Diffusing Revolution: how al-Jazeera Imagined the "Arab Spring"

Hisham Tohme

In May 2011, Lisa Anderson published an article in Foreign Affairs entitled "Demystifying

the Arab Spring." She argued that, while there is a great tendency to bundle the Arab uprisings

under one umbrella, that of the "Arab Spring," these very different popular protest movements

operated under very different contexts and faced each its own sets of obstacles and difficulties.

A proper understanding of the situation, she claimed, can only be achieved by "discarding the

notion of a singular Arab revolt."1 Anderson's argument is difficult to discard. Aside from the

slogans that were ceremoniously repeated from one uprising to the other and the desire to

topple dictatorial regimes which had broad resemblances to one another, there is very little

which allows us to consider the different Arab uprisings as one event in an auto-repeat mode, or

even as a single phenomenon.

This understanding of the nature of the Arab uprisings, however, was not adopted by a

large portion of the media which stressed the similarities between the different events to the

point of mirroring the one onto the other. In this paper, I will be studying how al-Jazeera,

representing the biggest and most watched pan-Arab satellite television channel in the Arab

world,2 framed the Arab uprisings in a way that created a homogeneous image of the different

events. I will argue that al-Jazeera did so by always stressing the similarities between the

different cases, suggesting that a domino effect was taking place. This could be read as being

1
L. Anderson, "Demystifying the Arab Spring," Foreign Affairs, 90 (2011), no.3, 6-7.
2
Out of a total population (Arab and non-Arab) of 405 million, al-Jazeera has a potential viewership of 53
million. http://www.allied-media.com/aljazeera/al_jazeera_viewers_demographics.html, accessed on
May 4, 2011.

1
one factor which assisted in the spread of popular demonstrations in different Arab countries, if

only because it allowed people to imagine the possibility of a successful rebellion, thus breaking

the "fear barrier" that had paralyzed them for so long. I will base this argument upon the theory

of indirect mechanisms of diffusion advanced by Stephen Saideman in which he argued that

diffusion can happen in the form of "lessons learned by others."3

Data and method:

The data used in this paper consists of news reports reproduced in the online archive of

al-Jazeera English. These are strictly reports which appeared in the channel's news bulletin, and

do not include live coverage of events or reports appearing in talk shows and documentaries.

They cover the earliest phase of the popular uprisings in Libya (February 16-24, 2011) and Syria

(January 30 - March 16, 2011. Syria witnessed a long incubation period when it was not known

whether or not popular protests were going to take place. The Libyan case was quite the

opposite; the rebellion against the 42-year long rule of Muammar al-Qaddafi sparked overnight

in the eastern city of Benghazi. In one week, the rebellion had spread across the country. The

two cases however provide us with chronological proximity to the successes of the Egyptian and

Tunisian revolutions, in that both Husni Mubarak and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had been ousted

from power respectively on February 11, 2011, and January 14, 2011, a short period before the

unrest in Libya and Syria began. This temporal proximity was an important factor in imagining

the different uprisings as constituting one event.

3
S. Saideman, "When Conflict Spreads: Arab Spring and the Limits of Diffusion," International Interactions:
Empirical and Theoretical Research in International Relations, 38 (2012), 715. Saideman reached this
theory by examining how the dismantling of the Soviet Union spread to Czekoslovakia and Yugoslavia; see
S. Saideman, "Is Pandoras Box Half Empty or Half Full? The Limited Virulence of Secessionism and the
Domestic Sources of Disintegration," in D. Lake and D. Rothchild, eds., the International Spread of Ethnic
Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

2
 These reports will undergo both content and discourse analyses. I will focus on the

trends of repeating the same ideas and topics that infers correlation between the different

uprisings. I will furthermore analyze how such correlations were made by examining the lexical

choices and the general uses that were made of the parallels between the Arab uprisings in the

different countries in the context of news reporting. I will thus be deconstructing and then

reconstructing the narrative presented in al-Jazeera, recreating in the process the frame that

they used to interpret the events. Robert Entman argued that such frame should fulfill four

functions, "problem definition, causal analysis, moral judgment, and remedy promotion."4 This

study will allow me to fit the framing process undertaken by al-Jazeera into this model of

framing functions. I would have answered the key question of this paper: what was the role of

al-Jazeera in promoting popular upheaval in the different Arab countries?

Drawing parallels, or the elements that created one "Arab Spring":

I begin my examination of the content found in the different news reports by

categorizing the recurrent themes that drew direct parallels between the different uprisings,

focused on corruption and undemocratic practices as the key instigator for people, and

positively portraying popular action, whether by way of actively promoting people to take to the

streets or by reporting on the benefits and gains of such movements. The results were as

follows:

Syria Mentioning Drawing Mentioning Making Mentioning

Egypt and Tunisia parallels with success of positive corruption and
Egypt and revolutions in statements undemocratic
Tunisia Egypt and about people practices
Tunisia protesting

4
R. Entman, "Framing Media Power," in P. D'Angelo and J. Kuypers, eds., Doing News Framing Analysis:
Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, New York: Routledge, 2010, 336.

