The LGBT+ Community. Migrant Workers. Women. In That Order: Framing and Visibility of Human Rights Issues in the UK Media During the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Human rights reporting in the West is conditional. Coverage depends on the visibility of the victims, their ‘marketability’, which country is doing the reporting, and its political relationship with the West, amongst other factors. The international spotlight afforded by the build up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar resulted in coverage dominated by reports of human rights issues surrounding the LGBTQ+ community, migrant worker rights and conditions, and women’s rights. The tournament offered the media a chance to bring these issues to the forefront of public discourse, which had the potential to overhaul the existing system of inequality through international pressure. This corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis explored the visibility and framing of human rights infringements in online and print articles from The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Telegraph, employing keyword, collocation and concordance analyses. The timeframe of the data spans across a three month period inclusive of the 2022 World Cup, allowing for longitudinal comparison regarding the nature and volume of coverage around the event. Results show that the visibility of human rights reporting peaks during the duration of the tournament, decreasing dramatically at its close. Notably, in comparison to the coverage of the LGBTQ+ community and migrant workers, women and their rights are rendered invisible in the media suggesting women’s issues are seen as less newsworthy. The media can be pivotal in creating and maintaining awareness of world issues at the forefront of public consciousness, with persistent societal pressure even resulting in government intervention. However, such change is only possible with sustained coverage of quality. As this research finds that not all issues are being addressed equally, it reinforces the evidence of conditional reporting on human rights issues in the media. Furthermore, it poses questions concerning the influence of the media and whether social justice should precede supposed newsworthiness.