scholarly journals Women’s Rights and the Feminists’ “Dirty Plans”: Media Discourses During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia

Affilia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 088610992096082
Author(s):  
Anna Andreeva ◽  
Nataliia Drozhashchikh ◽  
Galina Nelaeva

In this brief, the authors examine Russian media discourses on domestic violence during the COVID-19 global pandemic. With the introduction of restrictive measures against the virus, such as physical distancing measures, cordoning off cities, a 2-week travel quarantine, and others, media reports started to emphasize growing numbers of domestic violence cases and the insufficiency of measures to help the victims. Russian media frequently linked the incidents of violence under lockdown to the absence of adequate legislative measures. Importantly, Russian media reports referenced a proposed draft law on domestic violence that had been actively debated throughout the second half of 2019 but was not adopted. Traditionalist groups, who believed the special law was not necessary, countered media reports insisting that family remained the safest place for people under the pandemic. Drawing on a constructivist paradigm and using critical discourse analysis and content analysis, this article examines media representations of domestic violence during the COVID-19 health pandemic, as well as media narratives over the perception of the state faced with the two insurmountable tasks: to contain the epidemic and protect the most vulnerable members of the society. We argue that despite the increasing influence of traditionalist ideas in Russian foreign and domestic policy-making, the COVID-19 pandemic can provide human rights activists and social workers with a renewed opportunity to frame the necessity of a special domestic violence law as means to protect the interests of the most vulnerable members of the society during crisis situations.

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
Zhide Hou

This article studies the media representations of Shenzhen’s global image by adopting the corpus-based critical discourse analysis. Previous studies mainly analyze the shaping, publicity and construction of Shenzhen’s image from the perspective of urban culture and development and news dissemination. However, media construction on the global image of Shenzhen is empirical and noticeable. The findings demonstrate favorable representations of Shenzhen’s image associated with technology powerhouse, manufacturing heartland, industrial boomtown, jewelry fair advantages and giant headquarters economy in general. Negative representations associated with Shenzhen Stock trading drop, landslide accident and Apple’s Foxconn problems are amplified in media discourses.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110537
Author(s):  
Maria Paola Pofi ◽  
Leung Wing-Fai

Italy was one of the first European countries affected by the Covid-19 pandemic after the beginning of the outbreak in China in January 2020. Applying critical discourse analysis and theories of the mediation of suffering, this article explores the discursive strategies used by the Italian media to represent China and Chinese people in relation to the outbreak in the early stage of the pandemic. Employing the theoretical frameworks of Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and other thinkers on biopolitics, racism, and emergency, the results bring to light the persistent ideologies behind the media representations of an imagined Other, which reflect existing discourses toward the Chinese community in Italy. In this study, the contentious discourses around China and the Chinese amidst the pandemic reveal the role of the Italian media in presenting risks, mediating suffering as a distant event and, later, as a national concern.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174804852098744
Author(s):  
Ke Li ◽  
Qiang Zhang

Media representations have significant power to shape opinions and influence public response to communities or groups around the world. This study investigates media representations of Islam and Muslims in the American media, drawing upon an analysis of reports in the New York Times over a 17-year period (from Jan.1, 2000 to Dec. 31, 2016) within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. It examines how Islam and Muslims are represented in media coverage and how discursive power is penetrated step by step through such media representations. Most important, it investigates whether Islam and Muslims have been stigmatized through stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. The findings reveal that the New York Times’ representations of Islam and Muslims are negative and stereotypical: Islam is stereotyped as the unacclimatized outsider and the turmoil maker and Muslims as the negative receiver. The stereotypes contribute to people’s prejudice, such as Islamophobia from the “us” group and fear of the “them” group but do not support a strong conclusion of discrimination.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052199746
Author(s):  
Ella Kuskoff ◽  
Andrew Clarke ◽  
Cameron Parsell

In an international policy context that is increasingly recognizing the gendered nature of domestic violence, governments are becoming more attuned to the importance of improving policy responses for women who have domestic violence enacted against them. This has not, in general, been accompanied by a similar focus on improving policy responses to men who engage in domestic violence, despite a burgeoning body of scholarship suggesting that improved responses to such men are required to more effectively prevent domestic violence from occurring. Importantly, current scholarship also highlights the significant and complex tensions that may arise when policy informed by gendered understandings of domestic violence increases its focus on the men who enact it. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis methodology, we analyze how these tensions are negotiated in domestic violence policy in the Australian state of Queensland. Findings from this analysis demonstrate that the way government policy discursively constructs men who engage in domestic violence has important implications for how such policy targets and engages with members of this group. The article demonstrates that when such men are constructed as outsiders to the community, they may be viewed as undeserving of inclusion and support. This can result in governments failing to prioritize interventions targeted at men who engage in domestic violence, and prevent the active inclusion of such men in the development of policy and interventions. These findings provide important lessons for international governments seeking to implement or strengthen policy responses to end domestic violence against women.


