Reporting Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism

This study examines how the media construct the identities of the Other by creating various 'us' versus 'them' positions (Othering) when covering non-violence-based intercultural conflicts in Arab and Western news media. Othering in this study is understood as an umbrella concept that in general terms refers to the discursive process of constructing and positioning the Self and the Other into separate identities of an 'us' and a 'them.' Previous studies have devoted considerable attention to rather conventional dichotomous constructions of Eastern and Western Others. This study brings to the fore more non-conventional constructions and, while recognizing the occurrence of the conventional constructions, goes beyond these binary oppositions of 'us' and 'them'. Variations in the types of identity constructions found in this study can be attributed to the mode of the article, the actors included, the media affiliations and the topic and its overall contextualization.