Arab Migrants in English and Arabic Online News: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Daily Express and Al Jazeera

Abstract

This paper delves into the discursive depiction of Arab refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and migrants in the Daily Express and Al Jazeera, regarded as a means of reproducing and continuing a racist interpretation of inter group and outer group relations. The paper aims to unpack the extent to which the ideologies incorporated in news coverage mirror the two newspapers’ political views via throwing a light on how these two online articles’ depictions of Arab RASIMs are more than just reflections of reality; they are intentionally produced realities. Therefore, the importance of corpora compilation for this paper lies into the stance categories and degrees of subjectivity, which are analyzed with methodological tools provided by Reisigl and Wodak’s discourse-historical approach  (2001); (2009) to show the nature and quality of the discursive strategies used, following the broad principles of critical discourse studies (CDS). Findings show that, despite ideological differences, in some significant ways, the two newspapers contribute to depict Arab RASIMs in similar ways