Author(s):  
Ebuka Elias Igwebuike

Abstract Nigerian media reports on herdsmen’s violence present dehumanised images of a slaughterhouse in which farmers are represented as animals being slaughtered by herders. Using a critical discourse analysis and appraisal framework, with a focus on the systems of attitude and graduation, this paper critically examines media representation of herdsmen’s violence as “butchering” in the form of carnism. Analysis reveals that carnist representation is reinforced through death-dealing socio-cognitive labelling, attitudinal lexicalisation and strands of carnism. Also, using attitude and graduation resources, a one-directional and horrific image is painted. The study concludes that the creation as well as consumption of such scary news cultivates cognitive prejudices and stereotypes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1036-1057
Author(s):  
Muireann Prendergast

While the importance of journalism in memory studies has often been overlooked in academic scholarship, media discourses can be considered ‘memory’s precondition’ on both active and passive levels. First, journalists record events as they happen building on narratives and testimonies. Second, sometimes decades later, these can be invoked in legal and social post-dictatorship processes. Applying the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis to memory studies, this research explores the relationship between counter-journalism and counter-memories as a response to and rejection of the ‘echo chamber’ of authoritarian discourse which dominated the mainstream media and promoted official memory during Argentina’s last dictatorship. The methodological approach of the study is mixed, combining qualitative synchronic-diachronic text analysis with a corpus analysis of concordance lines to trace strategies of counter-discourse in two newspapers which opposed the dictatorship. The motivations of their editor-journalists for challenging official discourse and institutional memory in the climate of state terrorism are framed in the context of Margalit’s ‘moral witnessing’.


Author(s):  
Julio Renato SÁEZ GALLARDO

El objetivo de este trabajo es proponer un Modelo holístico multimodal para una lectura crítica del racismo en la prensa escrita. Para ello, desde el Análisis Crítico del Discurso Multimodal (ACDM), usaremos como estrategia teórico-metodológica integradora las aportaciones de Teresa Velázquez (2011) y su modelo semiótico-discursivo; el modelo sociocognitivo de van Dijk (1990, 1997, 2003a, 2003b); el modelo de la semiótica visual de Kress y van Leeuwen (1996) y el modelo intersemiótico de Nikolajeva y Scott (2001). Se validarán las matrices de análisis aplicándolas al llamado conflicto mapuche en Chile para extraer resultados y conclusiones valederas en torno a la representación periodística de las minorías étnicas. Abstract: This work aims to propose a holistic multimodal approach for making critical reading about racism in the written press. In order to achieve this, and taking account the Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we use as theoretical and methodological integrative strategies the contributions of Teresa Velázquez and her discursive-semiotic approach (2011), van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach (1990, 1997a, 2003a, 2003b), Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual semiotics approach (1996), and Nikolakeva and Scott’s intersemiotic approach (2001). The analysis matrices are validated using the so-called mapuche conflict in Chile in order to be able to draw conclusive results and conclusions about media representations of ethnic minorities.


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (04) ◽  
pp. A01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Asplund

This article examines communicative aspects of climate change, identifying and analysing metaphors used in specialized media reports on climate change, and discussing the aspects of climate change these metaphors emphasize and neglect. Through a critical discourse analysis of the two largest Swedish farm magazines over the 2000–2009 period, this study finds that greenhouse, war, and game metaphors were the most frequently used metaphors in the material. The analysis indicates that greenhouse metaphors are used to ascribe certain natural science characteristics to climate change, game metaphors to address positive impacts of climate change, and war metaphors to highlight negative impacts of climate change. The paper concludes by discussing the contrasting and complementary metaphorical representations farm magazines use to conventionalize climate change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 503-519
Author(s):  
Rajaa Hamid Salih

The incorporation of conceptual metaphor study and assessment in the broader process of critical discourse analysis represents a relatively recent development. At one level, this process can be viewed as an outcome that derives from the broader purpose and scope of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The main objective of this article is to understand how metaphors may unconsciously shape people's perception of the world. It is understood that metaphors may play a prominent role in shaping public perception of important topics especially in politics, journals or media discourses. People are exposed to many more metaphors than they may even realize on a daily basis.


Author(s):  
Liu Ming ◽  
Guofeng Wang

Abstract Protests and social movements have become part of Hong Kong’s local politics since the 1970s. However, protests against the proposed extradition bill in 2019‒20 turned out to be the most violent political mass movement in Hong Kong after its return to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. It not only drew wide international attention but also evoked another round of “news war” over Hong Kong (Lee et al. 2002). This special issue collects six articles which address the representations of the protests in Hong Kong by different parties on different media platforms. Adopting a critical discourse analysis approach, these studies examine discursive strategies employed in media representations of the protests and the ideologies and power struggles at play. It aims to present different perspectives towards the issue and shed light on the complex relations between language, media and politics in the representations of the Hong Kong protests.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document