MUSLIM WOMEN BY THE FRENCH PRESS: THE EXAMPLE OF LE FIGARO AND LE MONDE IN 2015

Using a framing and a content analysis approach, this study investigated how the European media treated Muslim women, focusing on two French daily newspapers, Le Figaro from center-right and Le monde from center-left between January 1, 2015 and January 1, 2016. Le Figaro mentioned Muslim women in 117 news and Le Monde in 47 news. 95% of the news mentioning Muslim women in Le Figaro and 30% of the news mentioning Muslim women in Le Monde had Muslim women as the main topic of these news. That would be the main difference and the other findings rather showed similarities. The two newspapers treated Muslim women mostly within the framework of political news (52% in Le Figaro and 43% in Le Monde) hence saw them as political actors. Furthermore, they considered Muslim women as oppressed and victimized (43% in Le Figaro and 36% in Le Monde) and terroristic (in 17% in Le Figaro and 34% in Le Monde). They adopted the human interest frame the most (60% in Le Figaro and 51% in Le Monde), followed by the conflict frame (26% in Le Figaro and 38% in Le Monde), the responsibility frame (12% in Le Figaro and 6% in Le Monde) and the morality frame (2% in Le Figaro and 5% in Le Monde). This study’s main argument is that European newspapers, no matter what their different political standings were, depicted Muslim women roughly the same wa