Discourse and Manipulation in the Representation of the Russian Military Intervention in the Syrian Civil War

Abstract

This article is concerned with exploring conflicting media positions as reflected in the discursive patterns of news headlines and leads. Using Halliday’s transitivity analysis, this study examines how the Russian Military Intervention in the Syrian Civil War was socially, discursively and linguistically represented in the CNN and RT coverage of the event. The analysis examines the process of news making, role of ideology, and types of relationships between the news agencies and the political institutions in the United States and Russia. The aim is to show the discursive power of news agencies in creating different realities of the same event through language use. Results indicate that media are a political actor in the dissemination of both Russian and American views on the Syrian conflict. Although RT and CNN write about the same issue, the language choices made and underlying ideologies are different. The conflicting ideologies of both CNN and RT were highlighted by the use of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation in order to support self’s ideological positions and distort other’s political stances.