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Success or Chaos? : Framing and Ideology in News Coverage of the Iraqi National Elections
Dianne M. Garyantes and Priscilla J. Murphy International Communication Gazette 2010 72: 151 DOI: 10.1177/1748048509353866 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gaz.sagepub.com/content/72/2/151

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The International Communication Gazette The Author(s), 2010. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav the International Communication Gazette, 1748-0485; Vol. 72(2): 151170; DOI: 10.1177/1748048509353866 http://gaz.sagepub.com

SUCCESS OR CHAOS?
Framing and Ideology in News Coverage of the Iraqi National Elections Dianne M. Garyantes and Priscilla J. Murphy
Abstract / This study used computer-assisted textual analysis of frames as ideological cues in news coverage of the Iraqi 2005 elections by CNN.com and Aljazeera.net. CNNs reporting revealed an ideology of a cultural conquest, framing the elections with sentimental patriotism toward westernstyle democracy. Al Jazeeras texts revealed distrust and suspicion toward the US, framing the elections with skepticism, a lack of legitimacy and chaos. Despite claims of journalistic objectivity, the analysis found a divisive ideology expressed by both news organizations. The study bears out the importance of global objectivity to provide critical, cross-cultural perspectives in an age of expanding media globalization. Keywords / Al Jazeera / centering resonance analysis / CNN / culture / elections / framing / ideology / objectivity

The growth of media globalization, international terrorism and political interdependence has intensied both the need and the opportunity for understanding among cultures. Yet this opportunity remains largely unmet, as exemplied by the rift between the Arab Muslim and western worlds following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and the subsequent US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This study explores the nature of this rift between the two cultures in terms of ideologically inuenced media coverage of Iraq that affects the way Arab and western cultures portray themselves and comment on the other. Globalization has increased the ability of news media with a worldwide reach to sway cultural understanding, given their long-recognized role as disseminators of information about other nations and cultures (Allen, 1955; Appadurai, 1996; Lippmann, 1922; Said, 1978). Particularly with respect to international news, events take place beyond the realm of personal experience if we learn about these events, it is almost surely the product of media coverage (Soroka, 2003: 43). Information transmitted about other cultures through international news coverage can also inuence public opinion and ultimately public policy (Robinson, 2001; Seaver, 1998; Soroka, 2003). Additionally, globalization, as a process of complex interconnections worldwide, has generated a new decentered network of economic and cultural power in which the patterns of distribution of power are unstable and shifting and, indeed . . . power is in some ways diffused rather than concentrated (Tomlinson,

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1997: 185). From an international communication perspective, the new media spaces that are emerging due to globalization and technology are not only changing patterns of international communication ows, but also . . . creating contemporary cultures pregnant with new meanings and experiences (Chalaby, 2007: 70). These experiences include a new cosmopolitanization where the national dimensions of media systems become less dominant, allowing for a remapping of communication ows and creating media systems that are more balanced, exible, open and diverse than they [have] ever been (Chalaby, 2007: 79). This optimistic view has been countered by other research ndings that journalists continue to defer to the agenda of elites (Bennett et al., 2004), that the internet is not necessarily a democratic medium, but is subject to market forces (Khiabany, 2003) and that, despite globalization, nationalistic attitudes continue to be uncovered in news coverage (Demertzis et al., 1999). Given our current context of expanding globalization and the large-scale consequences of the transmission of content to distant audiences, the ideological content of media coverage, expressed through the framing of news events, is worthy of close scrutiny. This article examines the presence of ideology in news frames by comparing the coverage of two international news organizations that claim to adhere to the journalistic norm of objectivity, CNN and Al Jazeera. In order to do so, it examines an event of great signicance to both Arab Muslim and western worlds: the Iraqi national elections in January 2005. The elections were widely covered by both the western and Arab media. They occurred against the backdrop of the September 11 attacks in the US by Arab Muslim extremists and the subsequent US military invasion of Iraq that led to the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. At the time of the elections, US military troops were occupying Iraq and a US-established government was operating in Baghdad. The elections thus offer an intense, brief period of time in which ideological views jockeyed with professional journalistic norms in two very different cultures.

Ideology vs the Objective Approach

The concept of ideology the theory of ideas addresses the way groups of people think, produce and process ideas and information (Althusser, 1971; Mannheim, 1936; van Dijk, 1998; Williams, 1977). Historically, the concept has signaled distrust of adversaries, particularly if the adversaries ideas appear founded on social factors rather than on individual understanding (Mannheim, 1936). More recently, ideology has been linked to social and class distinctions. Hence Williams (1977) saw ideology as a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group. Similarly, Shoemaker and Reese (1996: 2212) dened ideology as an overarching, societallevel phenomenon operating as a symbolic mechanism that serves as a cohesive and integrating force in society. They differentiated ideology from other forms of transmitting meaning about the world, such as culture, by arguing that that ideology is meaning tied to interests class and otherwise. Ideology also functions as a sense-making system. For example, Hall (1985: 99) dened ideologies as frameworks of thinking and calculation about the world