3
 30-Jan-115 18 8 3 1 9
2-Feb-116 8 6 5 6 3
4-Feb-117 9 6 1 1 11
9-Feb-118 12 14 1 4 20
12-Feb-119 4 2 0 0 7
6-Mar-1110 5 9 2 6 8
8-Mar-1111 1 0 1 1 5
15-Mar-1112 0 1 0 4 5
16-Mar-1113 0 1 0 8 5
Total 57 47 13 31 73
Average 6.33 5.22 1.44 3.44 8.11
Table 1: Count of sentences in each news report on Syria by date of appearance of every news report

We see in Table 1 that in the case of Syria, al-Jazeera insisted on repeatedly mentioning

Egypt and Tunisia (more than six times in each news report on average) and drawing parallels

between Syria and the two other countries (on average more than five times per news report).

These were the two most repeated themes after corruption which was mentioned on average

more than eight times each news report. It is also very interesting to note that we see the

greatest emphasis on drawing parallels with Egypt and Tunisia came prior to February 11, the

date of the fall of Mubarak. Afterwards, we see a quick decline of drawing direct parallels with

the Egyptian and Tunisian cases, to the point that they were almost no longer mentioned by the

5
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/01/2011129132243891877.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
6
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112282246404549.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
7
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/02/201122171649677912.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
8
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/201129103121562395.html, accessed on May3,
2012.
9
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/02/2011212122746819907.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
10
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113482455647372.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
11
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/03/20113818251795959.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
12
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/03/20113151834383782.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
13
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/03/2011316131236735771.html, accessed on May
3, 2012.

4
time major protests broke out in Syria. The themes of corruption and undemocratic practices of

the regime, and the positive statements about people rebelling remained a steady feature of the

al-Jazeera news reporting.

Libya Mentioning Drawing Mentioning Making Mentioning

Egypt and Tunisia parallels with success of positive corruption and
Egypt and revolutions in statements undemocratic
Tunisia Egypt and about people practices
Tunisia protesting
16-Feb-1114 3 4 1 9 13
17-Feb-1115 2 3 0 5 10
18-Feb-1116 6 8 3 7 21
20-Feb-1117 1 1 1 9 14
21-Feb-1118 3 3 2 8 11
23-Feb-1119 11 11 2 3 5
Total 26 30 9 41 74
Average20 2.89 3.33 1.00 4.56 8.22
Table 2: Count of sentences in each news report on Libya by date

In the case of Libya, we notice that, while constantly present in all of the news reports,

comparisons with Egypt and Tunisia were not as prominent in the list of themes as in the case of

Syria. Indeed, after corruption and undemocratic practices (including violently suppressing

protests) which were mentioned more than eight times on average per news report, mentioning

protestors favorably came second with 4.5 mentions on average per news report. Parallels with

14
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/201121623948974864.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
15
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/201121755057219793.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
16
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/201121716917273192.html and
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/20112187102317748.html, accessed on May 3, 2012.
17
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/2011219232320644801.html and
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/20112202148108558.html, accessed on May 3, 2012.
18
http://www.aljazeer.com/indepth/features/2011/02/2011221133437954477.html and
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/2011221133557377576.html, accessed on May 3, 2012.
19
http://www.aljazeer.com/indepth/features/2011/02/2011223133338324939.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
20
The average was calculated over a total of 9 news reports rather than the number of dates given in
Table 2.

5
Egypt and Tunisia, however, were mentioned three times more or less per report. It is also

interesting to note that the events in Libya began after February 11. Also, protests in Libya broke

out very rapidly and spread out across the country throughout the week examined here.

A simple comparison between the mentioned themes across the coverage of both

uprisings gives us the following table:

80
70
60
50
40
30 Syria count
20 Libya count
10
0
Mentioning Drawing Mentioning Making positive Mentioning
Egypt and parallels with success of statements corruption and
Tunisia Egypt and revolutions in about people undemocratic
Tunisia Egypt and protesting practices
Tunisia

Chart 1: Comparison between the counts in the early coverage of the Syrian and Libyan uprisings by theme

Overall, we see that the issue of corruption and undemocratic practices was the primary

point in the coverage of the early period of both the Syrian and Libyan uprisings, which is not

very surprising considering that they accurately reflected the state of both the Baath and

Qaddafi regimes. The least mentioned theme is also common to both cases and relates to the

successes of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. It is worth noting that, even though most of

the news reports on the unrest in Syria included in this study preceded February 11, the success

of both revolutions were mentioned more when reporting on Syria then on Libya. The other

three themes show that there was divergence in the framing of the issue of popular protest

6
against the regimes. In the Libyan case, priority was given to creating a positive and encouraging

image of the protestors while In Syria, the focus was on stressing the similarities between the

Syrian, Egyptian, and Tunisian regimes. What Table 3 does not show, however, is that these

claims of similarity were mostly concentrated in news reports dating prior to February 11, a

point which will be discussed later in this paper.

