Abstract
This chapter examines British media representations of ‘Islamist terrorism’ via the analysis of two newspapers’ (The Guardian and The Times) editorials. I first emphasize the media discourse regarding the 9/11 events and, second, I focus on the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, Paris and Brussels. My aim here is to examine the discursive dichotomy between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ and what kind of social actors are included in the in-groups and out-groups that media interpretations of the above events create. Hence, I intend to show how the British mainstream press represents ‘Islamist/Jihadist terrorism’, examine whether and how these representations have changed during the last decade and illustrate the fragile balance between national and supranational identities that is expressed via British newspapers’ discourses.
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Notes
- 1.
The same happened in the case of the Greek press, where Kathimerini supported the socialist government and Ta Nea criticized the government for its tolerance of the ‘war on terror’ (see Chapter 5).
- 2.
Kelly was the distinguished government scientist who hunted down weapons of mass destruction of the kind used by the Blair government to justify the 2003 war with Iraq. He was found dead a few days after his appearance before House of Commons committees.
- 3.
IRA had declared responsibility for numerous terrorist incidents in Britain.
- 4.
On 18 March 2003 the British Parliament approved the invasion in Iraq. The Conservative Party’s MPs voted to approve the invasion in Iraq, while a quarter of the Labour Party’s MPs voted against it.
- 5.
See also Chapter 5, as the same division is observed in the Greek press.
- 6.
“The Islamic State”. Mapping Militant Organizations. Stanford University.
- 7.
I would note here that the topos of NATO responsibility is relevant to the topos of European responsibility that appeared in the analysis of the Greek press; and although both of them are developed on the basis of the Aristotelian topos of analogue consequence, I decided to label them differently to highlight the fact that the Greek and British press emphasize different organizations to show the necessity of a battle against jihadism—the EU and NATO, respectively.
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Boukala, S. (2019). British Media Discourse About the ‘Islamist Threat’. In: European Identity and the Representation of Islam in the Mainstream Press. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93314-6_6
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