Digital Media Framing of the Egyptian Arab Spring: Comparing Al Jazeera, BBC and China Daily

Abstract

Digital Media organizations had a crucial role on the coverage of the Egyptian ‘Arab Spring’, but until today the outcomes of the news gathering are debatable in the academic society. This study examines the frames of the English-language websites of Al Jazeera, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and China Daily from 9 to 13 February 2011 because of the termination of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency. The sample consists of 92 website articles, which report the Egyptian ‘Arab Spring’ without considering any video footage in the examined news stories. The particular article examines the frames of each article and categorizes them according to a Knowledge Extraction (KE) tool named ‘Open Calais’, which is owned by another media organization, Reuters. In this study, China Daily’s coverage differs from the former researchers’ results regarding the ‘Arab Spring’ covering. According to the findings, there was a merited coverage on the case of the Egyptian ‘Arab Spring’ without relying exclusively on the content of the official press agency of the People's Republic of China, Xinhua News Agency, and acted like a western-type news media.