Historical Background of the Syrian War and Refugee Crisis
Before this study introduces the key concepts from the literature on newspaper framing and content analysis, it is important to briefly introduce the historical background of the Syrian refugee crisis on which this study will focus. First, it is necessary to ask: what elements gave rise to the Syrian conflict and subsequent outpouring of refugees from Syria? Next, how has the refugee crisis evolved since the Syrian conflict began, and what has been the general global reaction to this crisis? Finally, what are the political relations between the Syria, the U.S., and China, and how have the U.S. and China in particular responded to the Syrian war and resulting refugee crisis?
Syria is a land of diversity, and has been a land of prosperity as well. According to a 2012 estimate, the population of Syria is around 21,118,000 (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013). Ethnic division includes 90.3 percent Arabs and 9.3 percent Kurds, Armenians and other small groups.
74 percent of the total population is Sunni, and 13 percent are Shia, while the remaining 13 percent of the population are Christians, Druze, Jews, and others (World Population Review 2013). Since 1970, the Shia minority has ruled over the majority by means of suppression; this is considered to be the cause of hatred and insecurity among the majority Sunni population.
Corruption, unemployment, a greater ratio of youth in the country’s population, and poor
economic policies of the Assad regime are other factors which contributed to the suffering of the Syrian people, mobilizing them to stand up for their rights in 2011.
In fact, Syrians have lived under continuous authoritarianism since 1963, when the Ba’ath Party established its rule in the country as the result of a successful coup, promptly
23 imposing emergency and martial law in the country, as well as confiscating people’s basic
personal, political, and social rights. Current president Bashar al Assad has also put curbs on media and individual freedom (Dunne, 2013), creating a sense of frustration among Syrians about the political future of the country.
The Syrian uprising occurred as part of the Arab spring, which was triggered by the self-immolation of Mohammad Bouzaizi of Tunisia on September 18, 2010, protesting against the local authorities (Basselgia, 2012). After sweeping across various Arab countries, the wave of protest entered into Syria and turned into a nationwide uprising on March 15, 2011 aiming for the immediate exit of Bashar al Assad and his Ba’athist rule: the same ruling party that has controlled the country since 1963 (Bhardwaj, 2012).
Syria contains great significance due to its geostrategic position in the Middle East. It is situated between both friends and enemies; Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas are its regional allies, while Israel and other Sunni regimes in the region are considered as its rivals. Russia and China are the state’s strategic allies, as Syria has lent its strategically important warm-water seaport of Tartus to Russia, and is buying billions of dollars-worth of weapons from China. Furthermore, Syria’s pro Sino-Russian and anti-Israel policy also affects United States interests in the region. Thus, Syria is a hub of conflicting interests for the world powers.
The outcome of the Syrian conflict and the international response to the Syrian refugee crisis will define the future power politics of the region. The events of the civil war and refugee crisis are continuously being monitored and covered by international newspapers, and also thereby framed by news media, in particular the media of those countries who have stakes in the region. Media scholars of the agenda-setting and news framing schools believe media owners and organizers have different agendas when covering the same event, and thus present the issue
24 differently for pursuit of their own national objectives. Therefore this study will look into how the two selected newspapers, The New York Times and People’s Daily, which are both known but having divergent policies, contexts and regional backgrounds, frame the problem in question.
China and the U.S. differ greatly in terms of their strategic interests in Syria and the Middle Eastern region at large. Cordesman (1996) has listed several of the major strategic interests of the United States in Middle East, including oil, security of regional allies and
countering regional and ideological foes, the Iranian nuclear program, counter terrorism, support for military presence in the region, defense bases and installations, Russian and Chinese
influence in the region, arms control, capitalist ideologies, democracy, humanitarian issues, and many others (Cordesman: p.13). In the period of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East was built around a "holy trinity" of American interests: Israel, oil and anti-communism;
however the collapse of Soviet Union left a vacuum in American policy which was filled by Islamic terrorism or fundamentalism. Soon after the attacks of 9/11, the anti-communism frame was replaced by anti-Islam framing in U.S. newspapers (Ibrahim, as cited in Ibrahim, 2010).
