A Critical Discourse Analysis of Russia Today’s In-group and Out-group Presentation in the Syrian Crisis News Reports

Abstract

This paper presents a critical discourse analysis (henceforth, CDA) of the news items which tackled the Syrian crisis in the English-speaking Russian TV channel Russia Today (henceforth, RT). It aims to show the channel’s polarization into its in-group and out-group of the reports that focused on the Syrian crisis. To achieve its aim, the study hypothesizes that: 1) RT utilizes discursive strategies in order to positively present its in-group (Russia, the Syrian regime, and its allies) and negatively present the out-group (the USA, Europe, and their allies) and 2) Russia’s military involvement in Syria affected the way RT reports its Syrian crisis news. In order to test the two hypotheses, the study analyzes six reports that tackle the Syrian crisis from RT: three reports before and three after the Russian military involvement. After presenting a theoretical background of the field of CDA, the study follows two models by van Dijk, namely, the Ideological Square (1998), and Ideological Discourse Analysis (1995b) to analyze the data.