Al Jazeera as an instrument of Qatar’s international projection: an analysis of its coverage of the Syrian War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30612/rmufgd.v13i25.15989Keywords:
Qatar, Al Jazeera, Syrian WarAbstract
After a political transition in 1995, Qatar reoriented its foreign policy aiming to improve its international projection. One of the measures adopted to achieve this goal was the creation of Al Jazeera, a TV network broadcasting in Arabic (and years later in English) focused on foreign audiences. Based on reports on the Syrian war, this paper discusses the relationship between the broadcaster's coverage and Qatar's foreign policy, its sponsor State. The theoretical approach is the reading of Gramsci proposed by Robert Cox, who considers ideas and values as an element of power as long as material capabilities. The method adopted was Michael Pêcheux's French Discourse Analysis. The corpus analyzed (news published by Al Jazeera in 2012, 2015, and 2017) shows a prevalence of sources aligned with Qatar's position on war and the expression of consensual values in the liberal world order, such as human rights and the US leadership role. The TV station defends the political vision of the Qatari monarchy, of inserting itself into the current order rather than questioning it, even though its representatives are not actors portrayed in the news.
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