Editorial Articles Reporting on 'Decisive Storm' Events in Saudi Electronic Press An analytical study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the Saudi e-press coverage of the Decisive Storm campaign events by analyzing the media frameworks of journalistic coverage in Saudi electronic newspapers. It deals with the dimensions and characteristics of media frameworks used in these newspapers to address the Decisive Storm Campaign events by identifying the topics of these articles in terms of their indicators, type of coverage, tracks of persuasion, language, persuasive techniques, persuasive citations, referential domain frameworks, writing strategies, and effective power, as well as identifying their consistency in reporting the Decisive Storm campaign.

The researcher has adopted the survey methodology to study the editorial articles that have dealt with the Decisive Storm events in the three newspapers under study: Riyadh, Al-Madina, and Al-Yawm, for the period from 26/03//2015 to 22/04//2015.

The study has found that political aspects form a large proportion (90.3%) of the covered editorials in Saudi e-newspapers, followed by the military developments, and the emergence of the indicator of supporting the legitimate government in the contents of the articles by more than (90.3%) of the total indicators of the editorial articles in Saudi e-newspapers. The positive coverage reached (93.5%), indicating that the editorial policies of Saudi e-newspapers are in line with the policy of the leadership of Saudi Arabia. The persuasive means used in articles are predominantly logical. The findings also revealed that projecting a sense of danger was the most used strategy in writing articles, namely the newspapers sense of the Iranian threat not only to Yemen, but to the entire Gulf region.