In the wake of America’s post - 9/11 ”anti-terrorist” policies the old scenario of regime-change in Iran entered a new phase. The media coverage of the 2009 presidential election and especially the election aftermath in Iran, believed by many to be unprecedented in the history of Western media coverage of any presidential election, was clearly in line with color revolution strategies. Predictably, the BBC and VOA played a key role. Soon afterward, the August and September 2011anti-capitalism protests in London and New York provided a good chance once again to test the Western governments’ claim of respecting their people’s “right-to-protest.” Focusing mostly on the BBC’s coverage of the two events, as a case study, and drawing upon insights from colonial and postcolonial studies and critical discourse analysis, this study attempts to investigate how the BBC recontextualized and reported the post-election “protests” in Iran and August 2011 anti-capitalism “riots” in Britain through prepackaged information.
Of Protests and Riots: The Media Coverage of June 2009 Events in Iran and those of August 2011 in Britain