Framing in the Western News Media and the Style of Representation of the Popular Movements in Arab World With a Special Emphasis on Bahrain and Egypt

Undoubtedly the western governments got surprised by the Islamic awakening and again the effectiveness of their intelligence agencies came under question, something that happened once when they ailed to predict the Islamic revolution of Iran. With the spillover of the Tunisian revolution to Egypt the domino of revolutions began in the Arab World. The main question of this paper is about the frameworks of the Western News Media and the way they chose to represent the popular movements in Arab World in 2011. Using the Framing Theory this article shows that there is a meaningful coordination between the official policies of the western government and the media performances in these countries. The article argues that the degree of surprise in Egyptian and Libyan case was rather low comparing to that of Tunisia and that gave the western media and governments an opportunity to draw a strategy on how to deal with them posing the minimum threats towards their interests and that of Israeli regime. It will be shown in the article that in the Bahraini case the western media adopted a policy of boycotting the events 9in the f9rst place and then supporting the Bahraini government and minimizing and understating the significance of the Bahraini revolution. However in Egyptian case first they adopted a policy of supporting Mubarak and then the minimizing the demands of the Egyptian people, reducing the Islamic nature of the movement and pretending that it is purely a political and ant -dictatorship movement.