These themes convey how the narrative of the one "Arab Spring" was woven. By

stressing on the main and broad similarities, al-Jazeera adopted a viewpoint that combined the

different uprisings under one umbrella. The most important of these themes, corruption and the

lack of democracy, was indeed a common factor that described the state of the different

regimes where protests erupted. In the "Democracy Index 2010" published by the Economist,

Egypt ranked 138th, Tunisia 144th, Syria 152nd, Libya and 158th in a ranking that included 167

countries.21 Also, according to the "Corruption Perceptions Index 2010" published by

Transparency International, Tunisia ranked 59th, Egypt 98th, Syria 127th, and Libya 146th.22

Also, historically, the four regimes came to be when army officers in these countries succeeded

in their coups and took over the reins of power. Colonel Qaddafi staged a bloodless coup in

1969; Ben Ali was General Director of the National Security in Tunisia before holding a few

political positions and then ousted then president Bourguiba in 1987; Mubarak succeeded

presidents Sadat and Abdel Nasser, who had come to power after the 1952 July Revolution

against king Faruq; Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad, a general and

commander-in-chief of the Syrian Air Force, who came to power in 1970 after an intra-coup

21
Economist Intelligence Unit, "Democracy Index 2010: Democracy in Retreat," London: the Economist
Intelligence Unit, 2010, 7.
22
As quoted in http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/26/corruption-index-2010-
transparency-international, accessed on May 5, 2012. Jack Goldstone had labeled these regimes as
"sultanic" regimes because the heads of states behaved more like sultans rather than any other twentieth
century dictator, appropriating their countries' wealth, living extravagantly, building up toward family
inheritance of leadership positions... J. Goldstone, " Understanding the Revolutions of 2011," Foreign
Affairs, 90 (2011), no.3 pp.8-16.

7
within the Baath party in Syria. Also, there were apparent similarities in the way opponents of

the regimes organized and conducted protests. The usage of social media has been a major

element in all of the uprisings. Facebook and Twitter became a necessary communication tool as

protestors had a means to transmit their messages beyond the immediate control of their

governments. It was not long that the term "Arab Spring" became synonymous with "Facebook

revolution" or "Twitter revolution" (to complement the original "al-Jazeera revolution" which

became a famous slogan during the early days of the uprisings).23 Another similarity between

protests were the slogans shouted by the protestors, including the now famous: "the people

want to overthrow the regime." There were indeed many parallels to draw between the history

and states of the different Arab regimes, but also between the different uprisings in terms of

organization and protesting. There were, however, many more differences between them which

al-Jazeera chose to disregard. As a result, al-Jazeera's behavior coincided with the four elements

constituting the indirect mechanisms of diffusion advanced by Saideman:24

"New tactics and strategies" in the form of popular protests

"New ideas and deligitimation of previous approaches" in that the concept of

debating or dialoguing with the regimes became out of the question while the

only possibility of success was the downfall of these regimes

"Revised expectations about the likely behavior of key outside actors" in that an

image of unwavering international and more importantly Arab support was

guarantied

"Revised expectations about the chances of success" which were clearly drawn

by the parallels with the success of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions

23
S. Joseph, "Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights," Boston College International &
Comparative Law Review, 35 (2012), 146.
24
Saideman, "When Conflict Spreads," 715.

8
 Al-Jazeera had therefore acted as a promoter of revolution by creating parallels

between the different uprisings, thus consolidating the idea that popular protests were

necessarily the key to change, while the only solution to the socio-political problems facing each

country was the downfall of its regime. Protestors were fed the idea that this was the only

viable path to reaching their goals (irrespective of what these goals were), and that success was

the only possible outcome. Indirect diffusion was therefore at play within the narrative offered

by al-Jazeera.

The differences between the cases and how al-Jazeera framed a dominant narrative:

The main area of contention that was never discussed in the media (or at least was

mentioned on very few occasions) was the demographic differences between the countries

involved in this study. Population density and religious and social divisions were among the main

reasons why Egypt and Tunisia represented one aspect of the uprisings, and Libya and Syria

represented a completely different one. Tunisia represents a very homogeneous society with a

population density of 64 people per km2.25 Egypt has a small Coptic minority that represents a

total of 10% of the population and has a population density of 79 people per km 2.26 These two

countries are socially homogeneous, with high population density, especially in urban centers

which were also the place where popular protests took place.

Syria and Libya are a different story. Libya enjoys a population density of 3.2 people per

km2.27 Aside from having such an extremely low population density, social cohesion is totally

lacking in a country which Qaddafi sought to unify once he had accessed power. Tribal bonds

remained very strong forcing the colonel to advance individuals from allied as well as his own

25
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2009-2010 Demographic Yearbook, New York: United
Nations, 2011, 60.
26
Ibid, 59.
27
Ibid.

