Public discourse, the media, and international education in Canada

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 845-863
Author(s):  
Eunjung Lee ◽  
Bradyn Ko ◽  
Marjorie Johnstone
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
International Education ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Canadian Education ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Internationalization Of Education ◽  
The Media

The phenomenon of the internationalization of education has been prevalent in developed western countries, with varied and at times contested discourses about international education and students. We wonder how these discourses are constructed and contested in the media and further shape public opinions. Using the critical theories of language, power, and media, we analyzed 44 articles relevant to international education/students and their commentaries in the widely circulated Canadian newspapers. Our findings illustrate three dominant themes as the rhetoric of international education/students in Canada and how they are discursively constructed: (1) international education as a commodity; (2) international students as recipients of the generosity of Canada; and (3) international students as burden/harms to Canadian education/students as well as having moral deficits and being lawfully wrongdoers. This analysis highlights how international students are otherized, essentialized, and silenced as the voiceless despite their strong presence as the fastest growing migrant group in Canada with diverse identities and needs. We close with a discussion of the media analysis on international students as one such example of how dominance such as neoliberalism is taking up e-space like other public domains in social environments, which social workers deeply care about.

The discursive (mis)representation of English language proficiency

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Agnes Bodis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
International Students ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
International Education ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Proficiency ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
The Media

Abstract International education constitutes a key industry in Australia and international students represent a third of university students at Australian universities. This paper examines the media representation of international students in terms of their English language proficiency. The study applies Critical Discourse Analysis to the multimodal data of an episode of a current affairs TV program, Four Corners, and social media comments made to the episode. Using Social Actor Analysis, the study finds that the responsibility for declining standards at universities is assigned to international students through representations of their language use as problematic. This is supported by the visual representation of international students as different. By systematically mapping out the English-as-a-problem discourse, the paper finds that the media representation of language proficiency and language learning is simplistic and naïve and the social media discussion reinforces this. This further contributes to the discursive exclusion of international students.

ICERD in Malaysian online news reports: A cross-linguistic comparative corpus analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Siti Aeisha Joharry ◽  
Nor Diyana Saupi
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Online News ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Search Term ◽  
International Convention ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Media ◽  
Online Sources

The International Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which was not ratified in Malaysia, created a heated public discourse in the media. This cross-linguistic comparative study investigates the representation of ICERD in Malaysian news reports of two online sources in Malaysia – the widely read English portal: The Star Online, and its Malay equivalent: Berita Harian. A corpus-assisted discourse analysis was conducted to examine how news on ‘ICERD’ were reported in both English and Malay online newspapers. Initial comparative analysis of both newspapers revealed that the search term co-occurs statistically more frequently with the verb ‘ratify’ and its equivalent: ‘meratifikasi’. Patterns indicate that ‘ICERD’ was mostly referring to the act of sanctioning the agreement –particularly to ‘not ratify’ or ‘tidak akan meratifikasi’, which is concurrent with the timeframe of events. Interestingly, different patterns can be found in Berita Harian (e.g. the expression of ‘thanks’ or gratitude of not ratifying ICERD) that are not as revealing in The Star Online reports. Some inconsistencies were also reported between the two newspapers, e.g. referring to different ministers’ speech about the initial plan to ratify ICERD alongside five (The Star Online) or six (Berita Harian) other treaties in the following year.  

Austerity against the Homo Sovieticus

Focaal ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (59) ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Daiva Repečkait
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Shock Therapy ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Background ◽  
The Media ◽  
Economic Shock ◽  
Homo Sovieticus

This article analyzes the public discourse on the riots of 16 January 2009, in Vilnius, when protest against economic shock therapy ended in violent clashes with the police. Politicians and the media were quick to ethnicize the riots, claiming an “involvement of foreign influences” and noting that the rioters had been predominantly “Russian-speaking.” Analyzing electronic and print media, the article identifies a wider tendency, particularly among middle-class Lithuanian youth, of portraying the social class consisting of “losers of the post-soviet transition” as aggressive and primitive Others. A pseudo-ethnicity that combines Rus sian language and culture with lower-class background into a notion of homo sovieticus comes to stand for what is hindering the “clean up” of Lithuania and middleclass aspirations to form a new European identity. As such, the riots serve as a lens that illuminates the way ethnicity is flexibly utilized to shift political loyalties.

“The Only Thing I Am Guilty of Is Taking Too Many Jump Shots1”: A Deleuzian Media Analysis of Diana Taurasi’s Drug Charge in 2010

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Liao ◽  
Pirkko Markula
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
Basketball Player ◽  
Control Procedure ◽  
Professional Basketball ◽  
Drug Test ◽  
Amateur Sport ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Media

In November 2010, the US media reported that basketball player Diana Taurasi tested positive for a banned substance while playing in Turkey. In this study, we explore the media coverage of Taurasi’s positive drug test from a Deleuzian perspective. We consider the media coverage as an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Malins, 2004) to analyze how Taurasi’s drug using body is articulated with the elite female sporting body in the coverage of her doping incident (Markula, 2004; Wise, 2011). Our analysis demonstrates that Taurasi’s position as a professional basketball player in the US dominated the discussion to legitimize her exoneration of banned substance use. In addition, Turkey, its “amateur” sport and poor drug control procedure, was located to the periphery to normalize a certain type of professionalism, doping control, and body as the desirable elements of sporting practice.

