The strategic use of news coverage of the 2009 ‘Green Movement’ in the US and Iranian newspapers as social drama

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on Victor Turner’s framework of social drama, this article employs Robert Entman’s approach to framing, developed in 1974 and revised in 1993, to analyse a series of demonstrations that erupted due to widespread fraud allegations after the elections of the Iranian President in 2009. Analysing the coverage of mass demonstrations, dubbed the ‘Green Movement’, this study investigates how Iranian and the US media have framed events/practices of public persuasion, expressed across political spectrums, given secular, religious, and nationalistic sentiments. Focusing on news framing during times of major social/political upheavals, this study spotlights the media’s use of religious rhetoric as a means of strategic communication. Findings demonstrate that news coverage symbolically reflected political tensions in the countries. The United States and Iranian media were on the opposite poles, with Iranian media vilifying and the US media glorifying the ‘Green Movement’ and opposition. The study juxtaposes the frames used by the media to cover the Arab Spring demonstrations that happened after the Iranian ‘Green Movement’ to those constructed by Iranian and the US media during the ‘Green Movement’ of 2009. Implications about the role of media and religion during popular mobilization movements are drawn.