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Using Discourse Analysis on News Media Content

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Title: Using Discourse Analysis on News Media Content


1
Using Discourse Analysis on News Media Content
  • Issues and Challenges
  • By Shan Wu

2
Overview
  • Defining discourse analysis
  • Discourse and Power
  • Three key discourse analytical frameworks
  • Michel Foucault
  • Teun A. van Dijk
  • Norman Fairclough
  • Flaws of existing frameworks for analysis of news
    media texts
  • Critique of suggested improvements

3
Defining Discourse Analysis
  • Two main definitions
  • As social action and interaction between human
    agents
  • As social construction of reality that creates a
    knowledge system influences our social practice
    and relations
  • Effective qualitative supplement to quantitative
    content analysis
  • Considers link between media content and wider
    sociopolitical framework

4
Discourse and Power
  • Discourse linked to power and social interests
  • Language use and social practice framed by
    institutions
  • Institutions determine rules and and positions of
    agents

5
Three Key Scholars
  • Michel Foucaults system of representation
  • Teun van Dijks socio-cognitive approach
  • Norman Faircloughs critical discourse analysis

6
Foucaults System of Representation
  • Discourse as system of representation
  • Discourse Knowledge Power
  • Discursive formation can sustain regime of
    truth
  • Subjects constructed through discourse
  • Opposes Marxist theory of ideology
  • Intertextuality and interdiscursivity

7
Foucaults System of Representation
  • Criticisms
  • No structured and comprehensive methodology
  • Subject as mere product of discursive practices

8
Van Dijks Socio-Cognitive Approach
  • Reducing textual info to fundamental themes
  • On thematic level
  • Looks at overall description of text/
    macrostructures
  • Reduces complicated info to macro-propositions
  • On schematic level
  • Analyse schematic structures that influence form
    of the text

9
Van Dijks Socio-Cognitive Approach
  • Criticisms
  • Ignores intertextual relations
  • Difficult to compare across large number of texts
  • Uncritical reproduction of power relations and
    ideologies

10
Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis
  • Discourses influence social relations and
    knowledge systems through language
  • Group together to form discursive order
  • Discourse analysis analysis of discursive event
    analysis of discursive order
  • Three dimensions
  • Analysis of 1) language texts, 2) discourse
    practice, 3) discursive events as instances of
    sociocultural practice
  • Impt terms Discourse practice, intertextuality

11
Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis
  • Criticisms
  • Textual-oriented approach
  • Over-ambitious methodical frame
  • Questionable linkage between textual description
    and interpretation
  • Lack of understanding of human agency

12
Discourse Analysis for News
  • Shaping presentation of media texts
  • Professional ideology of journalists, news
    organizations
  • State and corporate pressures
  • Ownership of media
  • Profit motivation of news organization

13
Discourse Analysis for News
  • Key considerations neglected in current
    frameworks
  • Origins of competing discourses
  • Presence of divergent social accounts
  • Influence of external factors
  • Meaning of the text to different audiences

14
Discourse Analysis for News
  • Other issues
  • Accuracy of representations
  • Views included/ excluded in a text
  • Rhetoric of political stories
  • Time-sensitivity
  • Interaction between discourse and social
    realities Circulation of meaning

15
Suggested Improvements
  • Carvalho (2000)
  • Textual analysis
  • Language and rhetoric
  • Discursive strategies and processes
  • Ideological standpoints
  • (Surface descriptors, objects, actors)
  • Contextual Analysis
  • Comparative-synchronic analysis
  • Historical-diachronic analysis

16
Suggested Improvements
  • Pros
  • Intertextual and contextual
  • Time-sensitive
  • Accounts for journalistic intervention
  • Cons
  • Neglects production processes of text and
    audience reception

17
Suggested Improvements
  • Greg Philo (2007), Glasgow University Media Group
  • Interviews and focus groups with journalists and
    audiences
  • E.g. Coverage of Israeli-Palestinian conflict in
    the UK

18
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Reports on killing of young Palestinian boy Mohd
    Al-Durrah in Oct 2000
  • Images of him and his father crouched against
    wall widely shown

19
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Israelis issued statement that boys death was
    unintentional
  • Israelis focused on war on terror Israel as
    threatened and responding to attacks
  • Palestinians rejected this account
  • Israeli view dominant in news

20
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Influences on UK journalists
  • Strong support in US for Israel
  • Close political link between UK and US
  • Well-organized lobbying and public relations
  • Views of political and public figures
  • Aim for balance Sympathetic, acknowledge boy
    killed by Israelis

21
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Audience reception of messages
  • Reproduced content and structure of news progs
  • Little reference to Palestinian viewpoint
  • Reproduced structure and sequence of accounts
    based on news reports
  • Reorganized memories to give meaning to the event

22
Conclusion
  • Need to analyze media texts against total system
  • Consider processes of production, content,
    reception and circulation
  • Comprehensive discourse analysis Better
    understanding of generation and reproduction of
    social meanings through news media
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