Visual Framing of Protests in Regional and International Conflicts:

The study sought to analyze them quantitatively and qualitatively the visual news coverage of protests in regional and international conflicts on the BBC and Al-Ahram Weekly websites, based on the theory of visual framing. To understand the phenomenon, thestudy monitored a number of protests that took place during the years (2018, 2019 and 2020), represented as follows: The regional protests included (the Sudanese revolution (2018-2019), the Iraqi protests or the so-called ‘October Revolution’ (2019-2020), the Lebanese protests (2019), as for the international protests, they included (the yellow vests movement in France (2018-2019), the Hong Kong protests in China (2019-2020), George Floyd protests in the USA (2020). A comparative analytical study which used the Content Analysis tool that help idientifing the news frams within the visual coverage content of the events with a total of (837) images.
The results of the study showed that "demonstration frame" ranked first by (48.5%) for the total sample of the study, followed by the "violence and terrorism frame" by (11.8%), then "conflict frame" by (7.5%). Regarding the actors, "protesters" were the most prominent actors in the visual coverage by (68.4%), "security forces" by (20%), then "heads of states and governments" by (4.4%). The results also indicated the diversity of symbols used including national flags, V sign, fists, masks, dolls, drawings, clothing, and body language.