Journalism, solidarity and the civil sphere: The case of Charlie Hebdo

Abstract

On 7 January 2015, Said and Chérif Kouachi assaulted the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, leaving 12 people dead. The terrorist attack soon became a highly symbolic event, reflecting the core struggle between free speech and religious values that escalated after the ‘cartoon crisis’ in 2005. In this article, we wish to explore media discourses in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack in three European countries – Spain, Norway and the United Kingdom. In particular, we investigate if and how journalism performed their role as ‘vital centre’ in the ‘civil sphere’. We find that the patterns of in-group and out-group were carefully constructed to avoid polarization between ‘ordinary’ Muslims and the West in most newspapers. By doing so, most of the newspapers managed to work for the construction of an idealized civil sphere that exists beyond race, nationality or religion.

Exploring the ‘Civil Repair’ Function of Media: A Case Study of The Christchurch Mosques Shootings

“…While analyzing the Editorial of selected newspapers, the researcher has found out The New Zealand Herald and The News International have substantially produced the 'solidarity' discourse. The results show that the media performed a 'solidarity' 'consensus' role in Charlie Hebdo (Luengo & Ihlebaek, 2019). Similarly, the findings of analyzed data in this study show that discourse produced by the selected newspapers is 'positive', 'outgroup', 'civil repair', 'solidarity', and 'harmony'.…”

“…The Christchurch mosques shootings is not a single incident of its kind rather in quite a recent past there had been a Quebec City mosque shooting in 2017, London Bridge attack in 2017, Copenhagen shootings in 2015 and the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015 which stunned the whole world. Media all around the world gave specific attention and produced certain kinds of discourses on the incidents ranging from a 'solidarity discourse' Luengo & Ihlebaek, 2019;Ghauri, 2017) to a variety of binary discourses like; 'othering' (Umber, Ghauri & Haq, 2021;, 'Securitization' (Ghauri, Umber & Warrich, 2020;Tsagarousianou, 2016;Mertens & Smaele, 2016;Cesari, 2010), 'political parallelism' Ghauri, 2019a;2019b;Ghauri & Yousaf, 2018;Ghauri, 2018;Tsagarousianou, 2016;Mertens & Smaele, 2016). In such scenarios of conflict, especially within a country, the binary discourses produced by the local press is an act equal to pouring oil on fire.…”

Hostile emotions: An exploratory study of far-right online commenters and their emotional connection to traditional and alternative news media

“…Indeed, research on journalistic performance has shown how the news media often leave their role as critical reporters to take on a ceremonial one in the aftermath of radical events or terrorist attacks (Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou, 2018). Therefore, journalism can reaffirm core values of the civil sphere in the aftermath of a specific crisis (Alexander, 2006; Luengo and Ihlebæk, 2019).…”

Solidarity in the Public Sphere: A Discourse Network Analysis of German Newspapers (2008–2017)

“…For the European context, the European debt crisis and the migration crisis might be the most dominant issues related to solidarity. Furthermore, we expect that international terrorism and climate change are key issues that have dominated the public discourse in the past decade and that have been associated with solidarity (Kleinen-von Königslöw, Post, & Schäfer, 2019;Luengo & Ihlebaek, 2019).…”