Arab Media & Society

Much attention has been given to the role of electronic media in organizing recent protests in Egypt, particularly the ability of a group known as the “April 6 Youth Movement” to attract 70,000 members to a Facebook group in support of a  general strike planned for April 6, 2008.  Print media, however, have been relatively understudied despite their importance as a shaper and reflection of elite opinion and their role in influencing public perceptions of the protests.  There was a dramatic discrepancy among Egyptian papers in how the strikes were described, and so a comparison of how Egypt’s official and independent newspapers framed the 2008 protests makes a fascinating case study in how social movements and their opponents seek to present advantageous versions of events.  How this effect occurs is relevant to the study of both social protest movements and the ways in which authoritarian regimes deal with opposition.

Some may challenge the importance or influence of print media in Egypt; roughly half of the population of Egypt is illiterate and it is generally only elites who are the primary consumers of print media.  While I am hesitant to overstate the influence of newspapers, to discount the message that print carries entirely is short-sighted.  It can be argued that the goal of the competition over framing is precisely to influence those very elites who, after all, are generally those wielding political power.  While this study examines newspapers published immediately after the April 6 strikes, the argument presented here should be generalizable to other forms of media such as television, or to any other medium in which we find a competition to establish an accepted interpretation of events – the dominant frame.

Framing social movements

Theorists of media framing hold that how news is presented will impact the way it is understood.  At the most basic level, “frames” are organizing principles that are “socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world.”[1]  Framing “recognizes the ability of a text … to define a situation, to define the issues, and to set the terms of the debate.”[2]  How a given issue is framed exerts a powerful influence in how the public perceives the various elements involved.  Thus, a government has a vested interest in making sure that it is represented favorably in the media it controls.  How, then, do independent media outlets or protesters seek to challenge the frames advanced by government media?

Charles Tilly proposes that all social movements wish to be seen as demonstrating four key traits, to which he assigns the acronym “WUNC.”  They are: worthiness (being seen as dignified, e.g. showcasing mothers or veterans), unity (using common symbols or slogans), numbers (creating a large headcount, filling or emptying spaces) and commitment (braving bad weather or resisting repression or opposition).[3]  Any deficiency in one category can be compensated for by another, but the total effect needs to be present to form a convincing demonstration.  Just as popular protest movements and sympathetic media seek to display these four traits, their opponents in government or competing movements seek to neutralize or deny them.

What does it mean to “deny” these displays?  In examining the papers under consideration, we see what McLeod and Hertog term “marginalizing” frames.  These include violent crime or property crime which base stories around violence or vandalism and emphasize efforts of police to restore order, which protestors are depicted as damaging.[4]  Of particular note is Khalil Rinnawi’s work on the strategies Israeli media employed to delegitimize Palestinian participants in the al-Aqsa Intifada.  These include drawing most information from official sources, which tend to emphasize the state’s efforts to restore law and order, portraying protestors as a threat to society which places the group outside the state and paints their actions as damaging to others (possibly including the readers), legitimizing the actions of the dominant group (for example, arguing that police were provoked), balancing the coverage in favor of the dominant group, and “blaming the victim” by implying that police are simply responding to protesters’ infractions.[5]

In many ways, these are extensions of Tilly’s WUNC characteristics; blaming the victim, emphasizing disorder and threats, and balancing coverage to favor the dominant group all attack the worthiness and commitment of the protestors.  It is, indeed, a full reversal: instead of “resisting repression” by standing up to the police, governments seek to portray protesters as inciting police.  Instead of being labeled as “organized students” or otherwise, protesters instead become “disorderly youth.”

Snow and Benford offer the concept of “resonance” to describe the effectiveness or mobilizing potency of proffered framings.  Resonance hinges on credibility and salience: for a frame to be credible, it must be both empirically credible (“the sky is green,” no matter how well framed, will not resonate well) and come from a credible source.  For a frame to be salient, it must fit into pre-existing narrative conceptions and values held by the readers.[6]  This is far more difficult to measure, but presents an avenue for future research.

Findings

I spent April 6, 2008 walking around downtown Cairo.  There were only a handful of the usual cars on the road, and many shops and merchants were closed.  Few pedestrians were outside, and a fair number of students were absent from the American University in Cairo – although classes were held as normal.  Instead of the normal traffic, tens of State Security trucks sat parked at every intersection, with battalions of riot police and plainclothes thugs standing near the major squares.  These tactics put a stop to any major protest; a group of three students that began yelling slogans in Midan Tahrir were immediately pushed into a van and driven away.[7]  Although there were not any large organized protests, the State Security response and empty streets indicated that the routine had been interrupted.  This is precisely the arena of news media – to add detail and meaning to a situation outside the realm of readers’ experience.  With this perspective, let’s consider the coverage of Egypt’s opposition and independent papers: the newcomer al-Badeel, Ibrahim Eissa’s al-Dostour, and al-Masry al-Youm.

On April 6, 2008 al-Badeel led with the unusually large headline, “Wind of strikes sweeps over Egypt.”[8]  Below that ran three rows of main headlines: “Demonstrations and arrests and empty streets in every district,” “Demonstrations ignite in al-Mahalla [a factory town north of Cairo] … [State] Security meets them with tear gas canisters … more than 2000 demonstrators at the Lawyer’s Syndicate,” and “Random seizing of citizens … arrest of tens of members from Kifaya, al-Nasseri, al-Ghad, and al-Karama [opposition political parties].”  At the same time, the front page was filled with pictures showing protestors on a building, one waving an Egyptian flag, surrounded by police.  The caption read, “Security besieging demonstration at Lawyer’s Syndicate on Ramsis Street yesterday.”  Other captions read “A procession of the students of Helwan University yesterday,” “Children in Alexandria carrying Egyptian flags” and “half-empty lecture hall at the University of Mansoura.”  Two other photographs show empty streets and their captions indicate that they were taken in the middle of the day – when streets would normally be very crowded.

The main article on al-Badeel’s April 6 front page also features a telling interview with a police officer stationed in Tahrir Square, which reads in part:

Reporter: What’s the news of the country, sir?

Officer: The country is tranquil, as you see here, and totally secure…everything is good, thanks be to God.

Reporter: The country is “tranquil” or has been “made tranquil”?  [i.e. pacified by force]