Iran: A Hair’s ‘jab’ into a ‘hijab’? Western Media News Framing of Mahsa Amini’s Death

Oh, Visible Hair, Oh Hair, Hair, Oh Hair, thou art my beauty, my power, my glory, my identity, my voice, and yet are thou a ‘jab’ in my ‘hijab’ that brought my death on the 16 September, 2022 after my arrest by the Iranian morality police?  Could these be Amini’s silent rhetorical voice as she laid peaceful in her grave? As silent as her voice could be, it energized women in Iran and subsequently sparked up public protests in Amini’s northwestern Iran hometown which further spread through the streets of Tehran, Europe, Canada and America. 

As distant these protests may be, the media brought the news and picture narratives of angry women-protesters burning their headscarves, veils, hijabs whilst other women cut their hair in protests of the controversies surrounding Mahsa Amini’s death and Islamic moral dress codes. 

Besides the media directing the public towards the agenda of events around Amini’s death, it also provides the public with social, religious, political and economic context of Amini’s death. Furthermore, the media frames each of Amini’s narrative context by directing and influencing the mental senses of the public in terms of how the public should think about and relate to each of the contextual frames. 

The ability of the media in directing how the public should mentally perceive an event or a narrative is a media function referred to as media framing. In addition, the media employs two approaches of macro and micro framing in presenting news events and contents to the public. First, macro framing is about the big picture a story projects or in other words, the context within which the media presents a story or an event. Secondly, micro framing of an event is about the specific language choices the media employs, the implications of the language, the tone of the language and the type of content the media presents to the public.  A media’s macro and micro framing of event therefore has a tendency of directing a particular mental thought about an event, personality, community, and policies. From these, it is worthy to evaluate how news editors framed Mahsa Amini’s death and protests in the Western media.

Iranian Women and Hijab: Historical Perspectives

The power of Iranian women’s voices and protests around moral codes of dressing – hijab or headscarves policies dated as far as Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decreed on mandatory hijabs for all women. Again, in 1981 women and girls were legally mandated to wear modest ‘Islamic Clothing’. Further legislation passed in 1983, stated that failure of adherence to hijab moral codes shall attract 74 lashes and 60 days prison terms. Recently, President Ebrahim Raisi also signed an order    empowering the morality police to refer women to counselling for failing in morality dress codes. In spite of the religious and morality intent of the hijab dress codes, its controversies persist with Mahsa Amini allegedly falling short of the morality police hijab codes, its related death and the media coverage that followed.  These controversies surrounding Iran’s moral hijab codes, the power of its morality police, and moral codes enforcements has led to shades of news reportage and framing. This study therefore seeks to establish the type of macro and micro news frames the Western media employed in their coverage of Mahsa Amini’s death and the protests from the 16 to 26 September, 2022.   

The Framing Analysis 

This study analyzed the following Western media (CNBC, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NBC, CNN, BBC, Sky News, Bloomberg, VOA from the 16 to 26 September,2022. Qualitative news content methodology was used. The study units were 8 Macro frame typologies of: (Moral Values, Social Conflict, Attribution Responsibility, Human Impact, Powerless Attribute, Economic Disparity, Human Interests and Historical Antecedents) and subsequently micro study units emanating from the macro frames. Inter coder validity test was pegged at 85% validity with the following results as depicted in the two charts of Macro and Micro typology news frames. The Western media framed Mahsa Amini’s death in the context of moral values around dress codes and attribution responsibility of Iranian’s authorities and their responsibilities. The same frame is revealed under the micro level frames.

From the data results, the Western media reports on Mahsa Amini was framed from the perspective of a Hair’s ‘jab’ into a ‘hijab’ that is, the controversies surrounding Islamic Hijab dress codes and its social impact on Iranian women and its related agitations. This study is not a religious critique or a social critique of the Iranian policies or Islamic dress codes, but humbly seeks to promote a constructive relationship between Iranian women and the authorities by drawing attention to news frames and how that could be used for strategic communication efforts between women and Islamic clergy and also to inform on policy initiatives for peaceful existence as a way of finding answers to the rhetoric: A Hair’s ‘jab’ into a ‘hijab’?

About the Author: Messan Mawugbe (PhD), is a strategic corporate communication consultant and university lecturer.

From: The Meadows, Castle Rock: Colorado: Email: [email protected]

Source: newsghana.com.gh