Framing Boko Haram’s female suicide bombers in mass media: an analysis of news articles post Chibok abduction

ABSTRACT

The employment of female suicide bombers continues to be a trend among terrorist organisations. Due to their sensationalist nature, suicide bombings attract extensive media attention and are often covered through different, though intentional, lenses. While existing literature has identified various frames that the media used to portray female suicide bombers, there is not yet a study focusing on the framing of those affiliated with Boko Haram, an organisation known for its high rate of children and women involved in suicide attacks. Investigating media coverage of suicide bombing events carried out by Boko Haram’s female bombers after the Chibok abduction reveals two prominent frames: the liable agents frame, which is utilised mostly in local sources, and the vulnerable and helpless girls frame, in international sources. While a polarised construction of Boko Haram’s female suicide bombers can have both negative and positive implications, a comprehensive portrayal that treats these women as more than either perpetrators of violence or victims is needed. This can only be accomplished if journalists understand the consequences of their news writing routines and the media sources’ organisational pressures and constraints are adjusted to accommodate a more complex representation of the female suicide bombers in Boko Haram.

KEYWORDS:

• Boko Haram
• female bomber
• suicide bomber
• news framing
• terrorism
• Chibok kidnapping

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to give a special thanks to Dr. Michael Loadenthal for his advising throughout the process of conducting and publishing this study. They would also like to express gratitude for the time invested by the two reviewers who gave their valuable inputs, Alice Martini for providing her 2018 research study, and Thierry Delvigne-Jean for allowing the authors access to the UNICEF report. Lastly, the authors would also like to thank the Miami University’s Sociology Department for supporting this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Repetitive results had been omitted by Google due to the high amount of similar content among them.

2. To avoid any mistake in translation, all local and international news articles selected for analysis are articles originally written in English.

3. Each result page contained 10 articles.

4. The search history function was turned off during the sampling process to ensure that the order in which the news articles appeared and the numbers given to them would not depend on the authors’ personal enquiries.

5. At the time of selection, a new bombing incident was recently reported on the date of 17 February 2018; however, most sources that reported this event had not yet included specific details concerning the nature of the incident, which made it impossible to determine whether this bombing was conducted by Boko Haram, and more specifically, its female suicide bombers. Therefore, these results were excluded from the sample and new numbers were generated to replace them.

6. The name of the category “Manipulations of language” is directly taken from Fowler and Kress (1979). Neither Fowler and Kress (1979) nor the authors believe that there is plain manipulation of language. Instead, any instance of manipulations of language analysed in this study is considered intentional.

7. Given the sample used in the study, the trial version was deemed sufficient as the 100th word generated by this version was used thirteen times across all eighteen articles. Hence, a paid subscription was not obtained because it was determined that words used less than thirteen times would not be significant. Of the 100 words generated, some of the words were prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners. All words not categorised into one of the predetermined categories of nouns, naming conventions, and verbs were omitted.

8. Since the word “attack” could be either a noun or a verb depending on the sentence, the frequency count of “attack” and “attacks” generated by Wordsmith was replaced with a manual count performed by the authors. The verb “attack” was only used 11 times; therefore, it was not reported among the list of the five most used words for the Verb category.

9. The bombers’ “affiliation to Boko Haram” was defined as any reference to this group within the selected news articles. Since “Boko” and “Haram” were counted separately by Wordsmith but always appeared together in the articles, the two words were instead reported as one in Table 1 and the frequency counted used was that of “Haram,” which was the lower number among the two.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hien La

Hien La is in the final year of her undergraduate degree at Miami University, where she is a double major in Philosophy and Sociology.

Selena Pickett

Selena Pickett is in the third year of her undergraduate degree at Miami University, where she is a double major in Psychology and Sociology.