Morsi and Muslim brotherhood in western eyes : a critical discourse analysis of western media coverage of the 2012 presidential elections campaign

الملخص EN

The present study is critical discourse analysis of the Western online newspapers coverage of the 2012 Egyptian presidential elections, with a focus on the way the elected president- Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood group.

The way the candidatetoppled later after a tumultuous revolution- was represented to the Western nonprofessional is of extreme importance in the interpretation of the way he was received by the masses.

In addition to Halliday’s (2014) theory of systemic functional grammar and van Dijk’s (1988a) socio-cognitive model in analyzing news discourse, the tools applied to the analysis are drawn from the insights of Richardson (2007) into the analysis of news discourse.

The articles under analysis are selected to represent a variety of coverage stances, highlighting the way each presidential candidate is depicted, and revealing political stance the news article aims at confirming.

The results show a state of wariness among key political players towards Morsi and his group in fear of changing the secular identity of Egypt.