ABSTRACT - PhD thesis
The early
days of the January 25th Revolution received unprecedented international media
coverage that kept the world’s viewers on the edge of their seats watching the
plunge of another corrupt Arab regime, shortly after Bin Ali’s collapse in
Tunisia. Toppling Mubarak’s regime was the most significant achievement of the
January 25th Revolution, yet events that occurred under the interim military
regime that followed Mubarak’s rule also received extensive media coverage.
Media focus on the Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) was not only
because such events, collectively, represented a crucial transitional stage to
a new democratic Egypt, but also because of their dramatic nature of
re-occurring bloody clashes between the January 25th Revolutionaries and SCAF.
As the new military regime, like Mubarak’s, continued to clash with
revolutionaries and protesters, social media-equipped activists continued to
feed the cyberspace with anti-SCAF content, which was then pitched up and
broadcasted by news media to millions of viewers inside and outside Egypt. This
thesis focuses on examining the impact of an evolving relationship between news
organizations and social media-equipped activists on the coverage of the
Egyptian Revolution and its associated events. By examining disparities in news
coverage, it explores possible changes in journalism practices, and detects
emerging patterns, particularly pertinent to journalist-source relationship and
human rights reporting. While exploring possible changes in journalism
practices, it also questions whether the existing normative media typology
frameworks have been disrupted and as a result would invite media scholars to
revise their typology/ macro approach in understanding changes in journalism
practices across different media environments. The thesis’ findings have led to
identifying three emerging patterns in the coverage: a
counter-elite sourcing practice, human rights-centered reporting and a
disruption in existing normative media typology frameworks. If these patterns
continue to develop and consolidate, they might be seen as early features of a
new ear in journalism practices. Using an integrated content-textual analysis,
as a primary research method, the thesis analyzes the news coverage of the
Egyptian Revolution and its associated events by the Arabic and the English
news sites of five international news organizations: Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, RT
and XINHUA. Textual analysis is used to look at possible lexical consonance
between activists’ entries on social media and the non-attributed lexical
choices identified in news stories. The textual analysis is supported by two
sets of surveys that target Egyptian activists and journalists to explore their
insights about their relationship during the Egyptian Revolution and its
aftermath.
