Visual Representation of Ebossé’s Death News Event in Le Buteur, El Watan and Algerian Press Service: a Social Semiotic Analysis

Abstract

Our Research Study is concerned with the comparison between two locale and independent printed newspapers Le Buteur and El Watan with Algerian Press Service which is a Public News Agency and electronic one. The aim of the study is to sort out the differences in their representation of Ebossé’s Death news event visually from a Social Semiotic perspective and mainly the reasons behind those differences. The study analyzed four Photojournalism in relation to their Headlines and subheads in the three selected News Media. The Research method used is Qualitative in order to go in depth in the analysis with the Approach’s principles of Grammar of Visual Design (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996; 2006). The Findings and Discussion of the Findings showed that Le Buteur and EL Watan are more similar compared to the APS representation either visually or verbally (headlines). The differences concern all the principles under which we analyzed our data such as: the Image Size and Placements, Salience and Image Act. The results revealed that they are different due to the medium of news transmission (printed press vs. web page. Also because of the different communicative purpose they wanted to communicate. Finally, the three news media targeted different audiences. Le Buteur and El Watan are written in French (language), and their communicative purpose is to question Ebossé’s death, while APS which is online and targeted a larger audience, because it has several versions: Tamazight, Arabic, French, English and even Tifinagh. It also had another communicative purpose which was to inform but mainly since it is a News Agency its role was to serve the need of international press.