LE SÉISME D’EL HAOUZ EN 2023, LES DESSOUS D’UNE GUERRE MÉDIATIQUE ENTRE LE MAROC ET LE RESTE DU MONDE
THE 2023 EL HAOUZ EARTHQUAKE: THE BACKSTORY TO A MEDIA WAR BETWEEN MOROCCO AND THE REST OF THE WORLD

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the devastating earthquake that struck the El Haouz region in Morocco on September 8, 2023, considering it as a case study for analysing crisis management and communication in the digital era. It specifically explores the hypothesis that a relationship exists between the country of origin of international news channels and the nature of their media coverage. The study seeks to determine whether certain media outlets conveyed a critical discourse regarding Moroccan response efforts, potentially influenced by existing political and historical contexts. To test this hypothesis, the methodology combines discourse analysis conducted through a natural language processing algorithm (GPT-4 Turbo) with a predictive model based on Markov chains and neural networks, using a corpus of media content collected from more than 25 countries. This study contributes to the development of a tool capable of highlighting the issue of adaptive anticipation arising from various events that shape the relationship between two communicating systems or actors. In this case, one of the actors is Morocco as a nation-state, while the other is represented by media organizations from different geographical regions that covered the earthquake. Our analysis integrates both qualitative and quantitative data to identify potential correlations between the media treatment of the earthquake by outlets from each country or geographical area and Morocco’s political relations with the country of origin of the respective media organizations. This approach makes it possible to establish the foundations of a decision-support tool capable of simulating international media reactions toward a given actor in light of the historical parameters and prior interactions existing between the two actors under consideration.

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