What is it about?
We explore the impact of Arab women's representation in Western press during the Arab Spring on their conceptualization by German university students. In particular, we investigate the relationship between lexical items used by the students to express their attitudes toward Arab women and those featuring in news headlines about them published in British, American, and German news media.
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Why is it important?
Our results show that the portrayal of Arab women in news headlines has a clear impact on German students’ opinions of them. They also show that our participants tend to be aware of this effect, which could be partly due to their familiarity with discourse analysis as students of linguistics. These findings are important because they suggest that although news continues to shape public opinions, it is possible to limit its influence by improving the audiences' critical reading and thinking skills.
Perspectives
I hope this article will contribute to improving higher education by incorporating media instruction systematically in general university courses.
Zahra Mustafa-Awad
University of Jordan
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This page is a summary of: Arab women in news headlines during the Arab Spring: Image and perception in Germany, Discourse & Communication, July 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1750481317714114.
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