The Western elite press construction of Islam (The Arabs and Iran) (1991--1999)

This dissertation examines the Western daily press construction of news about Islam and Muslims in the first decade of the ongoing Arab-Israeli peace process. The dissertation attempts an analysis of the press coverage of Islam using a framework of combined approaches for the study of foreign news in the Western media.; The study shows that the press operates under a variety of influences and constraints, which become part of the structure of the press construction of foreign news. The Following results emerged from the analyses in this study:; First, contrary to what was expected, Western media portrayed Israel as more Aggressive and more intransigent than Arabs/Muslims. In terms of Terrorism and Incompetence, however, the findings came in line with the discussion in the literature review in chapters 2 and 3. Arabs and Muslims were portrayed as more terrorists and more Incompetent. With regard to Competence, Israel was portrayed as more competent than Arabs/Muslims.; Second, when the mentioned above variables were combined to construct the two new variables "Negative Arabs/Muslims," and "Negative Israel," the tests of these variables showed that Western newspapers' coverage of Arabs/Muslims was more negative than that of Israel.; Third, as expected, European newspapers covered Arabs/Muslims less negatively than The New York Times and Le Monde's coverage of Arabs/Muslims was less negative than that of The Times.; Fourth, in terms of sources, and consistent with the discussion in Chapter 3, the study showed that there was more use of Western/Israeli sources than Arab/Muslim sources by ail newspapers, there was more use of official sources than non-official sources by all newspapers, and there was more use of Western/Israeli official sources than Arab/Muslim official sources by all newspapers.; Finally, coverage was more intense at the beginning of the peace process (1991) and the two years that followed. When coverage for 1992, 1995 and 1999 was compared, there was no change of negative coverage for Arabs/Muslims by Western newspapers.