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the ideas which people use to gure out how the social world works, what their place is in it and what they ought to do. Van Dijk (1998) viewed ideologies as beliefs that apply to events, processes, groups, group relations and other situations and facts, arguing that ideologies control not only knowledge, but also opinions about events. In addition, van Dijk (1998: 65) viewed ideologies as differentiating between groups, helping to manage social representations of groups and group relations in ways that reect how groups and their members view a specic issue or domain of society. These views of ideology in terms of group boundaries and expectations suggest that important social cues regarding how people should behave and perceive the world are rooted in ideologies; they are expressed both overtly and in the exclusion of certain ideas from analysis or discussion. Many other scholars, however, have seen ideology in the news media as more complex and problematical (Althusser, 1971; Fowler, 1991; Gans, 1979; Gitlin, 1980; Gorham, 2006; Hackett, 1984; Hall, 1985; Herman and Chomsky, 1988; Shoemaker and Reese, 1996; Tuchman, 1978; van Dijk, 1998). In particular, media scholars have linked ideology to political and economic power. For example, Hall (1985: 101) wrote that ideology is embedded in the news media, although it often remains unacknowledged or even unnoticed by journalists, who can be inscribed by an ideology to which they do not consciously commit themselves, and which, instead, writes them. Althusser (1971) and Thompson (1990: 7) also linked ideology to power, arguing that ideology refers to the ways in which accepted meanings sustain relations of power that are systematically asymmetrical what Thompson called relations of domination, so that ideology becomes meaning in the service of power. Other media scholars (Hackett, 1984; Robinson, 2005) have related ideology in news reports specically to collaborative efforts by governments and journalists to confront a common enemy, as manifested by media coverage during the Cold War. In her discussion of ideology in news writing, Tuchman (1978) cited the argument of sociologist Dorothy Smith that news organizations reect ideology in what they do not say, or, as Smith called it, ideology as a means not to know. For example, Tuchman wrote, the way in which news stories are framed will exclude certain information and analyses, preventing them from being dened and disseminated as news. As a result, the public does not gain access to the absent information. In theory, Tuchmans argument should now be outdated as a full range of information should be available to people via the internet. In practice, even with access to online news, most Americans do not have increased knowledge of public issues (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2007). Thus, ideology has been found to be embedded in news coverage, with the coverage tending toward the dominant or hegemonic perspective. The media offer an important means through which ideology may be expressed, amplied and disseminated. Yet this role appears to collide with the central journalistic norm of an objective approach to the news. Like the concept of ideology, the norm of objective news reporting contains multiple dimensions; this study uses Ryans (2001: 3) straightforward characterization of journalistic objectivity as the effort to report news in a way that describes reality as accurately as possible. That effort at accuracy comprises such attributes as completeness, precision and clarity; receptivity to new evidence

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and alternatives; skepticism; initiative in nding ways to research difcult topics; and fairness, impartiality and disinterestedness (Ryan, 2001). Scholars and practitioners generally support journalistic objectivity as a norm of the profession. Hence Schudson (2001: 149) wrote that objectivity remains the chief occupational value of American journalism that still today distinguishes US journalism from the dominant model of continental European journalism. Gauthier (1993: 1) defended the concept of objectivity because the end of objectivity in journalism would spell the end of journalism itself. Journalists themselves still tend to hold onto the constructs of objectivity, whether they specically use the term or not. For example, the American Society of Newspaper Editors continues to name impartiality as part of its Canons of Journalism (ASNE, 2006: 1). More recently, news organizations have been setting guidelines for staff members who also write personal blogs in order to avoid confusion between editorializing and reporting the news. The concept of journalistic objectivity in journalism has become far more contested in recent years, particularly as the idea of scientic objectivity in general has declined (Gauthier, 1993; Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2006; Ryan, 2006; Streckfuss, 1990). Some scholars and practitioners have argued that this ideal is simply not possible perhaps not even desirable (Hackett and Zhao, 1996; Kinsley, 2006; Kitch, 1999; Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2006; Merrill, 1984). For example, Hackett and Zhao (1996: 49) outlined multiple reasons why journalists cannot adhere to strict objectivity, including powerful external and internal pressures in news production, framing in news stories, unintentional biases in the use of language (e.g. terrorist vs freedom ghter), and the myth that journalists can be detached observers when media are active participants in the social and political world. Other scholars have assailed the unintentional distortions caused by journalistic practices designed to encourage objectivity, such as the use of credible sources for information, which can favor an elite perspective, or an attempt to balance perspectives, which can articially enhance marginal viewpoints (Gans, 1979; Fox and Park, 2006; Jamieson and Waldman, 2003; McChesney and Nichols, 2002; Tuchman, 1978). Faced with such a problematical norm, many scholars have called for a reinterpretation of the concept of objectivity that reects the environment in which the reporting takes place. Hence Ryan (2001) examined alternatives to strict objectivity, including existential journalism, standpoint epistemology and public or civic journalism. El-Nawawy and Iskandar (2002) distinguished between current standards of journalistic objectivity and contextual objectivity, which presents various perspectives on an issue while maintaining the values of its audience. Going further, Ward (2005: 16) has advocated for a new ethic in journalism, one that encompasses global objectivity. He wrote: Objective reports, to be accurate and balanced, must contain all relevant international sources and cross-cultural skills perspectives. In addition, global journalism asks journalists to be more conscious of how they frame the global publics perspective on major stories and how they set the international news agenda (Ward, 2005: 17). The Iraq war offers a particularly rich laboratory in which to study the tension between ideology and claims of objectivity, including global and contextual objectivity. For example, Fox and Parks discussion of CNN reporting on the Iraq war argued that objectivity should be considered more broadly,

