as massive riots, clashes between young protesters and security forces and young people holding revolutionary tokens, are common depictions across this period. The shift in visual depictions as we move to the second period is highly significant. As outlined below, more than half of the published images pertain to the youth demonization master frame. More specifically, the Terrorist frame has been heavily used. Typical depictions include young people wearing visible Islamist symbols such as the niqab as well as youth attending public rallies held by fundamentalist parties.
Table 6
Prominent visual depictions:
Frames Prominent visual depictions across all media Percentage of repeated photographs per frame
First Period Second Period First
Period (Total:90) Second Period (Total:28) Master Frame: Youth Empowerment Sub-frame: F1: Activist/Rebellious frame
- Young people fleeing police forces/Being tear-gassed/leading protests
- Young person wearing some historical
rebellious icons such as Chee Guevara
t-shirt/hat - Young people
campaigning for a social or political cause
- Young women marching for women’s rights 81.2% 14.29% Master Frame: Youth Problematization Sub-frame: F5: Radicalized/Terrorist frame
Young people in Libya and Yemen holding weapons
- A woman in a Niqab passing down the street marking the rise of religious symbols after the victory of Islamist parties in Tunisia and Egypt - A group of young people attending a rally of a fundamentalist religious figure - A post-terrorist
attack site barricaded by anti-terrorism special troops.
19 - A group of young
people about to loot a property
Camera angles and shots:
Guided by the camera shots chart, introduced earlier in the study and recaptured again below, we can infer a general tendency of using Close-Up shots (CU) in the first period which typically convey a sense of intimacy with the photographed subject. DW has remarkably used Straight Angles (SA) as well as Close-Up shots (CU) during the first period as outlined in table 7. There is no significant trend to detect across the second period of analysis except for a meaningful increase of the use of straight angles which typically convey a sense of neutrality.
Table 7
Salience of camera angles per medium
Medium
CU
LA
SA
ECU
HA
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
NYT
4
1
3
0
2
3
0
0
4
0
DW
22
3
5
3
15
6
1
0
5
2
Liberation 1
1
2
1
2
3
0
0
2
1
Visual-Textual Framing Consistency:
Visual-textual framing consistency across both periods and amongst all three outlets has been revealed to be relatively significant. As shown below the blue line representing visuals in period 1 (P1) has the same trend as the orange line representing text in P1. The same can apply to the yellow and grey lines for period 2 (P2). In general, it is evident to notice the striking parallelism between visual and textual lines in the graphs below across both periods which endorses the idea of consistency.
Figure 6
20 Figure 7
Visual-textual framing consistency (DW)
Figure 8
21
Discussion
Summary of Results:
This study examined the salience of two master frames used by the NYT, DW and Liberation in the portrayal of Arab youth across two periods of time: the period where events of the Arab Spring were still unfolding (2010-2012) and the period that immediately followed the beginning of transitional political failures in the region and more importantly the rise of ISIS (2014-2016). Frames have been identified following a deductive-inductive approach and subsequently merged into the youth empowerment versus the youth problematization master frames. Not surprisingly, and as the literature published on youth portrayal within revolutionary settings has shown, the youth empowerment master frame (precisely the Activist/Rebellious frame) has tremendously dominated the first period of analysis both textually and visually.
Moreover, this study scrutinized the linguistic choices made by journalists to morally evaluate Arab youth throughout both periods. The series of adjectives collected in both periods demonstrates the dominance of positive adjectives such as “Educated” and “Connected” during the first period of analysis and the heavy use of “Radicalized” and “Jobless” throughout the second period which marks a striking shift of representation. In terms of episodic versus thematic framing, results did not record any significant shift between the two periods of analysis. In fact, thematic framing has been constantly used by journalists in both periods which points to the conclusion that Arab youth have not been heavily held responsible for the issues at hand as the latter were generally raised within a broader societal context embodied by the choice of thematic framing. Ultimately, visual-textual consistency has been revealed to be relatively strong across all selected outlets which reiterates the role that multimodality plays in the communication of one unified set of meanings.
