The Portrayals Of New Zealand Shooting Attack In The New York Times And Al Jazeera Newspapers

I. Introduction

1.1 Background

On March 15, 2019, the world was shocked by videos that spread across the world. The video showed a shooting action in Al Noor Mosque located in central Christchurch, New Zealand. The attack continued in a mosque of the suburb of Linwood. The New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, stated at least 40 people were killed (www.bbc.com). Muslim people, especially who were inside or outside the mosque, were targeted during the attack.

This incident became a worldwide issue. National and international mass media, especially online newspapers, were always dominated by various reports of the incident. Two major international online newspapers including The New York Times and Aljazeera also actively updated the development of this event. In their first reports, they released articles entitled “Christchurch Mosque Shootings Were Partly Streamed on Facebook” published by The New York Times on March 14, 2019 and “New Zealand mosque attacks and the scourge of white supremacy” published by Aljazeera on March 15, 2019. From those titles, each news media has its own style in portraying the event influenced by their ideological perspectives.

In linguistic study, this case is one of the social problems that can be revealed through the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis. According to Van Dijk (in Mahfouz, 2013) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a shared perspective on doing linguistics, semiotic or discourse analysis. This approach focuses on analyzing transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control in language. Van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive model is one of frameworks for the analysis of news discourse which focuses not only on the grammatical, phonological, morphological and semantic level but also overall themes and topics of news stories and whole schematic forces and rhetorical dimensions of texts. There are some studies that have shared this model in analysing media discourse, especially newspapers. Sivandi and Dowlatabadi’s (2015) research investigate two different newspapers that only focused on the language of media. They found that those newspapers utilized self-positive representation and negative-other representation based on their ideological perspectives. At the same point, Ghannam (2012) emphasized different newspapers have deployed diverse and opposing political ideologies through manipulating language. In short, language of journalist is an instrument to meet the hidden interpretation of the newspaper.

In addition to language, the images is also prominent to be analysed in investigating the ideology of the media. Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) supported that the role of images and the text are important to understand meaning in order to reveal ideological representation. Following the Fowler’s (1991) study on language in the news to analyze the headlines and Kress & van Leeuwen’s (2006) tool for analysing the visual text, Al Sawi’s (2015) research also confirmed and emphasized the importance of multimodal analysis, especially in newspapers that integrate visuals and texts as part of the process of meaning making. He continued that what people read or see in the newspaper is not the truth, but rather a version of the truth that is controlled by commercial and ideological considerations.

Accordingly, this current study on the articles talking about shooting attack in New Zealand is necessary to conduct because they are very ideological in reporting the event. Different from those previous studies, this present study adopts Van Dijk’s framework for critical discourse analysis which takes two modes of text analysis, verbal and visual text, into consideration to reveal the ideologies of The New York Times and Aljazeera.

1.2 Research Problems

The research problems of this study are formulated as:

1. What lexical choices and images are used by New York Times and Aljazeera to portray New Zealand shooting attack?
2. How the lexical choices and images reveal the national identities of media?

1.3 Research Objectives

The objectives of this study are:

1. To describe the lexical choices and images that portray the issue
2. To uncover the hidden ideologies of both media in reporting the issue

II. Review of Relevant Literature

2.1 Previous Studies

Critical Discourse Analysis on newspapers has been shared among many researchers to uncover the ideology of new companies. In the research of Sivandi and Dowlatabadi (2015) conducted the discursive micro and macro-strategies of analysis suggested by Van Dijk to reveal the ideological differences between two newspapers. They compared two daily English newspapers of Los Angeles Times and Tehran Ties in terms of representing negotiations of nuclear program of Iran. The case study of the nuclear program of Iran. The results of the research showed that the Los Angeles Times tended to utilize the Authoritative, Explanation, Evidentiality and Counterfactual discursive strategies; whereas, the Tehran Times utilized the Actor Description, Hyperbole, Lexicalization, Repetition and Situation Description discursive strategies.

Similarly, Mahfouz’s research (2013) investigated two Egyptian newspapers reporting about the Police news story framing before the January 25 revolution. He compare Al-Gomhuria, a totally state-controlled and served as official information outlet, and the independent one Al-Dostour. By utilizing the Van Dijk’s model that focused on the headline, the lead, and the body of the story, he found both newspapers mostly used metonym for describing the actor. For him, metonymies are usually used when the actors responsible are unknown found in Al-Gomhuria or because it is punchier than alternatives found in Al-Dostour. This case indicates that Al-Dostour reporters have much more liberty to challenge the ‘official’ version of the story rather than Al-Gomhuria in which it should accept the frames imposed on events by officials.

