Between 2011 and 2019 around 900 British citizens left the United Kingdom to travel to Syria and join militant groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) (EPRS, 2018, p.33). After the fall of the so-called caliphate the issue of prosecuting and/or bringing citizens back was widely debated in Europe, especially in the UK, who was accused of taking a drastic measure to the dilemma, causing a political rift in the nation (NPR, 2019). At the center of the debate, both in the media and in parliament, was a young woman called Shamima Begum, who was deprived of her UK citizenship in 2019. This event lead to a debate on human rights and if Begum had had hers violated (The Times, 2019). Previous research has shown that the ethical media discourse on human rights is multifaced, contested and strong in its ability to incite certain worldviews in society (Sampaio, 2016, p.2). Furthermore, previous studies argue that women tend to be framed differently from men in the media when they are involved in conflict, terror or war (Sjöberg & Gentry, 2007, p.30). In addition to this, western media tends to use Muslim women as a symbol of difference by stereotyping them in terms of culture and religion (Brown, 2011, p.716). This study aims to trace the width and depth of UK media’s discourse on human rights issues and the debate on foreign fighters over the political spectrum, through the case of Shamima Begum. Building off of framing theory and previous research on the framing of females and Islam, it asks how the Guardian and the Times, two national British newspapers, prioritizes the aspect of human rights in their reporting on Begum’s case. This by asking what frames they construct and how these frames compare and differ between the two outlets and the years 2015 and 2019. The material, constituted by articles and images, was analyzed on the base of Critical Discourse Analysis and Framing theory. The results find four different frames used. These frames are the Naïve victim, the Imperfect victim, ISIS radicalisation and the Willing ISIS devotee. The frames propose opposite standpoints of the newspapers both in their view on Begum and her guilt, and ultimately her human rights, perhaps aligning their discourse with the polarized political one in the UK. The study also shows that aspects connected to Begum’s gender and religion to some extent are prioritized in the framing of her, ultimately affecting the view of her end her fundamental rights as a human being.

This paper studies subjectivity in the Mail Online journalism with a focus on judgmental reporting from the male sphere. The Background research presents the current paradigm of what is acceptable when writing subjectively in journalism and concludes that it is acceptable and is no longer seen as the antithesis to objectivity. However, there remain rules as to what is too much subjectivity such as ‘falsehoods’. The background continues and discusses what the male sphere is, what it means to report from the male sphere, and how one must behave within this sphere to be a ‘true’ woman or ‘true’ man. The study located and categorised both Direct and Indirect Judgment from the male sphere in articles from the Mail Online. Articles about Shamima Begum and Mohammed Emwazi were chosen because of their similarities and because of the very different way reporters chose to present their stories. Locating and categorising Judgment using the framework Appraisal and Journalistic Discourse Theory worked well with the ideological focus of the male sphere. The theoretical framework allows for individual subjective utterances to be categorised as Direct Judgment as well as whole extracts to be analysed, and categorised as Indirect Judgment. The results show that in the case of Shamima Begum, negative Judgment was inferred from the male sphere in the form of Indirect Judgment which needed to be read in context. In the case of Mohammed Emwazi both positive and negative Judgment was inferred which was both Direct and Indirect. Both actor’s results directly correspond to Judgment of gendered characteristics from the ‘Male Sphere’ explained Background. This paper concludes with a discussion of the judgments from the male sphere of both actors with examples from the extracts, finishing with limitations of the study and future research considerations.