Ayman Elsoufy

Despite much research on the media coverage of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the specific language and ideological underpinnings used in this discourse have received little attention. This study compares the discourse surrounding the GERD construction in Egyptian and Ethiopian news sources to identify variations in word choice and underlying biases. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), the study analyzes two online English news corpora, totalling over a million words across 2655 articles. The analysis involves identifying statistically salient keywords in each corpus and examining their context through a contrastive collocation analysis. The study investigates the data in light of Fairclough's three-dimensional framework, which considers the text, discourse practice, and social practice, and applies van Dijk's concept of the ideological square to explore patterns of self-positive and other-negative representation. The findings reveal distinct patterns of bias in the news coverage from both countries. Egyptian news outlets often frame the GERD project as a source of crisis, depicting Ethiopia as violating international law and exacerbating political tensions. In contrast, Ethiopian news sources tend to portray Egypt as dismissive of Ethiopia's development rights and as monopolizing the Nile's resources. These discursive strategies reflect a broader trend of media bias, where lexical choices and framing techniques align with national interests and diplomatic stances.

This study aims to investigate the ways in which polarization is constructed in the news reporting on the issue of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) through a critical discourse analysis of Egyptian and Ethiopian online reports. The study focuses on tracing the lexical choices and the discursive strategies employed in the ideological representations of the events and the social actors related to the issue of the GERD. The data of the study consist of 30 online news articles covering three main events: the diversion of the course of the Blue Nile in 2013, the Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed in 2015, and the first filling of the dam reservoir in 2020. The analysis is based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework, and more particularly, van Dijk's (1998a) Ideological Square Model. The findings of the study reveal the impact of ideological and political stance on the discourse of news reporting in each of the two conflicting countries. The polarized representation of the issue of the GERD is realized through the positive in-group and negative out-group dichotomy.