For further research, Al Sawi (2015) tried to complete Mahfouz’s research. He integrated texts and images to make meaning. This study focuses on the analysis of the textual and visual representation of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) President, Muhammad Morsi, during the first week of his office in 2012 on the front page of Al Ahram newspaper. The analysis is based on the linguistic tools suggested by Fowler (1991), and the visual tools suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). The textual analysis revealed that Al Ahram positively represents the MB president as a powerful leader whereas the visual analysis showed the bias of Al Ahram towards the MB president by representing him in a higher position than the masses and as the new information. In this research, the writer emphasizes the importance of multimodal analysis to reveal meaning because visuals and texts as parts of the process of meaning making.

In line with those previous research, this current study also investigate how two different international newspapers, The New York Times and Aljazeera, represent the hype talking about shooting attack in New Zealand. Following Van Dijk’s framework, this study is conducted that integrate two mode of text analysis, verbal and visual text.

2.2 Theoretical Framework

a) News Discourse

News is a group of information about recent events reported in some media, such as newspapers. Reah in He and Zhou (2015) states that news deals with the information of events that may affect the lives of certain group. This indicates that news does not only aim to report what happened but also to carry some values. Therefore, the information reported in media are selected according to news value that represents some beliefs, values, proposition, and ideology (Fowler, 1991). Moreover, news is a product of selection in which there are many parties taken part in, like journalist, reporters, editors, sub-editors, etc. In selecting the information, they should follow the company’s ideology (Bednarek, 2006). It defines that the newspaper discourse is one-sided communication in which only the writers determine the content of news. By selection, news discourse is never biased-free and carries their ideology inserted in the news discourse. As a result, the readers are not able to find the hidden ideology or values without critical ability.

b) Critical Discourse Analysis

Dealing with the explanation about media discourse, this study decides to use critical approach to uncover the hidden ideology of the media. According to Cotter, critical is one of appropriate methods for analysing this media discourse (in Schiffrin et.al, 2001: 418). Van Dijk (1985) states that CDA focuses on examining the power abuse, dominance, and inequality reproduced by the text and talk in the social and political context. This approach explains that the text, such as newspaper, does not stand alone. There are some elements which adhere to text itself, such as the processes and the social context. Therefore, in understanding the news reports, the readers should commit not just to analyse the textual and structural level of media discourse but also analyse and explain production and reception or comprehensive level..

c) Van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Model

This study utilized the socio-Cognitive model developed by Van Dijk to explain how ideologies are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. His approach for investigating ideology is divided into three parts; they are discourse analysis, cognitive analysis, and social analysis. In discourse analysis, the analysis involves the verbal and visual analysis. The combination of these two modes are studied critically to unveil the hidden ideology within the text. According to Marefat and Marzban (2014), the visual and verbal modes are signed as two different modes of semiotics that are not free of writer’s ideology. Similarly, Van Djik (1995) considers discourse as ideology analysis that are typically expressed in discourse and communication, including the semiotic messages (photographs, movies, and signs).

In verbal analysis, Van Dijk divided into two levels of analysis: macrostructure and microstructure. At macrostructure level, the analysis focuses on the topic of text which is realized in the headlines and lead paragraphs. According to Van Dijk (cited in Wodak and Meyer, 2001), macrostructure analysis represents the overall what a discourse “is about”. In microstructure, the analysis is focused on semantic relations between lexical choices used by the journalists. He emphasized that lexical choices is one of linguistic features that expresses persuasion of ideological meanings. In visual analysis, the images are analyzed based on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) theory of size of frame and social distance, angle of image, and colors

In understanding the ideologies of the news companies, the role of cognitive analysis should be existed in Van Dijk’s model. For him, cognition is a various type of knowledge, attitudes, ideologies, norms, and values shared by certain group (Wodak and Meyer, 2001). It helps mediating between discourse and society. Furthermore, the social analysis becomes the final part of the model that covers the social condition and action.

d) Lexical Choice

With regards to Van Dijk (in Bukari & Xiaoyang, 2013), lexical choices is the choice of words that express the ideological meanings of people. It can be seen from some lexicons appeared in news. To refer to the same persons, groups or social issues, the journalists generally have a choice of several words based on genre, personal, social and socio-cultural contexts. In brief, the choices are often ideologically based. However, every word choice often bring the different sense of meaning. Therefore, the readers should comprehend the word meaning whether from the literal (lexical) meaning or contextual meaning. Lyons in Setiawan (2017) explained that lexical meaning is the meaning described in the dictionary, whereas the contextual meaning is the meaning influenced by the situation it is used.

e) Kress and Van Leeuwen’ Semiotic Model

This study also adopts Semiotic Model developed by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) in analyzing the images found in the news articles. It involves the theory of size of frame and social distance, angle of image, and colors.