By contrast, Chinese-Middle Eastern relations are far simpler and perhaps more “shallow”
(Alterman, 2008). Once, China sought to be the reliable friend of liberation movements around the world and the foe of most established governments. Today, however, China’s thirst for energy guides much of its policy in the Middle East, with other commercial, military, and diplomatic interests taking a secondary role. Since Middle Eastern governments control much of what China seeks in the Middle East, China has sought to broaden its relationships with the governments of the region.
Meanwhile, China views the United States as a hegemonic power that aggressively pursues its own interests at the expense of others. Analysts have determined that China sees
25 recent U.S. efforts to reform the Middle East and replace unsavory rulers as undermining
stability rather than supporting it (Zhu, 2010). Therefore, China tends to view the U.S. as acting against the interests of not only China, but of the international community at large (Chipman, 2007; Dumbaugh, 2008). The U.S., meanwhile, holds equally unfavorable views of Chinese involvement in the Middle East, especially considering trading of weapons and arms.
The observation that the U.S. is highly active in the Middle East, while China is more cautious, also corresponds to the levels of involvement that the U.S. and China have committed to the Syrian refugee crisis. According to UN funding data and various media reports, China, the world’s second largest economy, has supported UN efforts to alleviate the refugee crisis with a modest $23 million, but has not given any money to Syrian relief efforts since 2014
(Ignatieff, 2016). Given these meager contributions by a fellow major global player in the Syrian conflict, many opinion pieces in the U.S. have expressed that the United States ought to exert more pressure on China, as well as Russia, to contribute more significantly to UN efforts to address the Syrian refugee calamity (Bacchi, 2015). China has not yet hosted any Syrian refugees, and apparently has no plan to (Pan, 2016).
Comparatively, the United States has expressed more explicit efforts to assist and accept Syrian refugees than China, though many critics argue that U.S. efforts are nowhere near enough.
As of February 2016, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced nearly $601 million in new humanitarian funding for Syria and neighboring countries. Meanwhile, U.S. relief agencies continue to reach out to besieged areas in Syria with emergency food and other assistance, while health teams vaccinated 3 million children across Syria against polio in 2015 (USAID). However, the U.S. has not welcomed a large number of Syrian refugees either: only 2,290 as of 2015, or 0.0005 percent of the total number (Bremmer, 2015). Furthermore, to hear American politicians
26 and election candidates to speak in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, and more recently Brussels, it seems that general opinions in the U.S. are trending towards the belief that Syrian refugees pose a threat to domestic security. So far, the debate about whether or not to accept Syrian refugees has induced a “serious identity crisis for the U.S.” (Bremmer, 2015).
Although Chinese and U.S. policy in response to the Refugee Crisis both demonstrate some level of reluctance to fully committing to assisting and hosting Syrian refugees, that does not mean that the two countries express no concern for the matter. It remains to be seen in the content analysis of the respective nations’ newspaper coverage how the media frames portray the refugee crisis to the public.
Crisis Coverage in the News
In crisis communication, framing analysis can provide crisis managers with useful insights into appropriate crisis response strategies in order to minimize the damage to an organization’s image (Boyd, 2000; Coombs, 2006). Typologies of crisis response strategies have been developed and tested through framing research (e.g., Benoit, 1995; Coombs &
Holladay, 1996).
However, these previous approaches often fail to consider how the media framed the crisis at the outset. A crisis is “an event for which people seek causes and make attributions”
(Coombs & Holladay, 2004, p. 97). As it occurs, people seek information about the crisis and then evaluate the cause of the event and the organizational responsibility for the crisis based on media coverage of the crisis. Therefore, it is important to look at how the media frame a crisis event, the cause of the crisis, and the actor responsible for it, because those frames influence the public’s perception and impressions of the organization (Coombs, 2006).