22 The broad objective of zooming into western media representations of Arab youth is to stimulate a reflection about what implications these empowering or problematizing portrayals might have on western audiences’ perceptions, not only about Arab youth but also about a whole culture. The field of framing effects on public perceptions offers a range of insights that do apply to the case of Arab youth framing in western media. Several studies in the field have proven the degree of influence that media frames carry in terms of shaping audiences’ perceptions and evaluation of an issue (Schuck& de Vreese, 2006). Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley’s case of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) (1997) offers a relevant example. The authors probed the effects of positive and negative media framing of KKK rally on audiences’ level of tolerance toward the group. Positive framing linked the rally to “freedom of expression” whereas negative framing pictured it as a prospective tumultuous event. Individuals who were part of the “freedom of expression” condition manifested more tolerance toward the KKK than the other group. The outcome recaptures the role that frames play in influencing how the audience understand the subject (Guzman, 2016, Entman, 1993).
Studies that have considered the influence of negative media portrayals of youth on community perceptions, have also revealed a strong link between the problematization of youth as a demographic group in society and negative media depictions. For example, a study investigating community perceptions of young people in Australia, revealed that negative media portrayals constitute one of the main factors behind negative broad community opinions about youth (Bolzan,2003). Thus, it is safe to speculate that the dominance of the youth problematization master frame throughout the second period of analysis would affect western audiences’ perceptions of Arab youth in a negative manner.
Moreover, the implications of both negative portrayals and community perceptions on youth’s self-esteem is highly significant. Indeed, it is deemed that when exposed to negative depictions about themselves, youth tend to feel “devalued and worthless” (Blozan,2003, P37). This low self-esteem can potentially carry deeper implications. Most notably, cynicism, resistance to change and anger that could lead to violence (Blozan,2003, P37). The same could be applicable to Arab youth’s self-perception; if we assume that western audiences’ opinions about them are prone to be shaped by the problematization master frame, then we can deduce that these opinions are likely to be generally negative which in turn affects Arab youth’s perception about their sense of worth, self-esteem and value in the world.
Agenda-Setting, Sensationalism & Political Journalism:
The number of Arab youth-related news articles collected for this study in the second period, dropped from 68 to 35 which prompts a series of pertinent questions. Why did Arab youth drop in scale of importance on the news media’s agenda? What does that entail to the level of sensationalism in today’s political journalism?
Media’s agenda-setting power has been often reiterated in scholarly works. It mainly refers to the media’s high capacity in either “elevating” or decreasing an issue ‘in importance to the public” (Nurullah,2010, P 1024). It can be intrinsically connected to the concept of sensationalism in news production. Understanding sensationalism as “those characteristics of news that arouse audiences emotionally” (Arbaoui, De Swert & Van der Brug, P4,2016), we can draw the inference that sensationalist topics are more likely to be elevated on media’s agendas for their high capacity in stirring up audiences’ emotions. The heavy coverage of Arab youth’s participation to the events of the Arab Spring in contrast to the subsequent waning of the subject leads us to conclude that youth portrayals do also follow a scale of sensationalism that determines their position on the news agenda.
23 Study limitations & academic contribution:
Although this is one of the first studies that on the one hand explores western media representation of Arab youth in a comparative context and on the other hand employs a multimodal integrated framework, it still holds several limitations. First, clearly the small size of the selected sample precludes any attempt of generalization as well as the exploration of any potential nuances of portrayals. The imperfection of data collection was nearly inevitable as no centralized platform for articles retrieval could be found which imposed a less systematic data collection process. Moreover, however innovative the multimodal analysis approach could be, the process of its operationalization in this study has been challenging and far from being ideal. In other words, a better model that avoids a disparate analysis of visual and textual framing is needed. Ultimately, given the specificity of the geopolitical context of this study, shortage of exclusively-relevant scholarly work on Arab youth portrayals has weakened to some extent the literary framework.
Nevertheless, the findings of this study have humbly contributed to the debate on shifts of media depictions of youth in general and Arab youth specifically. It can be further expanded through applying a similar multimodal analysis framework to a larger number of media outlets in the West and testing the model on Arab media outlets to draw some potential new comparative insights. Further research on Arab youth media representations would also need to deeply investigate the journalistic professional norms in place when reporting on youth.
