Based on the peace journalism model: Analysis of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Bahrain’s uprising and Syria’s chemical attack

Abstract

The Al-Jazeera network, founded in 1996 and financed directly by Qatar’s royal family, is attributed with a significant catalytic role in the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings that swept the Middle East from 2011. However, the Qatar-based network has been criticized for facilitating and supporting the Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian and Libyan revolutions, while not giving the same attention to the uprisings in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, close allies to Doha and members (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia) of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Using peace journalism as a source of evaluative criteria, this study examines to what extent Al-Jazeera’s online coverage (Al-Jazeera Arabic (AJA) and Al-Jazeera English (AJE)) reproduced and supported key framings of GCC foreign policy in coverage of two stories: Bahrain’s uprising during the first two weeks of the military Saudi intervention and the Syria conflict in the week that followed the Al-Ghouta Chemical Weapons (CW) attack in Damascus. Al-Jazeera’s online coverage was dominated by the war journalism frames in both countries, but AJA’s coverage of Bahrain’s uprising was more propagandistic than that of AJE. However, AJA and AJE generally agreed on Syria, as both of them were dominated by pro-GCC framing.