Ukraine Conflict at the Crossroads of Geopolitics : The role of media reports work in situations of conflicts and wars

Abstract: This thesis aims to explain the role of media reports in the situation of wars and conflicts where the Ukrainian/Russian war will be the focus. Since the Ukrainian war has become the most global political debate worldwide because it has transferred from a national crisis to a geopolitical conflict, it becomes necessary to observe how different media has portrayed this war. It is a comparative desk study based on the discourse analysis method. The methodological framework is qualitative research because it seeks after a specific war by collecting and analysing different sources. The comparative research design gives depth answers to the four research questions identified. The discourse analysis method uses the collected news articles from two online newspapers, Al Jazeera and the Guardian. The first one is written in Arabic and the second one in English, giving a comprehensive view of the Ukrainian/Russian war. The selected news articles are limited to only the first week of the war because of the intensive reports presented by the media to understand the reason behind the war. The thesis uses abductive reasoning, while the securitization theory is used as the theoretical framework to highlight how the Ukrainian/Russian war has been securitized in different contexts. The results show that Al Jazeera and the Guardian have portrayed the war differently; the selected news articles from the Guardian have succeeded in a securitization process where it considered the Ukrainian/Russian war a threat to western security that has pushed the government leaders to security acts. On the other hand, the Arab media portrayed the Russian invasion as a security threat to Ukraine’s presence.