37. Name: Jonas Joris de Graaf Title: Al Jazeera English: the Opinion and the Other Opinion: A Comparison between Ideologies in CNN International and Al Jazeera English Institution: University of Utrecht Country: Netherlands Date: 2008 Language: English Abstract: In the globalized world, Western media has been dominating the flow of information through large press agencies and international news broadcasters. In the Arab world, this domination started to be challenged since 1996 with the launch of Al Jazeera satellite channel. In 2006, Al Jazeera English was launched to serve the same purpose. To find out if this channel produces a counter-ideology to the dominating Western worldview, a comparative analysis between CNN International and Al Jazeera English was undertaken. The news coverage of both networks for the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was subject to critical discourse analysis. Both CNN International and Al Jazeera English were examined on lexicalization, predication strategy, topicalization, intertextuality and framing. The findings showed that Al Jazeera’s coverage contained counter-ideological elements compared to CNN’s reporting. Some of the linguistic structures exhibit the dominant ideology, such as the word ‘terrorism’ in CNN, or the word ‘resistance’ in Al Jazeera. Both networks have in-group and out-group polarization characteristics. In Al Jazeera’s coverage, the in-group is the Palestinian side and the out-group is the Israeli side. The reverse is seen in CNN.
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