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along a continuum of general standards of objectivity, such as pursuit of the truth and a careful weighing of all evidence, including contradictory evidence. Along similar lines, a cross-cultural analysis of Iraq war coverage by Aday et al. (2005: 14), involving several US news networks and Al Jazeera, found that most stories were objective in that they were neutral in tone and balanced. However, they also found evidence of culture inuencing a networks objectivity. Put simply, when the networks erred, they usually did so in the direction one would predict based on their country of origin. American networks ran very few if any stories that were critical of the war. By contrast, whenever Al Jazeera ran an imbalanced story, it fell on the critical side of neutrality.

Media Framing, Public Opinion and Public Policy

One way objectivity and ideology are expressed in a news story is through framing (Gitlin, 1980; Hackett, 1984; Tuchman, 1978). Entmans (1993: 52) widely cited denition of framing leaves ample room for ideology by emphasizing the effort to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem denition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation. Scholars from the Glasgow University Media Group (1980: 402) likewise found connections between framing and ideology, arguing that a societys ideologies can be uncovered by examining the connecting link between the so-called facts of the news and the background assumptions which enable us, the audience, to understand those facts. From this standpoint, both framing and ideology operate by selecting certain ideas and excluding others in ways that provide meaning and context for mass audiences. Conscious of the directive effect of frames, Iyengar (1991) argued that frames can profoundly inuence how decisions are made. Similarly, Iyengar and Simons (1993) analysis of newscasts about the Gulf crisis in 1990 and 1991 concluded that news media framing helped to legitimize the administrations perspective on the crisis. This nexus of media, public opinion and public policy has been examined by communication scholars and political scientists for decades (Gilboa, 2005; Holsti, 1992; Norris et al., 2003; Pan and Kosicki, 1993; Soroka, 2003). Recently, Entman (2003: 415) conceptualized framing in the news media through a cascading activation model, in which interpretive frames promulgated by top-level governmental ofcials spread to networks of non-administration elites, then to news organizations and their texts, and then to the public, which feeds interpretations of the frames back to the news media and other elites. As these studies and conceptual models show, the news media, media framing and public opinion have important implications for policy, journalists, policy-makers, audiences and other stakeholders affected by the interpretation of events and issues. Journalists use a variety of framing mechanisms in the news they cover, including their words and images to describe an event or issue, which can attach widely different meanings to the topic. By the same token, messages also appear in the type of stories and story emphasis, such the emphasis on military affairs in the coverage of the rst Gulf war. Following this line of inquiry, this study compared the implied

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ideologies of two worldwide media networks CNN and Al Jazeera through a semantic network analysis of their coverage of the Iraq elections in January 2005.

CNN and Al Jazeera

Given their structural similarities, CNN and Al Jazeera are promising subjects for comparing the presence of ideology in news coverage. Both news organizations have a global reach. Both are based in regions closely involved with the elections in Iraq. Both claim to adhere to standards of objectivity. In both organizations, news is gathered and written on a continuous, real-time basis. Their news broadcasts are written under tight deadlines and across media platforms, including television and the web, on which both post stories in English. CNN is a commercial US-based news organization that employs more than 4000 news professionals worldwide (CNN.com, 2007a). CNNs website claimed an average of more than 22 million users per month in 2005, the last year for which such data are available (CNN.com, 2007b). Similarly, Qatar-based Al Jazeera supports bureaus worldwide (Aljazeera.net, 2007a). A readers choice survey by Brandchannel.com placed Al Jazeera among the top ve 2004 global brands selected by readers (Brandchannel.com, 2004). Both CNN and Al Jazeera have argued that their news coverage is neutral, objective and credible. A Code of Ethics posted on Al Jazeeras website states that it will adhere to the journalistic values of honesty, courage, fairness, balance, independence, credibility and diversity, giving no priority to commercial or political considerations over professional ones (Aljazeera.net, 2007b). The code also states that Al Jazeera will present diverse points of view and opinions without bias or partiality (Aljazeera.net, 2007b). For its part, CNN also has established itself as an objective, credible news source. CNNs parent company, Time Warner, makes a claim of CNNs credibility on its website. Under the heading Values, the site states: We rigorously uphold editorial independence and artistic expression, earning the trust of our readers, viewers, listeners, members and subscribers (Time Warner, 2007). Despite these claims of objectivity or adherence to the constructs of objectivity, the prior studies already cited have made it clear that, in practice, news coverage is often swayed by ideology. The ideologies expressed in news frames are especially important since previous research has established that news coverage inuences both audience opinions and political or policy decisions. This nexus between ideology, professional norms, framing and policy was the focus of the rst research question in this study. In order to establish the basic terms of the framing, the rst research question asked: What types of frames were embedded in each organizations coverage of the Iraqi national elections? Building on the frames found, the second research question sought to establish a link between these news frames and ideology in the Al Jazeera and CNN articles, asking: Did the frames reect an ideology? If so, how? Finally, the time period of the study was chosen for its coverage of events that were both seminal and turbulent: an experiment in western-style democracy set amid the shifting political landscape of military conict. In response to the journalistic challenges posed by the unstable political and military situation, the third

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research question looked for the emergence of a consistent point of view, or a sign of a hardening ideological position, by examining the evolution of news frames in the election coverage during the course of the study. Specically, the third research question asked: How did the frames play out over time? The following section discusses the method used to answer these three questions.

