US cultural colonization of IraqA Case Study of American Facebook Pages

Colonialism to advance its political and economic goals not only acts through coercive domination, but also adopts intellectual and cultural methods to turn its domination into hegemonic domination; That is, by producing meaning, it shows the relations of power as natural and rational, and in this way, it stabilizes the mentioned relations. The main issue in this article is how the United States culturally colonizes Iraq, and answering the question of what concepts the American media uses to deepen this issue and turn its dominance in Iraq into a hegemonic one. In this article, using the method of semiotic research and qualitative content analysis, the main sections of the four American Facebook pages (US Embassy in Baghdad, US Agency for International Development, Radio Sawa Media Campaign and Young Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program) created for the Iraqi audience were studied. It was further shown that the United States reproduced its colonialism in these pages by representing concepts such as: strengthening the public sphere, building democracy, strengthening the role of women, paying attention to minorities, and similar issues for the Iraqi audience and exercises cultural domination in the Iraqi society.