148. Name: Othman M.O. Al-Shareif Title: Western Media Representation of the Arab Spring Revolutions and its Impact on Staff and Students in a Libyan University Setting
(A Comparison between Al Jazeera and BBC) Institution: Liverpool John Moores University Country: United Kingdom Date: 2016 Language: English Abstract:
This thesis investigates the ways in which Arab and western media affected the staff and students of the Libyan Sebha University through their presentation of the major Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The research focuses on the reporting by Al Jazeera and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The study explores the representation of the Arab Spring by these two channels to find out if any ideological framework influenced their news coverage. The study employed a qualitative methodology and analyzed 30 semi- structured interviews. Fifteen interviews were conducted with the staff and 15 with the students of Sebha University in Libya. To gain further evidence about students and lecturers’ experiences and their views toward the two channels, 12 articles (6 from Al Jazeera and 6 from the BBC) were analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics. The study found that most of lecturers and students indicated that the two channels were different in terms of their reporting of the Arab Spring uprisings and, whilst the BBC was trusted for its dispassionate observations, Al Jazeera was considered to be ideologically driven.
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