COMPARING AL JAZEERA ENGLISH AND CNN ONLINE NEWS COVERAGE OF US-TALIBAN TALKS IN QATAR

Abstract

The US-Taliban talks in Doha was one of the historic mediations ever hosted by a Gulf state in recent times. This thesis applied Johan Galtung's war and peace journalism framework to analyse how two major news outlets, Al Jazeera English and CNN framed US-Taliban talks in Doha during the period of July 2018 to March 2020. A content analysis of news articles from both media showed that Al Jazeera English was dominated by peace journalism and CNN was dominated by war journalism in their coverage. Additionally, the most salient indicators for the selected media were elite oriented and causes and consequences. When it comes to themes, it was found that both media prioritised peace negotiations and diplomacy followed by current state of war and negotiation and violence. The study also found the tone used by Al Jazeera English was favourable towards peace talks and CNN was unfavourable towards peace talks.