A critical discourse analysis of the CNN and al Jazeera coverage of the beginning of the Syrian crisis

الملخص EN

The year 2011 constitutes a turning point in Syria which witnessed the so-called the Arab spring.

the different media outlets covered the events based on their ideologies.

al Jazeera and the CNN are examples of the leading media in the world which devoted hours for covering the Syrian unrest.

the current research seeks to investigate the linguistic and discursive strategies employed by al Jazeera and the CNN in their coverage of the first month of the Syrian uprising.

it is a critical qualitative study which adopts critical discourse analysis drawing on the social discoursal framework of Norman fairclough and the ideology square of T.van Dijk.

the results reveal that there are differences between the two channels at the textual and discursive levels and that al Jazeera used group polarization more obviously than the CNN.