Representations of the threat of cyberterrorism in the UAE's Arabic and English-language news media

Abstract

Cyberterrorism is a phenomenon that reportedly affects the entire globe. Scholars, journalists and policymakers all use the term 'cyberterrorism' with increasing frequency in their research, speeches, policy documents and news articles. However, the definition and the representation of instances of cyberterrorism are vague and unclear. For example, who is a cyberterrorist? What can be considered a cyberterrorist attack? And is cyberterrorism as deadly and fatal as it seems? Given the questions surrounding the term and the very real negative effects associated with it, this thesis will concentrate on the definition, representation and subsequent threat construction of cyberterrorism in the UAE by cataloguing and coding reports of cyberterrorism in both the Arabic and English-language news media in the UAE. The research project will use the similar methods and methodology outlined by Lee Jarvis, Stuart Macdonald and Andrew Whiting in their 2014 article 'Unpacking cyberterrorism discourse: specificity, Status, and scale in news media constructions of threat.' It will also use original empirical findings through investigating the representation of the threat of cyberterrorism in the Arabic and English news media in the UAE. In addition, this research will use combination of comparative analysis and theoretical framework with the textual analysis approach. The research question to the thesis is: To what extent is the threat of cyberterrorism represented differently in the Arabic and English-language media in the UAE? The results of the research will show that cyberterrorism representations in the Arabic and English-language media in the UAE contain largely the different content about the threat attempting to speak to different audiences. In addition, cyberterrorism representations in the Arabic and English-language media are not monolithic. Rather they demonstrate varying levels of concern about the threat, identity of cyberterrorists, and the targets of cyberterrorism.

Date of Award	Dec 2019
Original language	American English