Résumé:
This study deals with the treatment of crises by the Algerian media, especially the famous Algerian crisis that’s happened in last January 2011 which was a political, social, security and economic phenomenon. The problematic of our research focus on revealing the role of the Algerian press in dealing with this crisis through the lading articles of El Watan newspaper published in the period of crisis. The sample was selected from the numbers issued from the beginning of January 2011 until April 2011. This was the period in which the crisis has been extensively addressed in El Watan and most other media outlets.
Algeria has experienced several crises but the crisis of January 2011 was one of the most important of these crises. Despite it short duration; it was managed no later than six months. Some political experts claim that the crisis has not been finished but has been eased by the Algerian government. This crisis was characterized by violent demonstrations and clashes between security and police and demonstrators, who were demanding political change and democracy. The same uprising happened at the same time in Tunisia and Egypt, where both countries resorted to the overthrow of the current president and change the political system. The Algerian press has played a major role in addressing the events of the January 2011 crisis and informing the public opinion about developments in the current events.
Our study aims to clarifying the importance of media and its role in covering and dealing with crises, It seeks also to understand and explain how El Watan journal treat this crisis through the lading articles that explains and interprets news and events and comment on them, including revealing the newspaper's policy towards current events in the Algerian society. We relied on content analysis as a methodological tool to collect and analyze data in order to identify the position taken by El Watan newspaper about the management of the crisis and the trends adopted by it through its coverage of the crisis to conclude its role in addressing the crisis.
In this research we discussed both a theoretical an applied study. The theoretical side was divided into four main chapters. Chapter one deals with the nature of the crisis, its causes, characteristics, dimensions and effects. Chapter II, Has been dedicated to crisis management and the ways to deal with it. The third chapter was about communication crisis and media crisis. Finally, chapter 4 was devoted to the definition of the importance of written journalism and its importance in media industries. It also referred to a historical reading of newspaper in Algeria. In the applied study, we followed the steps of content analysis; we categorized the content into categories and identified the analysis units, and then emptied the data and processed it to derive the results.