9
tribe to key positions within the state.28 This meant that the number of opposing players within

the Libyan political scene remained high, even though the colonel was in effective control of the

situation - for forty-two years that it.29 Social divides in Syria are even deeper than in Libya,

simply because they run along religious and confessional lines. Of the total population, 74% are

Sunnis, 16% Shiites (including Alawites, Druzes, and Ismailis), and 10% Christians.30 The figure for

Sunnis also include a 10% of ethnic Kurds, while the one for Christians also include ethnic

Armenians. The Syrian uprising is also taking place in only two cities, Homs and Hama, while the

rest of the popular unrest is being witnessed in rural areas. The two largest cities, the capital

Damascus and Aleppo, had yet to witness any major protest;31 without the districts of Damascus

and Aleppo, Syria's population density drops to less than 40 people per km 2.32

These issues are not important by themselves. But in the context of increased popular

unrest, one could see how social homogeneity could galvanize people, while social disunity

would serve as a destabilizing factor. In Egypt and Tunisia, both Mubarak and Ben Ali had come

to power as a result of an intra-elite transition which took place under "stable" circumstances.

Qaddafi and Hafez al-Assad, however, came to power at a time when Libya and Syria were

facing turbulent events. Qaddafi succeeded in his revolution amidst major popular discontent

from the king Idris, a major part of which was directed against his regional affiliation and

preference; he was Cyrenaican, a fact that did not sit well with the Tripolitans and Fezzanis.

Hafez al-Assad's coup was the last of ten coups d'tat that took place in Syria in a little more

28
L. Anderson, "Qadhdhafi and His Opposition," Middle East Journal, 40 (1986), 228.
29
Ibid, 227.
30
"Syria," Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, vol.4: Asia and Oceania, T. Gall and J. Hobbey, eds.,
12th ed., Detroit: Gale, 2007, 768.
31
Peaceful demonstrations never reached the two cities, even though once violence broke out, they
became the targets of both rebel and governmental military action. For the purpose of this paper, this
subsequent phase will not be taken into consideration.
32 2
The overall population density of Syria is equal to 96 people per km . Department of Economic and
Social Affairs, 2009-2010 Demographic Yearbook, 64.

10
than two decades; the country had never known political stability before al-Assad's access to

power.33 It is very hard to conceive that Libya and Syria were to transition away from their

current regimes in such a "simple" way like in Egypt and Tunisia.34

The demographics in these regions played a major role in why this would not be the

case. Higher population density coupled with robust social cohesion in Egypt and Tunisia greatly

helped the protestors in that they coalesced and galvanized their grievances in mass

movements. Future research will no doubt factor this in when studying why the military sided

with the protestors in both cases; they truly represented and were part of these people who

were protesting; they inevitably (statistically speaking at least) had family, friends and

acquaintances in Tahrir Square. In Syria and Libya, social divisions and lower population density

meant that protests would necessarily be smaller than in Egypt and Tunisia. They would also be

more geographically dispersed. This would render the task of military crackdown on protestors

extremely difficult because it would simply spread the armies thin. Furthermore, the armies in

both countries had a corps that is very loyal to the regime because they belong to the same

social group (in Libya less so than in Syria where the higher ranking officers are almost

exclusively from minorities supporting the regime). These factors were always present in both

Syria and Libya and did not need hindsight to recognize. Still, al-Jazeera rarely mentioned any of

this, which brings us to the important question of how then did they frame the narrative of the

growing conflict in both cases.

To put the answer simply, al-Jazeera did so by not mentioning the differences between

each uprising and the context in which it took place, while stressing on the similarities between

33
R. Hinnebusch, "Syria: from 'Authoritarian Upgrading' to Revolution?" International Affairs, 88 (2012),
96; J. Galvani, "Syria and the Baath Party," MERIP Reports, 25 (1974), 3.
34
B. Haddad et al., "The Arab Uprisings and U.S. Policy: What Is the American National Interest?" Middle
East Policy, 18 (2011), no.2, 12.

11
these different popular upheavals. In the case of Libya, there was never any mention of tribes

and the tribal socio-political structure that governed the country except for the first time when a

tribe sided with the protestors in Benghazi on February 20, 2011, one week after protests broke

out.35 In the case of Syria, aside from the fact that Alawites were a minority, which was often

repeated, there was never any mention of the other social divisions in the country except for

once in an in depth news report.36 This report dated to February 9, a date when there had yet to

be any serious popular movement there. The reason for having gone with this report despite the

fact that there was nothing going on in Syria while, at the same time, the Egyptian revolution

was quickly reaching its pinnacle might have something to do with a couple of news reports

aired on al-Jazeera during the previous few days. Starting on January 30, al-Jazeera aired

successively three reports entitled "the Syrians Are Watching," Getting in Line for a Revolution"

(February 2), and "Calls for Weekend Protests in Syria" (February 4). These pieces coincided with

the first calls for revolution in Syria, launched on a Facebook page and calling for mass

demonstrations to take place on February 4. The titles suggested a build-up in the movement.

