Legitimising Dissent: Media Framing of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution within British and American Print Media
Legitimising Dissent: Media Framing of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution within British and American Print Media

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates how British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution framed the protest movement that led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak as the President of Egypt. Previous studies examining Western media coverage of domestic protests indicate that news media often covered movements and protesters with the expectation of violence occurring, or whose motivations, aspirations, and actions were trivialised and marginalised, while Western media coverage of the Middle East and North Africa often contextualised the region’s nations, peoples, and politics in ways that promoted negative stereotypes. In analysing British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, this paper demonstrates the opposite to be true through a content and framing analysis of relevant news stories (n=611). Results from British and American newspaper samples offer strong evidence for not only reassessing the dominance of the reportorial paradigms by which the news media covers political and social dissent, but also normative Western media portrayals of the nations and people within Middle East and North Africa.

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