Al Jazeera as a Challenge to the Traditional Framing Research.

This paper interrogates and extends theories of framing research, predominantly recent postulates to conceptualize frames in a context of sociopolitical power. It does so by examining the strengths and shortcomings of the framing literature when it comes to the puzzling challenge of discussing al Jazeera, the 24-hour Arabic satellite news outlet. Framing research has implicit or explicit assumptions concerning the way political power affects the framing process. Framing scholarship as generally established by Western scholars and idiosyncratic to the American media and the American power structure, overlooks the cultural and sociopolitical context of functioning of international media organizations. More important, scholarship on media frames and power do not take into account new technology, the relative freedom from domestic regulation and decentralized flow of information characteristic of Al Jazeera and similar entities. Al Jazeera is deemed to be significantly anti-hegemonic. This paper demonstrates why this thrust can be understood through deficiencies in framing scholarship. In the traditional Western framing research media have been seen as contributing to the sustenance and reinforcement of existing power structure, that is hegemony (Gitlin, 1980). Hegemony has been conceived in terms of the dominance of a national political power structure. I argue that al Jazeera has challenged hegemony, and is considered to have been an anti-hegemonic force in the Arab world - as a satellite channel freed from domestic media regulations and national power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]