scholarly journals Country images and identities in times of populism: Swiss media discourses on the ‘stop mass immigration’ initiative

2020 ◽  
pp. 174804852091346
Author(s):  
Alina Dolea ◽  
Diana Ingenhoff ◽  
Anabella Beju
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Strategic Communication ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Stop Mass ◽  
Media Discourses

The construction of certain country images and identities is traditionally studied in relation to public diplomacy, strategic communication and nation branding practices of state and non-state actors. However, we notice the increased instrumentalization of country images and identities in debates on issues beyond strategic promotional practices, such as those articulated around elections, referendums or migration. We analyse how Swiss media constructed Switzerland's image and identity in the debate following the 2014 referendum on ‘stop mass immigration’ initiative, in times of populism, a communication phenomenon and ideology discursively articulated by political and media actors. Thus, we: (1) bridge streams of research on country images, identities, migration and populism that have yet to be integrated; (2) propose critical discourse analysis to identify specific discursive strategies (offering insights into alternative methodologies for studying populist political communication content and style); (3) highlight the role of media in reproducing populist discourses on country images and identities.

scholarly journals Responses to health risk and suffering: ‘China’ in the Italian media discourses during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110537
Author(s):  
Maria Paola Pofi ◽  
Leung Wing-Fai
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses

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.

scholarly journals Articulation of resistance in the discourse of the 1996/97 Serbian protests: Political struggle through culture and symbolic geography

Sociologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 476-496
Author(s):  
Tamara Petrovic-Trifunovic
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Symbolic Geography ◽  
The Us

The present article analyzes the discursive articulation of resistance to the regime of Slobodan Milosevic during the civil and student protests in Serbia in the winter of 1996/97. By applying critical discourse analysis to the opposition press of the time, we find that the rhetoric during the protests centered around the notions of civilization and culture. In variations of orientalism, balkanism and ?urbocentric exclusivism,? the ?Us? and ?Them? identifications were constructed through mutually interlaced semantic pairs: civilization - backwardness, culture - primitivism, Europe - Balkans/Orient, urbanity - rurality and democracy - communism. By drawing on existing research on the role of symbolic geography and cultural distinctions in the creation of social cleavages in the post-Yugoslav societies, our analysis presents how cultural traits and affiliations, ?urbanity? and individual characteristics, such as intelligence, critical ability and sense of humor, were used for the framing of protests, but also as means of political struggle in the protests. A detailed reconstruction of discursive strategies of reporting on the protests allows for a contemporary assessment of the limits of protest politics articulated in this way, and its comparison with a recent wave of mobilization of citizens of Serbia in 2016 and 2017.

Victimhood in the Face of Media Ideological Battle: A Critical Discourse Analysis on the British Media's Coverage of Stabbing Incidents in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Cynthia Wang
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
British Society ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
The Impact

This article intends to reveal the power dimensions and ideological positions embedded in dominant media discourses. Informed by theories of media representation as well as those of colonialism and Orientalism, this article analyses eight articles from two British daily online news media sources, namely, The Guardian and The Telegraph. The methodological framework adopted draws on Fairclough's (1995) conception of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine textual features, and employs Bazzi's contextual analysis model with an emphasis on ideology. These methodologies are utilised in an effort to investigate the British media's representational and discursive strategies concerning a wave of stabbing incidents in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the six-month violence between October 2015 and March 2016. The results indicate that violent actions are framed in a binary fashion, between self and other, and that the discursive strategies employed position Palestinian subjects as unworthy victims or violent initiators, whereas Israelis were represented relatively positively, in order to inscribe the accepted values in British society and foreign policy. This article attempts to contribute to the discussion on the impact of media agencies embedded within a particular societal and political context, and comments upon their ability to foster and disseminate hegemonic ideologies, which in turn reinforce systemic power inequalities in times of conflict.

scholarly journals Curative, regenerating, redemptive and liberating? The systematic production of ignorance in Michael Gove’s rhetoric on prison reform at a time of crisis

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-105
Author(s):  
Chloe Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Progressive Reform ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Conservative Government