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Appendices (1-5)
Appendix 1:
Coding Framework
This study will rely on a hybrid form of content analysis which includes both pre-defined coding
elements and an inductive approach of frames and sub-frames identification.
Deductive approach:
Frames that have been detected in the above literature overview will form a starting deductive
point:
“Terrorism” frame
“Perpetrator” frame
“Victim” frame
“Peace activist” frame
Inductive approach:
Frames that have been inductively detected:
“Tech-savvy/organized” frame
“Generation gap” frame
“Artist” frame
Final list:
27 2. Tech-savvy/organized frame
3. Generation gap frame
4. Victim frame (including victim of tough economic situations, extremists’ manipulation, police violence)
5. Radicalized/ terrorist/perpetrator frame 6. Artist frame
Master frames:
Salience of frames:
Number of times the frame is repeated within the same news outlet.
Number of paragraphs dedicated to each frame.
Framing Analysis:
This will be based on Entman’s framing function: Moral Evaluation
How have causal agents (actors) been judged/ evaluated? (Here the focus will be on the
collection of adjectives chosen by journalists to describe Arab youth)
Episodic Vs Thematic Framing:
Percentage of each per article/ per medium.
Photographic depictions:
Gender: ……….
Camera angles used: …………
Consistency with textual dominant frames:
This includes the number of times dominant visual frames match dominant textual frames per
article/per medium
Youth Empowerment Youth Problematization/Demonization Neutral Activist/Rebellious frame Victim frame Generation gap frame Tech-savvy/organized frame Radicalized/ terrorist/perpetrator frame
28 Appendix 2
Youth portrayals frames collected from literature on youth media representation in multiple geographical contexts
Context
Youth Depiction & key
theories
Salient Frames
Operationalization
Netherlands
(Lepianka, 2015)
Ethnic youth in the
media are often
associated with
hostility, unfriendliness
and heightened
negativity in general.
Youth representation
has been studied from
the dichotomy of
benevolence/warmth vs
coldness
“Preparator”
‘Terrorist”
“Victim”
Negative evaluation
measurement:
Featuring youth in
articles with a negative
overall theme (such as
included public order,
conflict and defense and
demonstrations)
Positive evaluation:
Featuring youth in
articles with a positive
overall theme
Benevolence indications:
Youth actors’ attitudes,
intentions/ character
wehre associated with
“friendliness, kindness,
agreeableness,
helpfulness, charity,
honesty and
trustworthiness”
Coldness indications:
Youth actors’ attitudes,
intentions/ character were
presented as “unfriendly,
disagreeable, unkind,
dishonest, free-loading,
abusive, aggressive,
hostile, threatening, etc”
29
United States
(Aitken &
Marchant,2003,Bernier,2011)
Youth are routinely as
depicted in racist and
classist ways in the
media as “troubled,
troubling, and
dangerous”
Australia (Kabir,2008,
Bolzan 2003)
Australian Arab Youth
are often depicted in the
media as potential
terrorists following 9/11
Negative media
discourse created
around young people
through routinely
associating them with
“crime” “drinking”
“problem behavior”
“Terrorist”
“Preparator”
Sweden
Lindgren (2009)Media
overrepresentation of
youth immigrants
among criminals
“Criminal”
Ukraine-Georgia-Romania
(Orange Revolution Youth)
(Nikolayenko,2007)
Youth were depicted as
peace activists who
knew how to capitalize
on advances in
communication
technology to transmit
throughout the
revolutionary
movements.
“Peace Activist”
“Change maker”
Bulgaria
(Stoyanova,2011)
Images of Bulgarian
youth in the media is
dominated with strong
associations to violence
“Violent”
“Aggressor”
Egypt
(Guzman,2016)
Western media
coverage of uprising’s
participants in Egypt
has drawn from
classical orientalist
stereotypes that would
typically divide the
world into “US” the
“Rational vs
Irrational”
Human Interest
Rational Vs Irrational:
Irrational: proneness to
violence/ terrorism
Rational: Fight for
democracy and peace
30
rational West and
“Them” the irrational
oriental Other.
Depending on what
group demonstrators
belong to
(anti-
government/pro-government-Islamists),
the dichotomic label of
“rational-irrational” was
applied.
