Framing Narratives about the Middle East in the Presidential Speeches of Obama, Trump and Biden

• In Event: 50662 - Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Framing and Remembering Conflict

Abstract

This study provides a systematic analysis of the portrayal of Middle East in key US presidential speeches of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. The focus of the study is on how each president presents and justifies their Middle East policies to the public, paying particular attention to how they frame the ‘other’ through the lens of social identity theory. The content analysis of presidential speeches reveals that both Obama and Trump place strategies to counteract extremism and terrorism as the number one priority for their policies in the Middle East whereas diplomacy is the central priority in Biden’s discourses. President Trump exposes a more bravado attitude intended to impress or intimidate in his speech, but he is the least likely of the three presidents to mention war in his public addresses on the Middle East. Although Obama made the highest number of references to extremism-terrorism and Us vs Them dichotomies, President Trump’s speech has the highest overall percentage of negative comments about the Middle East. By contrast, President Biden invokes diplomacy the most of all the three presidents, and overall, has the most positive discourse with the highest percentage of positive comments about the Muslim countries of the Middle East. Grounded on rigorous content analysis with the NVIVO13 qualitative analysis software, this study is extremely timely and significant because it reveals how the most recent US presidents describe their Middle East policies in their official discourses. As the newly elected US President Donald Trump prepares for another term at the White House starting in 2025, these findings offer a glimpse on the framing of his foreign policy regarding the Middle East region.

Authors

• Aaron Moore Clarke, Kennesaw State University

• Darina Elena Lepadatu, Kennesaw State University