The construction of the Arab-Islamic issue in foreign news: Spanish newspaper coverage of the Egyptian revolution

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze how the Spanish newspapers covered an international event such as the Egyptian spring from 2011 to 2013. From the perspective of the representation of Arab-Islamic issues, this study carries out a quantitative content analysis on the four reference newspapers in Spain (ABC, El Mundo, El País, and La Vanguardia) to find out whether there was an Islamophobic or Islamophilic treatment during the Egyptian revolution. The results of the 3,045 articles analyzed show that Spanish newspapers were remarkably interested in Egyptian events and that cultural discourses were not relevant in the coverage. However, it is necessary to specify these outcomes by newspaper, because each paper proposed its own take on the matter based on information provided by press agencies.