Newsworthiness in Arabic News Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Discursive News Values Analysis

<p dir="ltr">This thesis examines the construction of newsworthiness in Arabic-language news discourse, focusing on its application to coverage of the 2017 Qatar/Gulf crisis. It employs the Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) framework, traditionally developed in Western contexts, and adapts it to Arabic news reporting. The research investigates three Arabic news outlets: Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, and the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), selected for their potential to provide distinct and contrasting perspectives on the crisis. The study addresses two key research questions: (1) How does the DNVA framework adapt to Arabic contexts, particularly given cultural influences on news values? (2) What lexical and discursive patterns reveal differences in the portrayal of the crisis across these outlets? To explore these questions, the research adopts a mixed-methods approach. A corpus of news articles was created, and a subset was qualitatively analyzed using DNVA. This analysis is complemented by quantitative corpus methods, including assessments of word frequencies, and collocations, to reveal each outlet’s distinctive lexical choices in constructing newsworthiness. The findings confirm the adaptability of DNVA to Arabic news discourse while uncovering notable differences. A previously unrecognized news value, <i>Religious Resonance</i>, emerges as uniquely meaningful in Arabic news values construction, highlighting the role of religious themes in constructing newsworthiness. Additionally, while existing news values such as <i>Eliteness </i>and <i>Negativity </i>remain relevant, their prioritization reflects cultural and contextual distinctions compared to Western media. Importantly, these news values do not necessarily align with the broader ideological stances of each outlet but rather operate as discursive constructions that can be foregrounded or backgrounded differently across the news outlets. This thesis makes several contributions. Methodologically, it pioneers the application of the DNVA framework to full news articles rather than focusing solely on headlines and leads, offering a more comprehensive analysis of news discourse. Theoretically, it extends the cross-cultural applicability of DNVA, providing a foundation for further exploration in non-Western contexts. Practically, it equips future researchers with a template for analyzing Arabic and other culturally distinct media. By highlighting how cultural, linguistic, and digital elements shape news narratives, the study enriches the field of news discourse analysis and invites deeper inquiry into the construction of newsworthiness across global media contexts.</p>