المستخلص: |
Adept use of media by activists during the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) revolutions since 2010 was a useful boon to the dissemination and amplification of the messages and action emanating from the protests. At times traditional media, both regionally and internationally, augmented protesters’ messages- for example on dignity, pluralism or democracy- by re-presenting their discourse. The revolutions were the embodiment of the potential to break free from Orientalist stereotypes of countries and people passive, if not sympathetic to, oppression, violent extremism and authoritarianism. In light of this, the following paper examines the presentation of the revolutions in the British media by undertaking a media content analysis of British Broadsheet newspapers. Thus the pertinent question of how the British media presented these revolutions, shaping the so-called Arab Spring’s definition as a paradigm, is addressed. While the broadsheets by no means presented an entirely negative portrayal of the revolutions, this paper explains, through the use of the concepts of Orientalism and Mobility, how the broadsheets subjugated the WANA revolutions under the traditional security concerns of Europe and the USA, namely a preoccupation with terrorism, ‘Islamic extremists’ and ‘rogue states’.
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