• At the same time, image-producers must choose the size of frame and its social distance to make interactive meanings of images. Related to the ‘size of frame’, the choice between close-up, medium shot and long shot indicates how they make the participant of image close to the viewer or not. However, the choice of distance can suggest different relations between represented participants and viewers, whether the participant ‘offers’ and ‘demands’ something to the viewers.
• The choice of angle, horizontal or vertical in taking an image has some meanings. The horizontal angle encodes whether the image-producer is ‘involved’ with the represented participants or not. The frontal angle says, as it were, ‘What you see here is part of our world, something we are involved with.’ The oblique angle says, ‘What you see here is not part of our world; it is their world, something we are not involved with’. On the other hand, the vertical angle encodes the important means of expression in cinematography. If a represented participant is seen from a high angle, then the relation between the viewers are is depicted as one who have power over the represented participant. If the represented participant is seen from a low angle, then the viewers are depicted as one who are powerless than the represented participant. If, finally, the picture is at eye level, then the point of view is one of equality and there is no power difference involved.
• Color is element of image that is used by people to present themselves and the values they stand for, to say in the context of specific social situations. Besides, it is also used to put an act that effects each other through power-dressing. Kress & Van Leeuwen (2006) emphasized that dding colour to documents can increase the reader’s attention span by more than eighty per cent. It is not just the case that colour ‘expresses’ or ‘means’ things such as ‘calm’ or ‘energy’; rather, people actually use colour to try to energize or calm down other people.

III. Research Methods

3.1 Research Design

This case study uses qualitative research approach. This approach is valuable in providing in-depth data of certain problem (Litosseliti, 2010) in order to gain complete understanding about the problem itself which is by understanding its contexts. With regard to the goal of study, to investigate the ideology imposition in media, Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model is utilized as the design of the study. The discourse analysis covers the verbal analysis that focuses on lexical choices used by journalists and the visual text that employs the theory of Kress and Leeuwen (2006).

3.2 Data and Data Source

The data sources of the study were two articles gathered from two international online newspapers; they are The New York Times and Aljazeera. The selected articles are the first published articles in each news company discussing about New Zealand shooting attack. The articles are entitled “Christchurch Mosque Shootings Were Partly Streamed on Facebook” (published by The New York Times on March 14, 2019) and “New Zealand mosque attacks and the scourge of white supremacy” (published by Aljazeera on March 15, 2019). These articles are selected because they represent how two media construct their ideology through verbal and visual texts in their first report of the issue.

3.3 Data Collection

In collecting the data, the documentation and note-taking methods were applied. In this study, the use of two articles of The New York Times and Aljazeera reporting the shooting attack in New Zealand refers to public document that is accessible for everyone (Cresswell, 2009). The selected articles were downloaded from their website https://www.nytimes.com/ for The New York Times and https://www.Aljazeera.com/ for Aljazeera. Furthermore, the data were gathered by using the purposive sampling, with regards to the need of the topic discussed in the study. It is conducted by selecting words of journalists that represent the inequalities as the verbal data and gathering the images of each article as the visual data. In selecting the words, the note-taking method was used to write the expressions containing the ideological imposition. While, all images existed in articles were selected as visual data analysis. Both data are important in this study to uncover the ideologies of media.

3.4 Data Analysis

The analysis of data followed some procedures:

1. In verbal analysis, the writer selected the words containing the expression related to ideological imposition by taking note and afterwards classified them into word class, type of meaning (lexical or contextual), expression category (positive or negative). The lexical meaning of word were referred to the definition in the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2008).
2. Interpreted the meaning of each expression based on the co-text or context
3. In visual analysis, the writer gathered all images existed in the articles
4. Interpreted and explained each image based on theory of color, size of frame and social distance, structure of composition, and the context
5. Conducted the cognition analysis of the expressions used by the journalists based on the social context (social condition)
6. Drawing conclusion

References

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