Mental Health Ontologies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janna Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way

Mental health presents one of the defining public health challenges of our time. Proponents of different conceptions of what mental illness is wage war for the hearts and minds of patients, practitioners, policy-makers, and the public. Debate and fragmentation around the nature of the entities that feature in the mental health domain divide resources and reduce progress. The way mental health is publicly discussed in the media has tangible effects, in terms of stigma, access to healthcare and resources, and private expectations of recovery. This book explores in detail the sorts of statements that are made about mental health in the media and public reporting of scientific research, grounding them in the wider context of the theoretical frameworks, assumptions and metaphors that they draw from. The author shows how a holistic understanding of the way that different aspects of mental illness are interrelated can be developed from evidence-based interpretation of the latest research findings. She offers some ideas about corrective, integrative approaches to discussing mental health-related matters publicly that may reduce the opposition between conceptualisations while still aiming to reduce stigma, shame and blame. In particular, she emphasises that discourse in the media needs to be anchored to an overview of all the research results across the field and argues that this could be achieved using new technological infrastructures. The author provides an integrative account of what mental health is, together with an improved understanding of the factors driving the persistence of oppositional accounts in the public discourse. The book will be of benefit to researchers, practitioners and students in the domain of mental health.

A Tale of Two Events? Media Analysis of the Melbourne 2008 Homeless World Cup

2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Sherry ◽  
Angela Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
World Cup ◽  
Sporting Event ◽  
The Media ◽  
Australian City

In 2008, Melbourne became the first Australian city to host the Homeless World Cup (HWC), an annual international sporting event that aims to raise the profile of homelessness and social marginalisation. This article first examines relevant print media articles relating to the HWC by identifying key themes through thematic and content analysis. It then examines the polarised reporting of the HWC by two print media outlets, The Age and the Herald Sun, and argues that each outlet's coverage served to reinforce its own established position on the key political and social issues, in this instance homelessness, asylum seeking and immigration. The divergence in the discourses constructed in each paper provides a demonstrative example of the capacity of the media to use events of all sorts to consolidate their political and commercial positions.

scholarly journals The Perils of Commercialism: Australia's Example

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Altbach ◽  
Anthony Welch
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
International Students ◽  
International Education ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Academic Integrity ◽  
International Higher Education ◽  
Recent Policy

International higher education has become a major income producer for Australia for more than two decades. The prime goal of internationalization was moneymaking, which resulted in creating problems in ethics, quality, and academic integrity. The recent policy change in reducing international students has affected institutions that had been too dependent upon high proportions of international enrollments. All of this is a predictable outcome of commercialism shaping international education.

scholarly journals The Comparative Academic Performance of International Students in Australia

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan John Olsen ◽  
Zena Burgess ◽  
Rajeev Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Academic Performance ◽  
International Students ◽  
International Education ◽  
Foreign Students ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Education Professionals ◽  
The Right ◽  
Australian Universities

International students do just as well as Australian students. This is the key finding from a study of the academic performance of 338,000 full-time students at 22 Australian uni- versities in 2003. The results of the study are important to international education professionals globally at a time when there have been allegations that Australian universities were dropping stan- dards to favor foreign students. The Sydney Morning Herald claimed in June 2005 to have found evidence of quality falling at universities to cater to international students with poor English seeking degrees so as to be accepted for migration. The research proved these allegations to be untrue. Australian students passed 89.4 percent of courses attempted, international students 88.8 percent. The results suggest that in their recruitment of international students Australian universities set their standards at about the right level.

Issue Emergence, Evolution of Controversy, and Implications for Competitive Framing

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Franklin Fowler ◽  
Sarah E. Gollust ◽  
Amanda F. Dempsey ◽  
Paula M. Lantz ◽  
Peter A. Ubel
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Hpv Vaccine ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
The Media ◽  
External Events ◽  
Insight Into

Although scholarship on competitive framing acknowledges that framing is a dynamic process in which the early stages may matter most, very little research has focused on the dynamics of issue emergence. In this article, we draw on several literatures to develop theories for how controversy related to new issues will emerge and expand in news coverage. Through a comprehensive content analysis of 101 local newspapers across the fifty U.S. states, we explore the dynamic and evolving process wherein a new issue—the HPV vaccine—emerged into public discourse and a legislative debate over school requirements for vaccination began. We find that coverage of controversy is a function of proximity, driven primarily by events within a state, although external events also influence local coverage. We also find that the legislative discussion in the media did not necessarily start out as controversial, but as the issue evolved, we observe a large increase in the proliferation of both actors taking positions and the types of arguments made to influence debate. The findings yield important insight into issue emergence with implications for how future research might test competing frames to better understand how the presentation of controversy in the mass media affects public opinion.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document