Discursive Construction of Power and Resistance: A Pragmatic Analysis of the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla Coverage in Al Jazeera and The New York Times

Abstract

This study looks at the discursive construction of power and resistance in the coverage of the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla by Al Jazeera and The New York Times. The study examines how the linguistic, pragmatic, and visual components correlate to create ideological narratives using a qualitative methodology based on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995, 2003), Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Twelve articles, half from each news organisation, that were published between June and October 2025, when the flotilla was receiving the most international media attention, make up the corpus. The study explores how each media organisation establishes legitimacy, accountability, and humanitarian identity in conflicting geopolitical contexts by looking at lexical selection, modality, evidentiality, and illocutionary act. The findings show that Al Jazeera regularly uses emotive lexis, expressive and commissive speech acts, and solidarity framing to humanise activists and highlight moral agency in opposition to structural violence. On the other hand, The New York Times favours aggressive and investigative actions, hedging strategies, and procedural methods that maintain the appearance of journalistic objectivity while subtly endorsing state power. Visual framing also reinforces these discursive tendencies: The New York Times favours procedural, distant images that emphasise institutional order, while Al Jazeera uses emotive images of suffering and resistance.  According to the comparative reading, empathy and neutrality are two different but ideologically influenced types of journalistic discourse. Lastly, by demonstrating how international news media mediate humanitarian discourse and reconstruct or subvert power relations through linguistic and multimodal selection, this study contributes to critical media and discourse studies. The study confirms that to obtain a comprehensive understanding of media representation in geopolitical conflict, it is essential to combine CDA and pragmatics.