A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Iraqi 2021 Parliamentary Election on the BBC Internet Platform

Abstract

One of the most significant shifts in Iraq's political regime was the parliamentary elections in 2021 with the election of a new prime minister. Massive demonstrations over government corruption and political parties' failure to enact measures to rein such corruption through legislative elections. It was possible that a new poll law might help the independent candidates in their efforts to secure a seat in the parliament. To explore this issue, the current study has employed two models: visual social semiotics of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) and Bednarek (2006) to analyze the visuals of Election Day and the evaluations of news values. The visuals convey representational, interpersonal, and compositional meanings, while the verbal texts are analyzed according to their evaluation characteristics. To demonstrate the different facets of election day that can be captured in the images chosen for the study on the BBC, the vocal text strives to explain how it relates to the visual style. Attempts have also been made to determine how the election day would be portrayed in the writer's news report for BBC. The results have demonstrated that the most significant aspects of election day could be reflected in the visual and spoken modes of BBC's less upbeat portrayal of Iraqi conditions which has been clear from this report.