Media Activity in the Syrian Crisis: A Comparative Study of Media Positions of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the European Union

The present research aims to study the role of the media of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the European Union concerning developments in Syria. The results of the descriptive-analytic research show that the media in question deploy various framings in line with foreign policy goals of their respective countries. That is, there is a meaningful relation between the performance of the media and the direction of their foreign policies, in keeping with which specific semantic components of the crisis stage are portrayed and framed. Drawing on Goffman’s theory and the idea of framing, media try to formulate the realities of the crisis scene in certain semantic frames. The framing by Media in Iran has ideological, cultural, and security specifications, while those in the European Union pursue a political-security and economic frame in the Syrian crisis