27 This study aims to identify what kinds of news frames have been used in the coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis, including frames attributing responsibility for the event. Based on previous research into news framing, this study uses content analysis to explore the different media frames used. Ultimately, the findings may better inform crisis managers about how news coverage might influence public perceptions in countries as divergent as the U.S. and China, and may also have implications for future research into international response strategies.
Today’s “Syrian Refugee Crisis” or “European Migrant Crisis” is not the first time the world has witnessed a humanitarian crisis of this scale. Several editorial and opinion pieces in the New York Times have drawn comparisons between Syrian refugees boarding trains in Hungary to the haunting history of Jews being sent to concentration camps during WWII. The repeated introduction of the crisis as “the worst since World War II,” further evokes this historical parallel. However, this current event is new and extremely different in many ways.
Perhaps more so than ever before, the crisis involves and implicates the entire world.
Furthermore, the media portrayal of the current Migrant Crisis via is quite different due to the new media technologies available to instantly report on the crisis. It is now instantly possible for readers far away from the crisis to access images and read about the stories of the refugees and the European citizens who are encountering them, as well as updates about politicians’ efforts to mitigate the crisis and solve the problem at its roots.
As European nations directly face the consequences and unfolding events of the refugee crisis, other countries in the world look on, report, analyze, and try to make sense of the situation from a humanitarian, political, and economic viewpoint. The United States and China stand on opposite ends of the world, with the refugee crisis continuing to exacerbate between them;
28 indeed, both the United States and China play an important strategic role in the region and in finding a solution to the crisis. Questions of responsibility and human rights in a globalized world are raised through the news coverage of the Refugee Crisis in the United States and China, among other media from around the world.
That being said, there are many other countries that are much more deeply implicated in the refugee crisis than China is, nations which almost certainly produce news coverage of the crisis that would prove insightful and meaningful for this study. For example, Russia is one of the most active players involved in the Syrian War, thus holds great potential to resolve the migrant crisis at its source by encouraging a solution to the raging war. An analysis of Russian newspaper framing of the refugee crisis would also prove insightful, however this study focuses on the U.S. and Chinese perspectives in order to illuminate their unique, contrasting perspective.
The issues raised by the Syrian Refugee Crisis are highly relevant countries all across the world today, especially key players like U.S. and China. For instance, one of the most significant debates surrounding the coverage of refugees in the media is the extent to which state power is being challenged or even undermined by the movement of persons across borders. This study will consider the implications of refugee flows for how newspapers frame the consequences of the refugee crisis, including security threats and economic effects. Finally, it is also important to ask: are newspaper media empowering refugees to reach safety, or are newspapers reinforcing state policy and control over their movement?
As globalization has impacted the transnational flows of people across borders, it has also dramatically impacted international media. According to Sparks (2000), the concept of
globalization has replaced the “imperialism paradigm” as the main way of thinking about the international media (2007; 126). As suggested earlier, “the deepest meaning conveyed by the
29 idea of globalization is that of the indeterminate, unruly and self-propelled character of world affairs; the absence of a center, of a controlling desk, of a board of directors, of a managerial office” (Bauman, 1998; 59). Power in this world, whether physical or symbolic in nature, is not concentrated in a single place. No state is strong enough to dominate world politics, just as no company is strong enough to dominate the world market, and no news organization is powerful enough to control all information about a certain topic (Sparks 139-40).
Such rejection of a notion of any single controlling center stands in contrast to the central claim of the media and cultural imperialism paradigm, which claimed that broadcasting around the world was dominated by U.S. companies and U.S. agendas (Sparks, 2007; 140). Following globalization, the United States “is no longer the puppeteer of a world system of images but is only one node of complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes” (Appadurai, 1996;
31). Therefore, it is not merely relevant but necessary to study news media outside of the United States in order to gain a broader, more accurate understanding of globalization’s effects on media framing.