Method
As a rst step, CNNs and Al Jazeeras news text was retrieved through the Englishlanguage versions of both organizations websites: CNN.com and Aljazeera.net. Articles from both news organizations were collected from 30 January 2005, the day of the national elections in Iraq, until 14 February 2005, the day after the nal election results were announced. Keywords used in the search for the articles were: Iraq, election, Iraq vote and Iraq January elections. Only articles substantially related to the election were included in the analysis; topics included voting, balloting, vote counting, announcement of the results, discussion of the political ramications of the elections, reaction in Iraq and abroad and violence directly related to the elections and candidates. A total of 30 articles were collected from CNN.com and 33 articles were collected from Aljazeera.net. To compare overall coverage for the election period, we rst aggregated all the stories into two large les: one containing all Al Jazeera coverage and one containing all CNN coverage. We then put each news organizations aggregated stories through semantic network analysis according to the principles of centering resonance analysis as described below. In examining media bias, it is particularly important for the investigators to avoid imposing their own interpretational biases. We therefore conducted our analysis using a computer-assisted form of semantic analysis whereby the most important words in the news coverage were organized into conceptual networks; in turn, these networks were organized into clusters that suggested particular frames shared by individual news stories. This technique not only controlled against investigator bias in selecting frames; it also allowed us to establish quantitatively the extent to which the two news organizations shared frames and their corollary worldviews. Each organizations news coverage was analyzed using centering resonance analysis (CRA), a computer-assisted, network-based text analysis approach (Corman et al., 2002). CRA is built on centering theory, which assumes that texts achieve coherence through conversation centers that consist of nouns or noun phrases. Links among these centers form a network of semantic meaning that offers a fundamental representation of the underlying text. Within this network, some words have more inuence than others, as measured by their betweenness centrality in the network that is, the degree to which they connect words and concepts that otherwise would not be connected (Dooley and Corman, 2004). CRA thereby not only represents an underlying text; it also shows which words and concepts are most inuential in structuring its meaning. As such, CRA is an apt methodological platform for the theoretical concept of a frame, which similarly draws together some ideas and excludes others in order to structure the meaning of a news story.

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CRA analysis yields several useful products. One product of CRA analysis is a set of inuence scores for the words with the highest betweenness centrality in a text. These scores can be used for further analysis such as hierarchical clustering in order to group similar texts. Another is a conceptual map of inuential words that shows spatially how the words in the network are co-located and related (Dooley and Corman, 2004). In addition, CRA also incorporates procedures for comparing network matrices, so that it is possible to see the extent to which two documents are similar, including shared and unique noun phrases. This is where the concept of resonance comes in. As described by Corman et al. (2002: 178), The more two texts frequently use the same words in inuential positions, the more word resonance they have. The more word resonance they have, the more the communicators used the same words, and the more those words were prominent in structuring the texts coherence. In other words, the higher the resonance, the more the texts show similar thought patterns. This ability to quantitatively compare concepts, expressed as word networks, was particularly important in the Al Jazeera/CNN analysis, enabling us to compare concept clusters involving frames and their underlying ideologies.

Findings
The analysis showed substantial differences in emphases, source choices and selection of facts between the Iraq election coverage by Al Jazeera and CNN. The differences revealed that the two organizations coverage of the elections was at cross-purposes even when the ostensible subject matter voting, violence and fairness was the same. As shown in Figure 1, the semantic networks of each overlapped mainly in the most basic and generic facts: the election results, security forces, the various factions (Sunni Arabs, Kurdish Party), the resulting apparatus of a new government (e.g. a National Assembly). However, moving beyond the basic facts of the election events, aspects of the stories that involved values word choice, sources, focal events differed strikingly, as shown in each news organizations unique word centers. For example, Al Jazeera featured conicting regional factions like the AMS (pro-Sunni Alliance of Muslim Scholars), the Turkmen in the Kurdish north, the nervous Turkish state across the border, the Shia alliance. In contrast, CNN concentrated on two topics central to American audiences: rst, the US troops (troops, soldiers and US military forces imposing security in the face of insurgency); and second, the success of westernstyle democratic processes (the percent of the population voting, the transitional national government, the interim prime minister). These contrasting word centers suggest that the two news organizations were looking at precisely the same factual circumstances, but interpreting them through the lens of separate, often conicting, ideologies. Overall, three frames guided Al Jazeeras coverage of the elections: chaos, lack of legitimacy and regional anxieties about burgeoning Kurdish power in northern Iraq. In contrast, the dominant CNN frame was driven by sentimental patriotism for the US-style democratic election process, with two additional themes: the success of