Anti-government
protestors were
associated with a
positive label of
“rational”
Human Interest frame:
“adding an individual's
story or an emotional
angle to the presentation
of an event, issue or
problem” (protests
fighting for their rights)
The Flanders and the
Netherlands
Young Flemish and
Dutch Syria fighters
have been represented
in the media followed a
“US” versus “Them”
discourse.
“Terrorist”
“Victim”
31
Appendix 3:
Number of paragraphs dedicated to each frame per medium
Medium
Activist
Rebellious
Tech-savvy
organized
Generation Gap
Victim
Radicalized
Terrorist
Artist
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
First
Period
Second
Period
NYT
136
17
38
9
12
1
28
8
7
30
2
10
DW
88
12
16
0
1
3
15
21
2
34
11
0
Liberation
53
4
17
1
3
2
17
6
1
52
9
8
Appendix 4:
Prominent visual depictions across all media
Frames
Prominent visual depictions across all media
Percentage of repeated
photographs per frame
First Period
Second Period
First
Period
(Total:90)
Second Period
(Total:28)
F1
- Young people fleeing
police forces/Being
tear-gassed
- Close-up / portrait of
young activists featuring
a look of bravery and
determination
(showcasing gentle
smiles or angry facial
expressions)
- Young person wearing
some historical
rebellious icons such as
Chee Guevara t-shirt/hat
- Young activists on the
frontline of a massive
protest holding banners
with messages and
posters of martyrs
- Young people injured
during violent
demonstrations
- Young women
marching for
women’s rights
81.2%
14.29%
32
- Sit-ins
- Young people caught in
violent clashes with
police forces
- Young people waving
flags on top of key
symbolic monuments
- Young people
campaigning for a social
or political cause
F2
- A group of young people
immersed in their
computers, sharing
content on social
networks
- Meet-ups of young cyber
activists
- Young people logged to
the internet while
participating in a sit-in
- Young people helping
one another during
protests to counter police
violence
- Young protesters
coordinating actions
during sit-ins
- A young activist taking
the oath during an
official appointment
- Young people holding a
giant flag made of the
collage of all Arab
Spring countries’ flags
- Young people starring at
electoral posters as a sign
of making an electoral
choice
- Young people speaking
during entrepreneurial
events
30%
0
F3
- Older citizens starring at
a young person’s
rebellion symbols such
as a Chee Guevara t-shirt
- Older adults starring
at young boys tearing
down electoral
posters.
33
- Young person starring at
an electoral poster
featuring an old
politician
F4
- Young people
participating in a protest,
holding banners that
express their frustration
over bleak economic
times
- Young person pulling
a long face
- Young people
participating in a
protest, holding
banners that express
their frustration over
bleak economic times
-
1.11%
14.28%
F5
Young people in Libya and
Yemen holding weapons
- A woman in a Niqab
passing down the
street marking the
rise of religious
symbols after the
victory of Islamist
parties in Tunisia and
Egypt
- A group of young
people attending a
rally of a
fundamentalist
religious figure
- A group of young
men attending prayer
in a mosque
- A post-terrorist
attack site barricaded
by anti-terrorism
special troops.
- A group of young
people about to loot a
property
1.11%
53.58%
F6
- Young people dancing at
the tunes of alternative
bands, using revolution
as a musical theme.
- Young musicians playing
an instrument.
- Young rap bands
expressing youth’s
frustration through
rebellious lyrics
- Young female
filmmakers sharing
their movies on
post-revolution youth’s
lives.
34
- Young people hiking
on top of mountains
where terrorist cells
are thought to be
established as a sign
of resistance.
Appendix 5:
Gender depicted in photographs per frame
Frame
First Period Second Period
Percentage of female Actors Percentage of male actors Percentage of Female-Male actors Percentage of female Actors Percentage of male actors Percentage of Female-Male actors* F1 23% 61% 16% 50% 25% 25% F2 38% 42% 19% 0% 0% 0% F3 0% 100% 0% 0% 100% 0% F4 0% 100% 0% 25% 50% 25% F5 33% 67% 0% 22% 78% 0% F6 0% 40% 60% 50% 50% 0%
