Project Overview

The United States has experienced a drastic decline in positive public opinion within the Middle East. This dramatic drop has been attributed to an overall negative reception to its policies -- specifically the U.S. support of Israel during its conflict with the Palestinian Authority and the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Yet, to argue that these policies by themselves cultivate negative opinions about the United States obscures the ways in which such actions are interpreted in the Middle East public sphere. This project explores how media frames, or the way media arrange information to suggest a specific interpretation, contribute to the formation of discourse that describes and anticipates the actions of the United States.

How does mediated argument constitute "frames" or "stories" that continue to elicit persistent unfavorable reaction to the United States policies and create expectations about the motivations of the United States? We have an intuitive sense that media does impact the opinions of audiences who might represent a risk to American national security. We need only look to U.S. government reactions to Middle East television networks like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya to recognize that policy-makers believe the media have a hand in influencing audiences. Polling data and traditional content analyses, however, tell only part of the story of what media might actually be doing to and for audiences in the Middle East. Rather than assume that audiences are simply media "targets," we propose that media may be a crucial site for the investigation of political discourse and reflect emergent sites of public controversy.

This project is an investigation into the development of public argument around key issues that have defined the representation of the United States in the Middle East since September 11, 2001. By conducting rhetorical analyses of public argument in Middle East media, the project aims to illumine the generative discourse that may have obscured potentially positive mediated depictions of the U.S., such as those offered by U.S. public diplomacy campaigns. This analysis may yield more insight into how local media deflect public diplomacy strategies from cultivating positive opinions about the United States.

Objectives

The Critical Media Framing project will, ideally, provide both a comprehensive reference of the consistent thematic and narrative depictions of the United States (or media frames) within various Middle East media outlets as well as suggest the development of public argument within these media venues. The analysis in this project takes a cue from the notion of framing research within mass communication scholarship by identifying frames representing the United States, and then examines these frames within the context of rhetorical and argumentation scholarship as elements of a developing international controversy. Rather than counting words, the textual analysis of this project suggests relationships between the uses of language and their impact on inducing action, sustaining identities, and portraying the complexity of motive. Given the pervasive and entrenched levels of negative public opinion towards the United States within the Middle East and the supposed levels of negative portrayal of the United States within this region's media outlets, this kind of investigation is warranted. Given these considerations, the goal of this project is to assess how media frames reflect a kind of argumentative discourse that contains the terminologies and characterizations which describe the United States; framing chocies that may limit how the United States can be perceived.

Project Case Studies

• The first phase of this case study is the collection of media coverage of Abu Ghurayb in mainstream newspapers targeting Arab and Middle East audiences (in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and the Gulf States).


• A close reading of this coverage is conducted to build a comprehensive picture of the argumentative discourse surrounding Abu Ghurayb. The texts are also analyzed in order to assemble a catalog of specific arguments that comprise a representation of the United States -- representations that ascribe motive, character, and value judgements to U.S. governmental polices and suggest future acts by the United States. Finally, this analysis aims to uncover what kinds of argumentation may be dominant, both in the context of the scandal as well as the unique venue of Middle East newsprint media.


• In the second phase of the case study, the project investigates how the resurgence of public discussion on the subject of torture and prisoner abuse is represented in self-identified Arab and Middle East blogs. Late 2005 witnessed an increase in attention to torture as the United States government engaged in an internal controversial reflection on its own torture policies. This phase of the project examines how Middle East bloggers discuss the issue of torture and the United States, in light of the dominant frames and argumentation identified in the first phase of this case study project.

2. Democratization Policy Reception (begins 2006)

• This case study project builds on the dominant themes identified in the Abu Ghurayb case study project. The goal of this case study is to assess the reaction in Middle East press to United States calls for democratic reforms within the region. Specifically, this project will track press reaction to public statements by both President Bush and members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Of principal concern is the linkage of values central to the United States interpretation of democratic reform to the perception of United States foreign policy within regional press. This case study will examine whether Middle East public discourse (in both mainstream press and blog content) demonstrates a negative association between democratic values and the United States, which may potentially foreclose on opportunities for reform within the region.

Research Manager

Craig Hayden
USC Annenberg School for Communication