A Comparative Analysis of the Russian – Ukrainian war coverage on Arabic News Websites: Al Jazeera Net vs. Al Arabiya Net in 2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17721/CIMC.2025.38.43-54Keywords:
Russia-Ukraine war, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, issues, trends, media and mass communicationAbstract
This article examines trends in the coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war on two Arabic websites, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, three years after its start. The study aims to achieve the following objectives: to analyze and quantify the media content related to the war on these two major Arabic news websites, and to conduct a comparative analysis of the media content on both news websites, focusing on themes, issues, and coverage trends. Method. To analyze and quantify media content published on the Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya websites, specifically issues and trends, content analysis was utilized to research 99 pieces of media content from both websites published between February 24, 2025, and June 24, 2025. Results. It was observed that both websites primarily focused on the political topics of the war; secondly, both websites demonstrated an emphasis on the military aspect. The humanitarian sphere ranked third, while the economic coverage was relatively low. Both websites demonstrated a shared trend of portraying Ukraine in a more favorable light while framing Russia more negatively. However, the degree of intensity and editorial framing between the two media differed. Conclusion. Both websites engaged with various issues of the Russia-Ukraine war, including political, military, humanitarian, social, and economic issues, with different levels of attention. The coverage by both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya of the Russia-Ukraine war was generally objective to some extent. However, a thorough analysis of the coverage trends indicates a slight bias favoring the Ukrainian perspective.
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Data Availability Statement
Materials from newspapers are in the ZENODO repository https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18705611
The data is partially presented in the article in Appendix 1. The text only provides references to the Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya websites, from where the quotes were taken. The links themselves are in the descriptions of the media materials in Appendix 1. Over time, the direct links we previously recorded sometimes do not work, and the materials need to be searched for by name on the media site. For this reason, we did not provide these direct links in the text of our article.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Сумія Теніу, Амель Фадлун, Асма Буанан, Мер’єм Мадуї
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