Proxies in Print: Strategic Narratives of the Sudan Conflict in Digital Media

The Sudanese civil war exemplifies how contemporary proxy conflicts are fiercely contested within digital information ecologies. Utilizing strategic narrative theory, this study examines the structural weaponization of transnational journalism to construct the geopolitical ontology of state collapse. An interpretive analysis of 402 English-language articles from Qatar’s Al Jazeera English , the UAE’s The National , and the US’s The New York Times reveals significant divergences in narrative projection. The New York Times frames the crisis through a “global instability” index, actively legitimizing US-led diplomatic intervention. Al Jazeera English deploys an identity narrative of “state victimhood” to delegitimize rival paramilitaries and subtextually indict competing Gulf patrons. In stark contrast, The National exercises “humanitarian obfuscation,” actively depoliticizing the disaster to shield Emirati proxy interventions from international scrutiny. These findings demonstrate that democratic and authoritarian regimes alike systematically co-opt digital news platforms as soft power arsenals to dictate the geopolitical imaginaries of the Global South.