Mapping Text-Visual Frames of Sub-Saharan Africa in the News: A Comparison of Online News Reports From Al Jazeera and British Broadcasting Corporation Websites

Abstract

This study presents a comparative analysis of 311 online news stories collected for 3 months from Al Jazeera and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) African news front pages with respect to both their text–visual valence and the overall portrayal of sub‐Saharan Africa. Results showed that text–visual complementarities in news reporting were primarily consonant, though a considerable portion of news reporting was dissonant implying that what is textually presented can differ in tone from what is visually shown. Besides, Al Jazeera and BBC online news sites portrayed sub‐Saharan Africa negatively both in textual and visual modalities, suggesting, in line with previous research, that negative events are considered more newsworthy than positive developments in reporting the subcontinent. Furthermore, and contrary to two of our hypotheses, we could not find any indication for a “pro‐African bias” by Al Jazeera. On the contrary, negatively toned reporting, both textually and visually, was even more dominant on the Al Jazeera website than on the BBC website. However, overall no significant difference was found between Al Jazeera and BBC in reporting news from sub‐Saharan Africa.

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