Discursive Representation of Victims of Mosque Attacks in Egypt and New Zealand

Abstract

This study examined the discursive representation of victims of two terrorist attacks that occurred in Egypt and New Zealand. The data include all news reports released by the online version of The Guardian and The Washington Post on the attacks. To this end, we employ Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal Theory, van Leeuwen's (2008) Socio-semantic Inventory and Entman’s (1993) Framing Theory. This article filled a gap in literature as it is the first – to the best of our knowledge - to address Muslim victims of terrorist attacks in two countries, one Muslim, and one Christian. Discussion reinforced the belief that there is disparity in journalistic treatment in favour of victims in a country culturally and linguistically belonging to the west (New Zealand). All the 10 frames devised for this study, side by side with the appraisal resources deployed, reveal a marked difference between the ‘high-profile’ representation of Christchurch social actors and the ‘low-profile’ depiction of the Sinai social actors. All the socio-semantic categorisations of victims also prove such discursive disproportion.