Framing Financial Collapse: Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis Of Iranian Rial Foreign News Coverage

Abstract

This study examined how The New York Times and Al Jazeera frame the Iranian rial collapse through Teun A. van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis. The problem addressed is how news discourse constructs social cognition and ideology in reporting a financial crisis. The research aims to analyze the realization of macrostructure, superstructure, and microstructure in the selected news texts and to identify how these textual elements shape representations of responsibility, victimhood, and policy responses. Using a qualitative-descriptive method, the study analyzes headlines, leads, lexical choices, syntax, and rhetorical strategies from articles published between December 2025 and January 2026. The analysis is guided by van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model and ideological square framework. The expected result is that both outlets will show different framing patterns: Al Jazeera is likely to emphasize institutional and economic pressures, while The New York Times is expected to foreground public suffering and protest. These differences indicate that media discourse does not merely report economic events but also produces ideological meanings and power relations.