title: A Critical Discourse Analysis of The Representation of Migrants on Twitter
title: The Case of #SaudiArabiaForTheSaudis
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Al Moussa, Arwa
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2024

description: This research examines anti-migrant discourse on Twitter. I carry out a
 qualitative analysis of tweets with the hashtag #SaudiArabiaForTheSaudis
 للسعوديين_ السعودية# from a discourse-historical perspective (see Reisigl
 &amp; Wodak, 2016). The main aim of this thesis is to explore the
 discursive construction of the main social actors involved and to examine
 topoi as a key part of argumentation schemes employed to justify and
 downplay the exclusionary
 
 discourses within this hashtag. The study sample consisted of 836 tweets
 with the hashtag #SaudiArabiaForTheSaudis posted between the years 2016
 and 2020. A two-level analysis was carried out to investigate the
 representation and argumentation strategies. The first level focuses on
 mapping out the content of the tweets, that is the discourse topics within
 the tweets with the 
 
 SaudiArabiaForTheSaudis hashtag, and the semiotic resources which are
 
 often employed in the data set as forms of legitimation. The second level
 is an in-depth analysis of the discursive construction of ‘migrants’ in
 Saudi and their ‘allies’ as social actors where particular attention is
 paid to nominative and predicative strategies, followed by an analysis of
 a sample of the most salient argumentative shortcuts (topoi) exploited in
 the tweets to legitimise the self and delegitimise the other (see Reisigl
 and Wodak 2001). Given that Twitter provides its users with various
 meaning-making resources, they rely partially or
 
 solely on multimodal resources to construct the other or to advance an
 argument, the in-depth analysis inevitably draws on multimodal analysis
 (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006) combined with the DHA approach. 
 
 
 The first stage of analysis revealed that of the codes related to social
 processes, those that belong to the category unemployment were the most
 prevalent codes in the data set.Institutional favouritism was the most
 frequent code in the data set followed by Saudization issues. On the other
 hand, thematic hashtags were the most frequent code among the semiotic
 resources identified in the data set.
 
 
 Taking advantage of people’s frustrations with unemployment and fears of
 losing their identity has led to the scapegoating of migrants, naturalised
 Saudis, and those who defend them. In the second stage of analysis which
 focused on the representational and argumentation strategies present in
 the data set, Arab migrants were the most negatively constructed group of
 migrants. They were portrayed as the ungrateful, ill-intentioned other who
 look down upon Saudi as just an uncivilised desert Bedouin society.
 Ethnonyms or nationyms are usually used in conjunction with other
 strategies such as criminalisation and problematisation that evoke
 stereotyped images of all migrants but particularly Arabs. The presumed
 lack of belonging of naturalised citizens led to their exclusion, and both
 naturalised Saudis and other Saudis who defend migrants were portrayed as
 traitors with ulterior motives.
 
 
 The argumentation schemes that are typical of antimigrant discourse were
 identified using Reisigl &amp; Wodak's (2001) list of topoi. The
 topos of threat, which is a common topos in populist discourses was the
 most dominant topos identified in the data set. It is often employed
 textually and visually to legitimise the self and delegitimise the other.
 Migrants were constructed as a threat to Saudi Arabia's culture,
 national security, but most primarily to Saudis’ employment and wages.
 Other topoi such as the topos of responsibility, abuse and culture were
 also present in the data set.
 
 
 This thesis aims to contribute to the body of knowledge about anti-migrant
 discourse online by examining Saudi Arabia, a largely understudied
 context. It focuses on how discriminatory ideologies within tweets with
 the hashtag #SaudiArabiaForTheSaudis are constructed and propagated. The
 analysis shows that the affordances of Twitter facilitated this negative
 construction of ‘migrants’ and their ‘allies’ in the data set and thereby
 paved the way for the legitimation of discriminatory ideologies in
 relation to migration.