Framing the Arab Spring: Partisanship in the news stories of Korean Newspapers

Abstract

This study explored how the Arab Spring coverage by South Korean newspapers was influenced by the ideological orientations of those newspapers. Employing quantitative content analysis of the news stories, it compared the coverage by two major conservative papers ( The Chosun Daily and The Joongang Daily) and two major liberal papers ( The Hankyoreh Daily and The Kyunghyang Daily). The findings show that the partisanship of these newspapers resulted in divergence of the news framing by the conservative and liberal papers. Specifically, the liberal papers tended to present the Arab uprisings as being due to economic insecurity, including factors such as poverty, unemployment, and income inequality—more frequently than did the conservative papers. They were also somewhat critical of the U.S.’s role in the Middle East as being a facilitator of the Arab dictatorships. In contrast, the conservative papers put an emphasis on the possible impact of the Arab Spring on democratic movements in countries such as North Korea or China. This tendency may have originated from the conservative papers’ support of confrontational foreign policies toward North Korea. This study elaborated on the ‘hierarchy of influence’, in which ideology is a variable at the environmental level, while the partisanship of news outlets is a variable at the organizational level.

News Framing of the Arab Spring Conflict from the Lens of Newspaper Editorials

“…Hence, certain frames become crucial for journalists for several reasons such as to understand the complex word and then reproduce it into news stories in a manner which is intelligible to their audiences. Framing is utilised as a "potent technique" for pressurising both individuals and society to change media the representations (Ha & Shin, 2016). Goffman (1974) defined frames as organisational principles "which govern events-at least social ones-and our subjective involvement in them" (21).…”

“…In order to determine domestic implications of foreign issues, the news coverage possibly reflects each state's interests and 'cultural stereotypes'. The media scholars have pointed out that frames are designed by a variety of influences stemming from socio-political ideologies of a given society to values and backgrounds held by journalists-who are dependent on news frames not just to organise social world but may also disregard certain aspects of reality (Ha & Shin, 2016). In fact, to enhance several interpretations of meaning, newspaper editors utilise particular linguistic structures such as rhetoric, metaphors and others.…”

“…Ideological framing may obstruct objective representations of events. Ha and Shin (2016) claimed that South Korean conservative papers (The Chosun Daily and The Joongang Daily) emphasised the likely influence of the Arab Spring on democratic movements in North Korea and China while liberal papers (The Hankyoreh Daily and The Kyunghyang Daily) framed that the uprising was instigated by economic insecurity, poverty, unemployment, and so on.…”

“…In framing events, editors decide what is significant for their audiences and what matters for them (Ha & Shin, 2016). The NI and AN unanimously disseminated the discursive strategy of showing discontentment with the authorities and accusing them for resisting 'change' and defying protesters' demands.…”

“…In this paper, we examine the print media framing of the Arab Spring in the editorials of The News international (NI) of Pakistan and Arab News (AN) Saudi Arabia. Mostly, previous media studies about the Arab Spring demonstrate how the events were framed in news articles of different newspapers (e.g., see Golan, 2013;Ha & Shin, 2016;Haigh & Bruce, 2017) and very little (e.g., Ha, 2013) has been investigated the way editorial writers portrayed the events. Hopefully, this paper will offer useful insights into the editorial lens of the two mainstream newspapers.…”