Ideological representations of political discourse in the Arabic and Anglophone media outlets

Abstract

The study examines the assumptions that the media's linguistic choices and group polarisation are largely ideological, conditioned by the respective outlets' ideological positions. Such media manipulation and polarisation produce greatly varying representations and labelling of the rival groups, in the particular case of this thesis, the warring factions in the Libyan Civil War. and it is this which in turn produces a variety of representations of the same incident and groups. The study applies the analytical model of the ideological square of Critical Discourse Analysis as this model provides scope to identify ideological discursive moves and strategies for analysis of the salient Ideological Key Terms. In this study, the particular incident on the ground is considered as a source text, while the media representation and reporting on the incident and people are seen as a target text. This study, accordingly, attempts to demonstrate as systematically as possible how the media outlets as translators of the Libyan Civil War of 2014 manipulate the representation of the incident so as to suit and correspond to the policies and the controlling vision of the financiers and/or owners. Furthermore, it aims to demonstrate the reason behind these biased and ideologically laden media representations, which have worked against the stability of Libya and serve to fuel and agitate conflict, thereby causing enduring chaos and the collapse of the state and resulting in proxy wars that have been aggravated both by the actions of international outsiders and by intensive and polarised media propaganda.

Date of Award	Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Supervisor	David Johnston (Supervisor) & Neil Sadler (Supervisor)