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FIGURE 1 Comparison of Aggregated Al Jazeera and CNN Coverage

Words shared by Al Jazeera and CNN

Unique words for Al Jazeera

Unique words for CNN

Notes: Unlinked words listed at the bottom of each group have high betweenness centrality; they should not be interpreted as less important than the connected words above them. Rather, they are not connected to words with high enough centrality to appear in the chart. Certain words, such as Iraqi, appear as unique words in each group because their relationship with other words, shown by their links, is unique to that group.

the elections and speculation, with a mix of hope and anxiety, regarding the future of Iraq. Further analysis produced a subtler picture of the values and assumptions impelling these broad ideological contrasts. To look more closely at evolving coverage, we applied the network analysis techniques to each of the 63 individual news story les. This process resulted in a square word-by-word similarities matrix for the most central words in each news story. We then cluster-analyzed all 63 of these news story matrices in one analysis. This procedure yielded a six-cluster solution in which each cluster expounded a specic frame for the elections, and stories by the two news organizations occupied discrete clusters with almost no overlap. Thus, the frames through which the elections were seen depicted divided camps with almost no shared vision from the start. The six clusters are summarized in Table 1.

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TABLE 1 Summary of Clusters Cluster Cluster 1: Violence at elections Cluster 2: Voters score a victory for democracy Cluster 3: Public commentary on the elections Cluster 4: Problems with the elections Cluster 5: Sunnis should unite to oppose illegitimate elections Cluster 6: Negative aftermath of the elections No. of Al Jazeera stories 3 0 3 25 2 0 No. of CNN stories 1 5 13 1 0 7

Cluster 1: Violence at Elections

As Table 1 indicates, Election Day itself (30 January 2005) was covered partly by a cluster of four stories, three of them from Al Jazeera and all focusing on the violence that accompanied the polling. The Al Jazeera stories displayed vivid writing that emphasized the number of Iraqi voters not soldiers killed, and described salvos by mortars, bombs and American soldiers. Indeed, one story concluded that the attacks were a plague that marred the elections a premonition of the discontent about legitimacy that emerged in subsequent coverage. Overall, Al Jazeeras Election Day cluster emphasized chaos surrounding the elections, with articles about violence and security issues at the polls, confusion over voter turnout numbers, charges of fraud and delays in the announcement of election results due to vote recounts. For example, in one story from 30 January 2005 (Attacks Plague Iraqi Election Day), the most inuential words linked station, attack, bomber, city, polling and Baghdad. Other important words included people, United States, military, mortar and civilian, implying a connection between civilian suffering and US military presence. In contrast, the lone CNN story in this cluster about Election Day violence merely listed, without comment or quotes, all the attacks that occurred during the polling period.

Cluster 2: Voters Score a Victory for Democracy

In fact, most of the CNN Election Day coverage occupied a separate cluster shared by no Al Jazeera stories. The theme of all ve CNN stories in this cluster was the victory of democracy; and by implication, victory for the West and western values. In this cluster, voting became a symbol of defeating terrorism. Each story tended to repeat a formulaic compilation of inspirational quotations and praise for resolute Iraqi voters with such quotes as, This is the happiest day of my life, This is the greatest day in the history of this country, We are defeating the terrorists as we

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are coming here (Iraqs Mark of Freedom: Ink Stains, 30 January 2005). One CNN story started out: Iraq nds itself rapt in the euphoria of democracy (Our Pride, by First Iraqis to Vote, 31 January 2005). Other CNN.com articles called the elections a milestone and historic (Milestone Elections Begin in Iraq, 30 January 2005). CNNs coverage also began looking ahead and speculating about the future after the elections in a way that emphasized a US-style horse race: wondering who would win and anticipating the writing of the constitution. Peripheral, but still present, was a disturbing note of concern about violence, but this was far less prevalent than the Al Jazeera-dominated clusters focus on Election Day violence. The few articles that noted Election Day violence referred to it as sporadic (Sporadic Violence Doesnt Deter Iraqi Voters, 31 January 2005). Of more interest were the ink-stained ngers of Iraqis who had voted (as in the story cited earlier, Iraqs Mark of Freedom: Ink Stains, 30 January 2005). The spirit of this cluster was best captured by a CRA-generated network map representing CNNs transcript of President Bushs speech late on Iraqs Election Day (Figure 2). The network representation shows the terms most responsible for creating coherence in the speech by linking other terms together. The most inuential (central) words have the darkest boxes; boxes around words with slightly lesser inuence are paler; and words with still less inuence are unboxed. Lines indicate associations between words; the heavier the line, the stronger the link. In President Bushs speech, the most inuential words were Iraqi, people, today, poll, peace, election and Iraq, indicating the presidents emphasis on the people and voters in Iraq. Other important words included democracy, American, freedom, attack, terror and terrorist. The speech thereby emphasized the freedom and peace the elections could bring to Iraq, contrasting this vision with the anti-democratic
FIGURE 2 Network Map of Speech by President George W. Bush, 30 January 2005

Source: Transcript of Bush Address CNN.com, 30 January 2005).

