ACTIVATING NEWS POWER: A CASE STUDY ON THE SYRIAN ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE

Abstract

This paper attempted to critically analyze the Syrian elections news coverage by media during the Syrian war from a critical discourse analysis perspective. It aimed to explore how discourse in general and news discourse in particular produced and reproduced power relations. Three reports from three channels; CNN, RT and the Syrian Satellite Channel (SSC); were downloaded from the websites of each channel. The channels were chosen based on their political orientations. The downloaded reports, which covered the Syrian election of 2014, were analyzed for their thematic structures and schematic structures. The analysis showed significant differences in the hierarchal arrangement of themes and schematic categories along with differences in the vocabularies used, which indicates the influence of the ideological background and political interest of each channel. The results also showed that the channels depend on different strategies to influence their audience and enhance their point of view.