Framing Middle Eastern Ethnic Minorities in the U.S. Press

Framing Middle Eastern Ethnic Minorities in the U.S. Press

Khalaf Tahat1 & Dina N. Tahat2
1Yarmouk University, Jordan
2University of Jordan, Jordan

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to map out how leading newspapers in the U.S. are framing different ethnic groups in the Middle East in their daily reporting. For this analysis, a systematic random sample was drawn from published articles focused on two main ethnic groups in the Arab region, namely, Amazigh “Berbers,” and Copts. There are 391 news stories in The New York Times and 408 news stories in Washington Post about Berbers and Copts during the last eight years (2011-2019). The study came out with the findings that American newspapers dedicated large spaces to cover the issues of minorities in the Middle East, and there was a greater tendency in the newspapers to cover Coptic minority compared to the Berber minority. The study newspapers heavily relied on minorities sources, both NYT and WP relied on 61% Coptic sources and 67% on Berbers sources. However, the data showed that Arabic sources were the least cited in stories published about minorities in the Middle East (6% in both NYT and WP). Different frames were used by NYT and WP, while NYT focused more on presenting Copts issues through international frames, WP tends to present Berbers through the cultural frame.

Keywords: Ethnic and communication, Middle East, framing, Copts, and Berbers

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Khalaf Tahat (Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, USA, 2015 ) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism at Yarmouk University, Jordan.
Dina N. Tahat is pursuing her research in the areas of socio-economic, and women and gender studies at the Sociology Department of the University of Jordan.