Double-Standard Reporting: A Critical Study of the Discourse on London (2017) Attacks in British Press

Abstract

This research analyzes, in a critical stance, the headlines and leads of the news reports of the attacks that took place in London in June, 2017; namely: the London Bridge attack and the Finsbury Park Mosque attack. It focuses on (4) British newspapers that reported both incidents: Daily Express, Daily Star, The Guardian, and The Times. It aims to investigate the language used in the reports of both attacks in terms of the lexical items, how they are emphasized/mitigated, and the grammatical structures used therein. It is hypothesized that, though similar in nature, the selected newspapers might have dealt with the two attacks differently by adhering to double-standard discourse strategies in a way that perpetuates the Islamophobic narrative. The research presents a theoretical framework about the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, and analyzes the headlines and lead paragraphs of the reports on the abovementioned attacks via van Dijk's ‘Socio-Cognitive Approach' (2015).  It concludes that the discourse strategies used to report both attacks are different.