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force of terrorism and in doing so, taking a different position from the emphasis on violence and chaos in the Al Jazeera articles. Framing the success of the elections, CNN.com posted numerous articles touting the high voter turnout, the start of the transition process for a new Iraqi government and even the boost to the Bush administration provided by the successful elections. Two of CNNs stories called the voter turnout higher than expected (Iraqis Vote Amid Violence; Bush Calls Election a Resounding Success, 30 January 2005; Counting Begins after Historic Iraq Vote; Bush, Other World Leaders Hail Election, 31 January 2005).

Cluster 3: Public Commentary on the Elections

Election Day coverage also included a third cluster whose main theme was public commentary about the success of the elections from outside Iraq. Of the 16 stories here, all but three came from CNN, and the sources chosen for comment lined up in opposite ideological corners to those in the few Al Jazeera stories. The CNN stories focused on world leaders like Bush and Tony Blair; leaders of countries that support the US, such as Jordan; and some CNN correspondents and members of the US public. Jubilant Iraqi expatriates were featured in one CNN story celebrating the democratic process (Our Pride, by First Iraqis to Vote; Ofcial Tells of Jubilant Mood among Iraqi Ex-pats, 31 January 2005). CNN leavened this pro-western slant with a single story that quoted election coverage by various Arab media but this was merely a roundup of secondary sources rather than an effort to seek out extensive Arab sources (Arab Reaction to Iraq Elections, 30 January 2005). In contrast, the three Al Jazeera stories in this public commentary cluster delivered scorching opinions from anti-western sources. In one story, Palestinians argued that Iraqis should be able to develop their own future without being clients of the US (Palestinians Ambivalent over Iraq Poll, 1 February 2005). In another, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev denounced the elections (Gorbachev Calls Iraq Elections Fake, 1 February 2005). In the third story, Saddam Husseins former UN ambassador dismissed the elections merely as part of the US political strategy (Iraq Elections, Democratic Practice But . . ., 2 February 2005). The frame of illegitimacy of the elections came through strongly in this choice of sources.

Cluster 4: Problems with the Elections

In fact, the next two clusters of stories with almost no CNN members presented an increasingly somber view of the elections. The largest cluster of 26 stories was unied by a focus on problems with the elections. Not surprisingly, all but one of these stories came from Al Jazeera and this group mainly showed the owering of discontents about the election already noted, in terms of three major frames in Al Jazeeras coverage of the elections: rst, chaos surrounding the elections; second, the elections lack of legitimacy; and third, the potential regional problem of Iraqi Kurdish power, fostered by fraudulent election practices. Al Jazeeras coverage set these problems in the context of low voter turnout, especially among Sunni voters;

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a lack of real choice among candidates; and the unwanted inuence of the US on the elections. Stories in this cluster gave particular attention to Al Jazeeras strong regional concerns. In contrast to CNN, which seldom focused on Kurdish issues, multiple Al Jazeera stories centered on the potential problem of Kurdish power and possible autonomy in northern Iraq. Al Jazeeras framing of the issue emphasized alleged rigging of Kurdish voting in northern Iraq, problems stemming from growing Kurdish power and the struggle for control among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen over the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk. A number of stories implied that US behavior exacerbated the problems. For example, Al Jazeera posted a story headlined, Turkey Slams US (31 January 2005), in which Turkish Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan criticized the US for failing to intervene in Kurdish attempts to control Kirkuk. The critical subject matter, polemical tone and activist bent of this large cluster of 26 Al Jazeera stories deeply divided it from the CNN election coverage. The latter was mainly self-congratulatory in tone; it implied the Bush administrations frame of defeat of terrorism through democracy and thus the defeat of a backward politics by more evolved western values. However, the Al Jazeera coverage took a more activist stance, typically by focusing on groups and individuals who questioned the fairness and lawfulness of the elections and using quotations with loaded, polemical language that implicitly suggested ways people should react to and deal with the US occupation and illegitimacy of the elections. Along these lines, one Al Jazeera story quoted Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as saying the West was responsible for the deaths of the Iraqi civilians killed on Election Day (Al-Sadr Demands Date for US Pullout, 4 February 2005), while another headline on Election Day read, Confusion Surrounds Iraq Poll Turnout (30 January 2005).

Cluster 5: Sunnis Should Unite to Oppose Illegitimate Elections

The nal cluster in which Al Jazeera stories appeared consisted of only two stories toward the end of the coverage period (13 February 2005), and showed the most activist coverage of all. Both stories focused on the AMS, or Association of Muslim Scholars, a religious umbrella group representing the Sunnis. In one story, the AMS called for all Sunnis to unite and extend a hand to all Iraqis (AMS Calls for United Sunni Front, 13 February 2005); in the other, the AMS declared it would not participate in writing the new constitution because the US occupation army was still in Iraq (AMS Rejects Writing Constitution, 13 February 2005). Again, the emphasis was on specic actions that sources were recommending to counter US inuence.