To further reinforce the importance of examining Chinese media in combination with U.S.
media, Sparks (2000) has argued that no media is genuinely global in nature, as the so-called global media’s audience is “too small, too rich and too English-speaking to be considered
inclusive.” There is also scant evidence that supports the existence of a global public sphere, and in fact the public sphere remains largely state-oriented. However, there is no question that many globalizing trends are made possible with the assistance of mass media at both domestic and international levels. Optimistic perspectives portray these processes of globalization as a positive force that works to unify widely different societies, integrating them into a “global village,” and enriching all parties in the process (McLuhan 1964). It remains to be seen what effect
30 globalization has had on the use of media frames in regards to a uniquely ‘globalized’
‘internationalized’ crisis such as the Migrant Crisis.
Since the dawn of the era of globalization, studies outlining the ways immigration has been portrayed in the popular media have found elements of public anxiety over immigration and related issues of multiculturalism, race, and national identity. According to Chavez (2001), these anxieties did not suddenly burst forth in the 1990s, but rather these issues received increasing attention and formulation over the past thirty-plus years (2001; 12). This raises important
questions about the role of the popular press in such coverage (German 1994). In the coverage of refugees and migration, it is pertinent to investigate whether popular newspapers merely reflect the public’s increasing anxiety, or, by playing to the fears and concerns of the public, cite anti-refugee, anti-immigrant sentiments (Parenti, 1986). Therefore, the present study’s examination of coverage of refugees by two popular newspapers seeks to raise new questions about the media’s role in the public’s increasing concern about refugees and immigration (Simon and Alexander 1993) as well as in reflecting international relations and policy regarding the Refugee Crisis.
Media Framing and International Relations
The political relationships between countries are profoundly important aspects of global society, as they influence the way the entire population of the world lives and divides itself into separate communities. The United States and China are often considered to be at opposite ends of the cultural and political spectrums, and the relationship between the two countries has been considered to be one of the most complex in the world due to centuries of isolation between the two nations. In the modern era, tensions between China and the United States remain heated amidst economic competition and cooperation.
31 There is an impressive body of literature that explains the key concepts of international relations in great detail (i.e. Griffiths & O’Callaghan, 2012; Carlsnaes, Risse, Simmons, 2013).
U.S.-China relations have long been an interest and enigma for many scholars of international affairs, and the contemporary international relations between the U.S., China, and their interests in the Middle East in particular, has been a growing area of interest for many years, with recent literature focusing on human rights offering especially relevant insights into the present analysis of both countries’ media framing of the refugee crisis.
There is also a rapidly growing collection of literature related to the media’s influence on foreign affairs (Gowing, 1994; Neuman, 1996; Bahador, 2007; Evans, 2008; Van Belle & Potter, 2011; Yordanova, 2012; Robinson, 2013), most of which support the hypothesis that the media indeed have an influence on the decision-making in foreign policy. However, these studies often fail to define the degree to which the media coverage plays a role in foreign affairs. Some research has examined the ways that the media of selected countries portray foreign nations by focusing on one country’s media (Yu & Riffe, 1989; Saleem, 2007) or comparing media of selected countries (Soderlund & Schmitt, 1986; Soderlund, Wagenberg, Surlin 1989; Yang, 2003). There is still a dearth of academic research comparing media in U.S. and Chinese media, especially concerning the coverage of the Middle East, including the Refugee Crisis. Even though some studies emerging are about media coverage of the crisis, none of them have compared news from U.S. and China, nor have they explored the framing perspective.
The framing of international issues by different national newspapers reflects each country’s different policies and goals. Even for countries in which newspapers are not strictly regulated by the state, the coverage of political issues will follow certain established narratives and political motives. In the era of globalization and communication technology, media have a
32 significant influence on international relations. Through coverage of foreign crises, media are able to create an emotional response from public who may extort policy-makers to take action (Neuman, 1996). For example, in 1994 when the Clinton administration decided to withdraw from Somalia after the media’s negative representations of the issue, which caused public
32 significant influence on international relations. Through coverage of foreign crises, media are able to create an emotional response from public who may extort policy-makers to take action (Neuman, 1996). For example, in 1994 when the Clinton administration decided to withdraw from Somalia after the media’s negative representations of the issue, which caused public