The first piece began by stressing the similarities between Egypt and Syria, while at the same

time recounting the crumbling of the Egyptian regime, alluding to a possible link. This link was

confirmed by Mazen Darwich, "whose Syrian Centre for Media, which campaigns for press

freedom in Syria, was closed by authorities soon after opening."37 Another source for this piece

was a "graduate medical student" talking in a cafe while surfing the web. At the end of the

article, Mazen Bilal, editor of Suria al-Ghad, a news website close to the Baath, mentions a point

about the role of national pride in curbing possible protests, but it was only accorded two lines

35
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/20112202148108558.html, accessed on May 3, 2012.
36
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/201129103121562395.html, accessed on May3,
2012.
37
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/01/2011129132243891877.html, accessed on May
3, 2012.

12
in comparison with the 47 lines arguing for the idea that the street in Damascus was already on

alert. Once the call for protests was out, al-Jazeera was all over it. The proof that there was

action on the ground was that "the Syrian Revolution" page on Facebook received 13,000

"likes". The fact that most of them came from people living outside of Syria was of secondary

importance. Social media were, again, brought to the forefront as a primordial motivator for

people to go on the ground, as half of the article focused on how widespread they were in Syria

and how they could be used for communication purposes by the demonstrators.38 The "day of

rage" never ended up materializing on the ground. The report aired on February 9 had an

apologetic tone to it, focusing on the difficulties facing popular unrest in Syria, which included

the social divisions mentioned earlier in this paper.

Therefore, al-Jazeera offered its viewers a narrative which was similar to the one they

had seen in Egypt and Tunisia, if only because of the many common factors which were

repeated in the coverage of the different uprisings. This narrative quickly became the solely

acceptable interpretation of the unfolding events, leaving little room to questioning or

alternative narratives and points of view. This was made possible because it was al-Jazeera that

was telling the story. A giant pan-Arab news media station, al-Jazeera had been quickly building

an image of a credible and professional news media. Its viewership had exponentially increased

since its inception in 1996. El-Nawawi and Iskandar cited an estimate that claimed that al-

Jazeera broadcasted to 60% of all Middle Eastern households; that was in 2002.39 Since there

were never serious studies of Arab audience and official statistics to prove this claim, the above

estimate must be taken with a grain of salt; Allied Media estimate that al-Jazeera has an

38
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/02/201122171649677912.html, accessed on May 3,
2012.
39
M. El-Nawawi and A. Iskandar, al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and
Changed the Middle East, Boulder: Westview Press, 2002, 48.

13
audience of 50 million out of 400 million people living in the Arab world, which seems to be a

much more sober estimate.40 The point is that, since 1996, al-Jazeera has increasingly gained in

viewership, remaining the single leading channel even after the coming of other pan-Arab

satellite news channel such as al-Arabiya and al-Hurra.41 Furthermore, and aside from being the

most watched pan-Arab news channel in the Arab world, al-Jazeera has gained the reputation of

being a credible news source, especially after its reporting of the Iraq invasion in 2003 when it

challenged the official US and UK war propaganda,42 but also before that, when al-Jazeera

covered the Second Intifada and the bombing of Baghdad during Operation Desert Fox.43 This

meant that al-Jazeera was believed to be reliable, professional, and objective in its news

reporting.44

The Arab public on the receiving end:

The size and image of al-Jazeera allowed its narrative to monopolize the public's mind.

This monopoly manifested itself on two levels. First of all, al-Jazeera's influence, position, and

credibility in the eyes of its viewers rendered its account of events dominant; It became the

mainstream story which was repeated by other news channels. The Qatari channel further

established its hegemonic position within the context of news reporting on the Arab uprisings

when it became very vocal in supporting the Tunisian and Egyptian protestors, reaching a point

where these revolutions were dubbed the "al-Jazeera revolutions."45 By doing so, its version of

events became familiar to the public, a matter of popular belief. With no alternative narrative

40
http://www.allied-media.com/aljazeera/al_jazeera_viewers_demographics.html, accessed on May 4,
2011.
41
M. Lahlali, Contemporary Arab Broadcast Media, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, 55.
42
M. Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today, New York:
Columbia University Press, 2006, 213-5.
43
L. Bahry, "the New Arab Media Phenomenon: Qatar's al-Jazeera," Middle East Policy, 8 (2001), no.2, 91.
44
Lahlali, Contemporary Arab Broadcast Media, 79-80.
45
L. Pintak, "the al-Jazeera Revolution," February 2, 2011,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/02/the_al_jazeera_revolution, accessed on May 8, 2012.