Cluster 6: Negative Aftermath of the Elections

In fact, the nal cluster, entirely comprised of 10 CNN stories, expressed the underlying doubt that has since come to typify US coverage of the Iraq war. Stories in this cluster spanned the entire two-week period and were dominated by two ideas: growing violence and Iraqi allegations of unfairness. Nonetheless, this CNN cluster

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typically expressed a mix of hope and anxiety regarding the future of Iraq. The articles included reports of ongoing sectarian violence, warnings from US ofcials about the need to maintain troops in Iraq and the challenges of forming a new Iraqi government. Hope appeared in articles about the opportunities of the new government, including its ability to allow the minority voices of the Sunnis and Kurds to be heard. However, what chiey distinguished this cluster from the other, more positive CNN representations of the elections is the space given to cautionary comments and complaints, not just hyperbole about the voting. Typical of this clusters tone is a comment by then-deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz: As impressive as that election was, Iraq still faces a difcult road ahead. . . . This is not a time to sit on our hands and congratulate ourselves (Pentagon Ofcial Sees Difcult Road in Iraq, 3 February 2005).

Discussion
The rst research question asked: What types of frames were embedded in each organizations coverage of the Iraqi national elections? Overall, the analysis showed that the dominant frames expressed in CNNs and Al Jazeeras coverage of the elections were at cross-purposes even when the ostensible subject matter voting, violence, fairness was the same. The dominant CNN frame expressed sentimental patriotism for the US-style democratic election process. Al Jazeeras dominant frames for the elections indicated chaos, a lack of legitimacy and the regional problem of burgeoning Kurdish power in northern Iraq. Cluster analysis, coupled with semantic network analysis, highlighted the dominant frames and showed very little overlap between the two news organizations. Al Jazeeras coverage clustered in three ways. First, the elections were chaotic and violent, and that violence was aimed primarily at Iraqi civilians and associated with the US military. Second, the elections posed problems of parity and legitimacy: nonSunnis were favored and the process mainly reected the political aims of the American occupier. Third, because the elections were imposed by a foreign occupier and lacked legitimacy, they were open to criticism and opposition. Looking at the identical circumstances, CNN coverage grouped into three clusters of stories that differed strikingly from the Al Jazeera version. A rst cluster of news stories registered a triumph of western-style democracy over terrorism. A second cluster described world approval: most world leaders and citizens outside Iraq applauded the election process and results. Doubts and worries that subsequently have come to dominate news coverage were relegated to a third cluster in which rising violence and insurgency, and the desire to leave Iraq, dominated. The second research question asked: Did the frames reect an ideology? If so, how? Despite the news organizations claims of journalistic objectivity, their frames reected different underlying ideologies and provided different social cues for the news organizations audiences. On the one hand, the online statements by the news organizations cited earlier in this article suggest that there was an attempt to report on the election in a way that describes reality as accurately as possible (Ryan, 2001: 3), and to achieve objectivity through accuracy, skepticism, initiative, fairness and

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impartiality. Nonetheless, the presence of underlying ideologies bears out the point made by multiple media scholars that ideology is unconsciously embedded in the news texts (Gitlin, 1980; Hall, 1985; McQuail, 1992; Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). CNN.coms news texts were imbued with a hegemonic ideology that implied cultural conquering by the US of an Arab nation, while Aljazeera.nets news texts conveyed an underlying ideology of distrust and suspicion of the West. To some extent, the differing content of the news coverage shows the apparatus of ideology as sense-making noted by other media scholars. For example, CNNs patriotic ideology would help a western audience to make sense of events in a country whose sensibility could seem as far away as its geography. According to the CNN framing, the elections were successful, allowed the people and minority voices to be heard and were modeled after a process that works precisely the social cues that other members of the western world would expect and need in order to make sense of the elections, and to champion the military initiative. According to CNN, the elections were legitimized by high voter turnout, valid results and support from leaders worldwide. For its part, Al Jazeeras media frames would provide different social cues for its primary readers, other members of the Arab community worldwide: to be skeptical of the voting and to see the elections as illegitimate, with negative impacts for Iraq and the region. On balance, this studys ndings support the contention that the concept of objectivity should not be abandoned, but it should be revised to reect the undeniable presence of ideology. Coverage of the Iraqi elections is most aptly described in terms of contextual objectivity proposed by el-Nawawy and Iskandar (2002), in which journalists present various perspectives on an issue while maintaining the values of their primary audience. In this sense, the Iraqi election coverage bears out the argument by Aday et al. (2005) that when the news networks err, they usually do so in the direction one would predict based on their country of origin. The authors argued that the news organizations in the case of the elections should have strived for global objectivity, that is, containing all relevant international sources and cross-cultural skills perspectives (Ward, 2005). Such global objectivity is particularly important in a transnational media arena in which news organizations are headquartered in a particular country with a particular ideology, but diffuse their products to multiple other societies. In this way, transnational media such as CNN.com and Aljazeera.net could more successfully achieve the laudable goal of cosmopolitanization envisioned by Chalaby. No matter what the country of origin, this analysis conrmed that an elite point of view serves as ideological anchor. It supports Shoemaker and Reeses (1996) view that ideology is related to powerful interests in society, in that the ideologies expressed by both CNN and Al Jazeera reected elite positions within their respective societies. Each news organization tended to reinforce the values and beliefs of their respective societies, to encourage bonding against a common enemy (Hackett, 1984; Robinson, 2005), and to dene the others constituency inimically. The study also offers more evidence that ideology is related to asymmetrical power relations. In this case, the dominant power of the US was reinforced by the cultural conquering ideology embedded in the CNN.com news texts and countered with the subaltern

