War and Journalism: Framing the Syrian and Yemen War Through the New York Times Online News Coverage

Abstract

This study, based on a quantitative and qualitative approach of content analysis, aims to understand the image of Arab-Muslims in times of crises and wars and how they are presented through the American press. In particular, the study is concerned with analyzing the news coverage of current Arab issues by the New York Times Online (NYT). The study answers a number of questions about how the New York Times Online produced stories and news related to the Syrian war (SW) and the Operation Decisive Storm (ODS) in Yemen, in terms of news processing and media frames.Results revealed that overall, the perceptions of news-sources trends in the NYT regarding the two issues (SW and ODS) can be described as negative trends. Furthermore, the analysis framing perspective indicated that the NYT was more likely to use emotional features than substantive features to cover all the two issues. The type of frame most used in covering the SW was limited frame, conflict frame, general frame and human-interest frame, while framing type related to the ODS, the most frame used were conflict frame, human-interest frame and limited frame.

Keywords: journalism, war, news coverage, framing, Syria, Yemen, New York Times

DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/88-03

Publication date: February 29^th 2020