14
and no criticisms of al-Jazeera's behavior, their mainstream story became as a consequence

dominant in a way that makes any new reading of the events impossible.46 Herman and

Chomsky, elaborating on their "propaganda model," claim that such a hegemonic narrative

would then allow the mainstream news channels (in this case al-Jazeera) to go for more inflated

claims and unsubstantiated reporting without fear of repercussion; they just "suspend critical

judgment and investigative zeal, they compete to find ways of putting the newly established

truth in a supportive light" while even seriously conducted news reporting, commentary, and

analysis are either suppressed or ignored.47 What makes it worse in the case of the Arab

uprisings is that with the lack of a strong civil society, the system of social recording and public

memory is weak, and, as Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder noted, this permits news coverage

to be "a substitute for reality rather than its faithful messenger," the weaver of truth rather than

a mirror for events.48

Aside from the dominant account, there is also the issue of the general public

acceptance of this account. Iyengar and Kinder's seminal work also focuses on how the general

public assimilates a story in the news, if only because of accessibility to the story.49 In this case,

the general public has access to only one story, the one presented by al-Jazeera, in which all

Arab regimes are the same and ought to be ousted by the people. The constant moral

argumentation that underlies the corruption and undemocratic practices theme (irrespective of

whether it is right or wrong to argue as such) primes the viewer into making new moral

evaluations of their regimes; they start to judge them differently. This is a very important point

because it applies perfectly to Iyengar and Kinder's analysis. Their experiment showed that
46
E. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, the Political Economy of the Mass Media, New
York: Pantheon Books, 2002, 34.
47
Ibid.
48
S. Iyengar and D. Kinder, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion, Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1987, 123.
49
Ibid, 64.

15
performance-based evaluation tends to influence all people much more than regular agenda-

setting, even when they are politically involved (a factor which the authors found to almost

immunize viewers from the effects of agenda-setting).50

Sadly, there is not yet any empirical data to suggest to what level the public was

influenced by al-Jazeera's rhetoric or even to what level al-Jazeera was really a direct factor in

bringing protestors to the street. But one way I thought could assist us in knowing how their

hegemonic narrative was digested by the public is through an examination of a more popular

understanding of the events as portrayed by the many caricatures that mushroomed alongside

the uprisings. If one were to look at the many caricatures that were produced during the early

period of the popular upheavals, one would notice a strangely recurrent theme that found its

way into many of them, that of the domino effect. Appendix A contains seven samples of

caricatures depicting in different forms the domino effect that toppled one Arab dictator after

the other. The one obvious idea behind the domino effect is that the uprisings that were

toppling Arab dictatorial regimes constituted one phenomenon that repeated itself like a chain

reaction. The similarity between each case is stressed out over and over again in almost all of

the caricatures. Picture 1 shows dominoes labeled as Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, followed by

"etc." dominoes, suggesting a continuation of the same. Picture 5 shows dominoes with the

heads of Arab dictators starting to fall, each yelling "I understand." Picture 6 shows similar

statues of the different Arab dictators striking the same pose and falling like dominoes. Picture 7

shows dominoes falling while each yells that it does not resemble the one that preceded it, thus

connoting the famous speeches of Mubarak, Qaddafi, and Ali Abdallah Saleh, successively.

50
Ibid, 95-6.

16
 But while the theme of a common phenomenon is recurrent in all these caricature, thus

advancing the claim that al-Jazeera had succeeded in framing an "Arab Spring," we can see some

major differences between each drawing, differences that express their caricaturists' political

positions as well as the context from which they saw the "Arab Spring." For example, Picture 2

shows an Egypt domino knocking down a Libya domino which is in turn falling toward Bashar al-

Assad who took a human shape. Tunisia is first disregarded and Yemen, whose head of state Ali

Abdallah Saleh had already been deposed is not mentioned. Picture 3 shows a small effigy of

Uncle Sam pushing the domino on which Qaddafi's head was drawn, insinuating that it was the

US rather than local protests that actually deposed the colonel. Also, Uncle Sam is pushing the

Qaddafi domino toward the Syria domino; the caricaturist wanted to point out that, not only

was the US behind some of the crumbling dominoes fall, but it also specifically targeted others

as well. Picture 4 only shows a Tunisian domino falling down on a Mubarak one, with the

dominoes next in line unidentified, suggesting that Karlos Lattuf who drew the picture did not

yet know who was next in line to fall, but expected that the line will not end with Mubarak.

Picture 5 is much more detailed. It shows the succession of leaders who were expected to fall

due to the domino effect. They were Ben Ali, Mubarak, Abdullah II of Jordan, Qaddafi,

Muhammad VI of Morocco, Saleh, Mahmud Abbas, Jalal Talabani, Abdallah of Saudi Arabia,

followed by unidentifiable heads of state from the Gulf. Bashar al-Assad does not figure in the

list of falling figures while all those who are falling are close allies of the US. Saib Khalil, the

caricaturist behind this picture, was making a political statement that the "Arab Spring" was

directed against leaders who were US allies or were now on good terms with the US, while

Bashar al-Assad who still belonged to the resistance axis was immune from popular resentment.

Picture 6 shows that the beginning of the domino effect was with Saddam Hussein, which means

that the artist who drew the picture believed in the American rhetoric of democracy spreading

17
with the "Arab Spring" the same way it did so with the invasion of Iraq... or alternatively he was

equally cynical toward the fall of these dictators. The most interesting conclusion I draw from

these caricatures is not that al-Jazeera's political point of view (which shall be discussed next in

this paper) was not as pervasive as its original message that imagined the different uprisings as

one, but rather that Iyengar and Kinder's conclusions on how viewers are affected by agenda-

setting and priming accurately applies in this case. They found that political affiliation renders

the viewer much less susceptible to influence from agenda-setting, but that priming affects all

viewership segments equally. Thus, we notice that the different political opinions on the Arab

uprisings are still expressed based on personal affiliation and preferences, but that most

caricaturists accepted the notion of a common event. Al-Jazeera's framing of the "Arab Spring"

was thus successful, but the political goal behind that frame was not as effective.

