Comparing Al-Arabiyeh and BBC Persian-Language Website's News Discourses

The present research aims to compare media framing in Al-Arabiyeh and BBC Persian-Language Websites with regard to public protests in Bahrain; it also seeks to discover the similarities and differences of the websites’ news discourses and hence, carries out a discourse analysis of their news. In this study, VanDyke Framework of discourse analysis is employed. The research population consists of all news related to Bahrain public protests covered in these two websites; 14 pieces of news were selected as samples and then analyzed based on the research framework. According to the findings, the main frame used in Persian-language BBC website is “ignoring Islamic nature of the protests and suggestion of conflict and increased tensions between regional powers over Bahrain issue” and the basic frame for Al-Arabiyeh website was “to support Bahrain government, downplaying the public protests as well as supporting Saudi Arabia’s actions towards Bahrain.” The findings also show that the major shaped discourses around these protests in Persian-language BBC website focused on creating crisis, Iranophobia as well as Shiite-phobia; the major formed discourses for Al-Arabiyeh website focused on Iranophobia, Shiite-phobia as well as supporting dialogue amid chaos, plotting etc.