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distrust and suspicion of the West ideology embedded in Aljazeera.nets news texts. As Mannheim long ago (1936) observed, ideology has a great deal to do with distrust of adversaries on both sides. Our ndings also bore out the observation that ideology functions to dene distinct groups and keep them apart (van Dijk, 1998), and thereby addressed our third research question: How did the frames play out over time? While neither media organizations frames shifted radically during the two-week time period, perspectives appeared to harden as time went by. In the case of Al Jazeera, story after story accumulated evidence of awed elections. For its part, CNNs hyperbolic rhetoric about heroic Iraqi voters steeply declined after Election Day, while the chastened tone that acknowledged remaining difculties persisted. In fact, the frames that appeared in this two-week microcosm of election coverage still characterize both Iraq coverage and policy more than three years later, reecting the depth of the ideological divide. On the CNN side, the 2005 depiction of Iraq elections expressed condence in the eventual success of western-style democracy as its major frame. However, the frame of success has since been increasingly challenged by a view of Iraqs democracy as failed: a frame of doubt that formed only one cluster in the 2005 CNN election coverage. On the Al Jazeera side, frames invoking the illegitimacy of elections and violence of the US occupier in 2005 became the precursors for full-blown civil war and insurgency over the course of time again, not so much a shift in content as in balance. The continuity of frames suggests how difcult it is to break framing patterns once they are formed; future actions are incipient in yesterdays frames. As news media coverage reects mass audience and elite values, the distinctly divergent frames for the Iraqi elections suggest similar ideological rifts between the Arab and western worlds. The incompatibility between the CNN and Al Jazeera frames is reminiscent of Dorothy Smiths concept of ideology used as a means not to know (cited in Tuchman, 1978). By framing the elections as sentimental patriotism for US-style democracy, the American public and elites were unprepared for the civil war that came on the heels of the elections. Although in hindsight, Al Jazeeras framing of the elections as chaotic, illegitimate and a potential regional problem seems closer to the reality in Iraq, that framing cast the democratic elections in Iraq in a negative light from the start. It thereby became a means for the Iraqi people and the rest of the Arab world not to know whether the democratic effort could be made to work. While the two-week time frame was selected for its signicance as a critical event, ongoing analysis of news coverage after the 2005 elections could reveal points at which coverage changed and index these points to policy decisions or political events. Given the regional basis for the ideology, the language of the news stories may also be a limitation, since the English-based texts could have been posted by the news organizations with an English-speaking audience in mind. Future research could compare English and Arabic versions of coverage to see if ideology had been adjusted for the audience. In addition, journalists reliance on ofcial sources, which has been associated with embedded ideology in news, presented particular problems with coverage of the Iraqi elections. In the case of Al Jazeera, the organization had

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to rely on independent freelance journalists, having been asked to leave the country in fall 2004. Both news organizations coverage was handicapped by ongoing street violence, kidnappings of journalists and reporters restricted mobility in Iraq. Thus future research could consider the effect on coverage of source inaccessibility. Lastly, future research could explore the specic effects of the election coverage on public opinion and public policy in Iraq and the Arab world in general. The rapid pace of globalization makes it increasingly important to uncover media frames imbued with divisive ideology, to determine their origins and potential remedies and to advocate for a more cosmopolitan perspective. Sharper awareness of ideological inuences might achieve two aims. First, it might enable journalists to revise restrictive norms of objectivity and achieve a new global objectivity that ts more easily into a multicultural, globalized world. Journalists using such a revised professional norm might be encouraged to include multiple cross-cultural perspectives in their news coverage, rather than focusing only on a dominant one. Second, even though news media framing exposes the rifts between elite adversaries, frames also point toward solutions. This analysis showed the extent to which frames and their underlying ideologies were not shared between media, reecting the disputants worldviews. However, ongoing analysis of such controversies might expose frames with more potential for common ground. In this way, journalistic expressions of ideology might offer genuine advantages to policy-makers rather than appearing solely as a violation of professional norms.

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Dianne M. Garyantes is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. Prior to earning her doctorate at Temple University, she spent 14 years working as a print journalist and as a writer and producer for national broadcast television. Address Department of Communication and Journalism, Rider University, 2083 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, USA. [email: dgaryantes@rider.edu] Priscilla J. Murphy is a Professor of Communication at Temple University. She publishes in the areas of semantic and social network analysis, strategic media relations and reputation. Her research involves complex systems as models for crisis communication and reputation management, most recently concerning issues management strategies of the tobacco industry, CEO leadership during crises and executive reputations in the media. Address Department of Strategic and Organizational Communication, 216 Weiss Hall, Temple University, 1701 N. Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19122 6085, USA. [email: murphyp@temple.edu]

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