Agenda building or the politics behind al-Jazeera's frame:

Iyengar and Kinder conclude their book on this remark: "In commanding attention and

shaping opinion, television is now an authority virtually without peer. Near the close of the

twentieth century, in the shadow of Orwell's 1984, it would be both naive and irresponsible to

pretend that such an authority could ever be neutral."51 This serves as a starting point to the

question of what were the motives of al-Jazeera as well as its goals in portraying the different

uprisings as one. To answer this question, I go back to Entman's model of the frame's functions,

especially the last of these function, remedy promotion, which is a clear indicator of intent. Al-

Jazeera's narrative of the uprisings told of a regime that faced a popular opposition. The causes

of the conflict were corruption and the undemocratic practices enforced by the dictators at the

top. The moral judgment had been cast when the belligerents in the conflict were depicted in

51
Ibid, 133.

18
terms of righteous and villain, which leaves the people with one option, getting rid of the

corrupt and sadistic dictator. The endgame from that frame as constructed in al-Jazeera's news

coverage is therefore the toppling of the regimes. As shown in Table 1 and 2, people were

constantly reminded of the corruption of the regime, its similarities with regimes that had fallen

facing popular protests, and promoting such action by the people and advertising their

successes. The station managers were no longer simply deciding what story to air (agenda-

setting) and what story should be given more importance, but were rather focusing on how to

tell the story, i.e. on agenda extension or agenda-building.52

Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model concentrates on the forces shaping what the

media has to say; these are mainly the owners and managers of the different media outlets who

fund and finance the operations of the television stations.53 In the case of al-Jazeera, it is the

Qatari emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani who conceived of, promoted, and financed al-Jazeera as

part of his vision to give Qatar a bigger geostrategic role in the region.54 According to the

propaganda model, al-Jazeera serves the interests of the Qatari emir who still finances the

annual deficits incurred by the network. This claim is further reinforced by the fact that al-

Jazeera operates within "red lines" imposed on it; they deal with all of the hot issues in the Arab

world as long as they stay away from trying to criticize Qatar.55 From this scope, it is not difficult

to see why al-Jazeera would frame the issue of the Arab revolt in such a politically driven

fashion. Libya had been at constant odds with Qatar and the rest of the Gulf states, while the

relationship between the emirate and Syria had soured over the past year. When asked about

52
J. Kuypers, "Framing Analysis from a Rhetorical Perspective," in P. D'Angelo and J. Kuypers, eds., Doing
News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, New York: Routledge, 2010, 299.
53
Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, xii, xix.
54
Bahry, "the New Arab Media Phenomenon," 88.
55
L. Pintak, "Breathing Room, Toward a New Arab Media," Columbia Journalism Review, 2011, May/June,
25.

19
the emir of Qatar's reaction to the toppling of his fellow Arab autocrats, columnist in al-Sharq al-

Awsat Hussein Shobokshi answered that "he has a huge smile on his face."56

We can thus deduce that al-Jazeera has been serving as a propaganda tool for the Qatari

government, promoting its political agenda as represented by the remedy they proposed to the

corruption and lack of democracy in certain Arab countries. An important point that I had

mentioned earlier in this paper is that there was a dividing line concerning how much Egypt and

Tunisia were mentioned at one point in the early days of the Syria uprising. That line was

February 11, 2011, the date when Mubarak was deposed. Prior to that date, al-Jazeera played

the parallel created between Syria on the one side and Egypt and Tunisia on the other to incite

the people to rebel. This parallel drew on the superficial similarities between these countries,

suggesting on multiple occasions (on average 3.44 times per news report) that a popular

uprising against the regime was needed and would in fact be successful. Focusing on Egypt and

Tunisia created a sense of precedent for the people of Syria, a precedent that necessarily shook

the image they had of the invincible regime that could not be challenged. This was exactly the

same reason for why Egypt and Tunisia were not mentioned as frequently when reporting on

Libya, even though Libya was located right between the two countries and was more similar to

them than Syria could ever be. There was no need to incite the people to take to the streets

there. Mass protests broke out as soon as a few people began demonstrating; in just one week,

protests had spread throughout the country, the military had taken violent action against

civilians, and there were clear signs that the country was heading for civil war. For people to do

the same in Syria, they needed extra incentive, a reason for the wall of fear to be shattered. A

comparison between their possible future and that Egypt and Tunisia was definitely a factor in

their final decision to brave the killing machine of the Baath regime and take the streets in

56
Ibid, 24.

20
protest. Although it goes beyond the scope of this paper, but a small note on al-Jazeera's

reporting on the uprising in Bahrain tends to fit within the explanation offered in this paper. Al-

