A Critical Discourse Analysis of Hespress' News Articles on the Issue of Irregular Migration

Over the past few years, the arrival of social media has altered the Moroccan news media landscape. Online newspapers have become inescapable sources of information thanks to their accessibility and interactivity. Accordingly, this study adopts a Critical Discourse Analytical approach to investigate how Hespress, the most popular Moroccan online newspaper, represents the issue of irregular migration in the country. To uncover the hidden ideologies which reside in news discourse, this study focuses on the linguistic practices of the Hespress news articles as well as the contextual background surrounding them. The study takes a closer look at the thematic patterns and lexical paradigm used to represent the irregular migrants. It has been found that the online newspaper, Hespress, utilizes a humanitarian discourse to legitimate and justify the integration of the irregular migrants in the Moroccan society