Comparing Attitudes of Local and International Electronic Newspapers on Anti-Muslim Crimes: A Corpus-Based Cognitive Approach

This research work investigates the representation of anti-Muslim xenophobia in online news media, focusing on two specific incidents: a hate crime and a terrorist attack targeting Muslim worshippers during Friday prayers in mosques in New Zealand and Egypt, respectively. Given the recent surge in such crimes and their profound impact on Muslim communities, an examination of how these events framed in the press is critical. Newspapers play a vital role in shaping public discourse and influencing societal ideologies through the strategic use of persuasive language. The paper therefore leverages the synergistic potential of Cognitive and Corpus Linguistics to analyze the portrayal of these two anti-Muslim acts. Specifically, Fillmore’s Frame Semantics theory provides the theoretical framework, enabling a combined cognitive and corpus-driven investigation. Corpus linguistic analysis, facilitated by Yoshikoder and aConCorde software programs, is employed to examine a corpus of articles drawn from Akhbarelyom (Egypt), NZ Herald (New Zealand), and The Guardian (UK). This selection of newspapers allows for a comparative analysis of how these incidents are reported across different cultural and geographical contexts. By applying corpus linguistic techniques, the study seeks to identify underlying ideologies embedded within the news coverage.