Using Discourse Analysis on News Media Content

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Using Discourse Analysis on News Media Content

• Issues and Challenges
• By Shan Wu

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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

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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

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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

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Three Key Scholars

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

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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

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Foucaults System of Representation

• Criticisms
• No structured and comprehensive methodology
• Subject as mere product of discursive practices

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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

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Van Dijks Socio-Cognitive Approach

• Criticisms
• Ignores intertextual relations
• Difficult to compare across large number of texts
• Uncritical reproduction of power relations and
  ideologies

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Suggested Improvements

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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