Converging and Diverging Images of Arab Women in Western Media during the Arab Spring: A Corpus-Based Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes980Keywords:
Arab countries, Arab Spring, Arab women, stereotypes, topical frames, western mediaAbstract
This study relates the general images of Arab women in news dscourse during the Arab Spring to specific ones in different Arab countries. We used a self-compiled complex corpus and its 20 subcorpora, each consisting of articles published about women from a specific Arab country by British and American news media during 2010–2014. These articles were categorized into four datasets according to the political stability in the countries they are associated with: Arab Spring, conflict, semi-stable, and stable countries. Each subcorpus was analysed for the occurring collocates of woman/women, which were then classified according to the topical frames they reflected. The themes were compared within and across the four categories and to those identified earlier in the complex corpus. The results indicate discrepancies between the general depictions of Arab women and those particular to women of different nationalities. Despite the commonalities among all Arab women, images of those from specific nationalities provide evidence for profound variations among them.
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