Media Coverage of Syrian Female Refugees in Jordan and Lebanon

Abstract

Jordan and Lebanon are among the predominantly affected countries by the Syrian civil war that began after the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2011. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrians, including women and children, moved to these two countries. As media plays an integral role in shaping societies and framing the world around us, this study explores the representation of Syrian female refugees in Jordan News Agency (Petra) and Lebanon National News Agency (NNA). It uses a 13-million-word corpus of Arabic news articles from 2012 to 2016. These 5 years represent the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, and the media coverage of it was extensive and thorough. Adopting a corpus-assisted discourse approach to analyze the data yielded eight main categories that were recurrent in the news of the two agencies, namely, suffering, sexual exploitation, impact on the local female community, awareness-raising, making a living, support, vulnerability, and burden. The findings revealed that the focus in Petra news was mainly on empowering the Syrian female refugees, while NNA highlighted Syrian women’s suffering and efforts of alleviation. The study recommends that the governments of Jordan and Lebanon as well as international organizations provide more support and protection for vulnerable and disadvantaged refugee women. It also stresses the need for psychosocial support, counter-trafficking, protection, and women empowerment programs.