Jazeera downplayed the importance of the protests there, giving them minimal attention, which

incidentally coincided with the professed interests of the Qatari government in accord with the

rest of the GCC. That was a friendly government and thus represented one of those "red lines"

that al-Jazeera could not cross. Another important indicator is the February 11 demarcation

date, for when Mubarak was still in power, al-Jazeera was one of the most pronounced and

staunch opponent to his rule; but when he was deposed, al-Jazeera was suddenly no longer

interested in the ongoing events in Egypt. They almost entirely stopped broadcasting news on

Egypt and increased their focus on Libya. The Egyptian military council that assumed provisional

control over the state resumed Mubarak's undemocratic suppression of civil liberties, but al-

Jazeera was uninterested. Again, this goes in line with the Qatari position on the evolution of

events in Egypt and, as a result, there was almost total amnesia on this matter. Even using Egypt

as a comparison was minimized as much as possible. As shown in Table 1, the news report of

February 9 included 12 mentions of Egypt and Tunisia; the 5 next report figured only 10 such

mentions. News reports on the events in Libya mentioned Egypt and Tunisia on average less

than three times per report.

Conclusion:

Against all informed opinion, al-Jazeera sought to create an image of a single "Arab

Spring" with the different rebellions sharing common features such as corruption and lack of

democracy. This image was greatly emphasized by comparing the cases of Syria and to a lesser

extent Libya with those of Egypt and Tunisia. A parallel with successful rebellions would

necessarily have to factor in when examining the reasons why people in Syria and Libya

21
challenged the grim odds and demonstrated against regimes whose answer was predictably and

brutally violent. Indeed, the news network acted as a vehicle for an indirect diffusion of

revolution through the promotion of the idea of a non-existing parallel between Syria and Libya

on the one hand, and Egypt and Tunisia on the other. People were thus primed to revolt,

accepting none other than the total destruction of the regimes, and encouraged by the

seemingly guaranteed odds of success, an image which, as time has shown, only existed in the

imagination of the editors of al-Jazeera. Consequently, it could be argued that this was a

conscious effort on the part of al-Jazeera to promote dissent against governments that were not

entirely friendly to its financial patron and owner, the Qatari government.

To reach this goal, al-Jazeera used the legitimacy and credibility capital it had gathered

throughout the years to construct a frame which was geared toward one main function, remedy

promotion. The narrative they adopted quickly became the dominant version of events, leaving

no room for an alternative point of view, if only because the Qatari news channel has the largest

audience in the Arab world; it had also earned the initial trust of its audience by blindly siding

with the protestors in Tunisia and Egypt. As a dominant rhetoric that reached to the widest

possible viewership, al-Jazeera's version of events managed to create the image of a singular

event that was labeled the "Arab Spring," a label which proved to be very potent for diffusing

the revolutionary zeal that had first erupted in Tunisia and then in Egypt. The problem ended up

being that the differences between Egypt and Tunisia on the one hand and Syria and Libya on

the other were not restricted to the histories of these countries and their social divisions. They

ended up also facing a very different possible outcome to their supposed revolution. Even

though Qaddafi was deposed in Libya, the country has drowned into a civil war. Syria is also

facing civil war, but al-Assad is still in power. Both results differed greatly from the more

relatively peaceful outcome experienced in both Egypt and Tunisia where, even though there

22
seems to be strong dissent against the newly formed elected governments, a resemblance to a

normally functioning state has come to exist. From this perspective, al-Jazeera has spread war

more than it did democracy; it became a voice of fundamentalism rather than one of liberal

progress. What is worse is that it did so hoping to increase the influence of a country that

cannot in geostrategic terms play the role it wants to. Qatar is indeed playing an impossible

gamble, and it is doing so at the expense of the lives of other peoples.

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24
www.ibda3world.com/- --/

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25
Appendix A:

57
Picture 1: Domino effect knocking down Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, followed by etc.

58
Picture 2: Domino effect knocking down Bashar al-Assad after Egypt and Libya

57
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/directory/d/dominoes.asp, accessed May 3, 2012.

26
 59
Picture 3: Uncle Sam pushing the dominoes to create a domino effect

58
Ibid.
59
Ibid.

27
 60
Picture 4: The domino effect beginning with Tunisia that falls on Mubarak

61
Picture 5: A Tunisian hand beginning the domino effect, while each domino has the head of an Arab dictator on it

60
http://www.ibda3world.com/- - -/, accessed on May 3, 2012.

28
 62
Picture 6: The domino effect taking down statues of Arab dictators starting with Saddam Hussein

61
http://www.alnoor.se/article.asp?id=104227, accessed on May 3, 2012.
62
http://www.mahjoob.com/ar/archives/view.php?cartoonid=3607, accessed on May 3, 2012.

29
Picture 7: The domino effect taking down Arab regimes, each claiming that they are not like the one preceding
63
them

63
http://elmeda.net/spip.php?article58, accessed on May 3, 2012.

30