Prisons are in a moment of crisis, with a number of recent high-profile scandals receiving substantial media attention and threatening to undermine the hegemony of the institution. At the same time, the work of the current Conservative Government on criminal justice policy as a whole, and on prisons in particular, has been seen by many as a marked departure from their previous penal policy agenda, heralding a new, progressive and broadly liberal direction. Focusing on Michael Gove’s rhetoric on prison reform during his term as Justice Secretary (May 2015 to July 2016), this article uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine how Gove employed a variety of discursive strategies to create an impression of a liberal, progressive reform agenda, while simultaneously reinforcing the need for an expansive and punitive prison system. Building on recent work on agnotology, it shows that Gove strategically selected, deflected, distorted and ignored the available evidence on prisons. In doing so, he effectively legitimized and reinforced the central role of the prison in the criminal justice system despite increasing evidence of its inefficacy, foreclosing discussion of genuinely radical alternatives.

scholarly journals The Hidden Grand Narrative of Western Military Policy: A Linguistic Analysis of American Strategic Communication

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-62
Author(s):  
Saara Jantunen ◽  
Aki-Mauri Huhtinen
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Strategic Communication ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
Military Studies ◽  
Art Of War ◽  
Friendly Fire ◽  
The Military ◽  
As Effects

Abstract Strategic communication has replaced information warfare. As Art of War has been replaced by science, the representations of war and the role of the military have changed. Both war and military forces are now associated with binary roles: destruction vs. humanity, killing vs. liberating. The logic behind ‘bombing for peace’ is encoded in the Grand Military Narrative. This narrative is hidden in American (and NATO) strategies such as Effects Based Operations, which rely heavily on technology. As people aim to rationalize the world with technology, they fail to take into account the uncertainty it brings. In warfare, that uncertainty is verbalized as “friendly fire”, “collateral damage” or simply as “accident”. Success and failure are up to technology. Technology is no longer a tool, but an ideology and an actor that not only ‘enables’ the military to take action, but legitimizes it. This article aims to contribute to military studies by analyzing, in the spirit of critical discourse analysis, American ‘Grand Military Narrative’ and he standard and trends of rhetoric it creates. The article focuses on pinpointing some of the linguistic choices and discourses that define the so-called ‘techno-speak’, the product of modern techno-ideology. These discourses result in representations of techno-centered binary values, which steer military strategy and foreign policy.

The question of power in language classes from a critical discourse analysis perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-570
Author(s):  
Esmat Babaii ◽  
Abbas Parsazadeh ◽  
Hassan Moradi
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Classroom Talk ◽  
Experienced Teacher ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Efl Context ◽  
Language Classes

Abstract Informed by the major tenets of critical discourse analysis, the present study attempted to expose the chasm between veteran English teachers enjoying a nation-wide popularity and those linguistically talented novices achieving locally mediocre fame in the Iranian EFL context. In so doing, two highly competent English teachers, each as a prime example of the above-mentioned camps, were selected to serve as the main participants of the research. The analysis of their classroom talk indicated that linguistic excellence could not fulfill the role of educated experience as far as discourse competence was concerned. In all, the discursive strategies used by the experienced teacher seemed to manifest his recognition of students' voices and created a more heteroglossic atmosphere in the classroom.

scholarly journals The Enemy Next Door: The Image of Russia in Georgian and Ukrainian Political Discourses Amid Conflicts Escalation

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-203
Author(s):  
Aram Terzyan
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Image Representation ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The Core ◽  
Standing Up

Abstract This article presents an analysis of the evolution of Russia’s image representation in Georgian and Ukrainian political discourses amid Russian-Georgian and Russian-Ukrainian conflicts escalation. Even though Georgia’s and Ukraine’s troubled relations with neighboring Russia have been extensively studied, there has been little attention to the ideational dimensions of the confrontations, manifested in elite narratives, that would redraw the discursive boundaries between “Us” and “Them.” This study represents an attempt to fill the void, by examining the core narratives of the enemy, along with the discursive strategies of its othering in Georgian and Ukrainian presidential discourses through critical discourse analysis. The findings suggest that the image of the enemy has become a part of “New Georgia’s” and “New Ukraine’s” identity construction - inherently linked to the two countries’ “choice for Europe.” Russia has been largely framed as Europe’s other, with its “inherently imperial,” “irremediably aggressive” nature and adherence to illiberal, non-democratic values. The axiological and moral evaluations have been accompanied by the claims that the most effective way of standing up to the enemy’s aggression is the “consolidation of democratic nations,” coming down to the two countries’ quests for EU and NATO membership.

Constructing the myth of protest masculinity in Chinese English language news media

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yating Yu ◽  
Mark Nartey
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
English Language ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
Chinese Media ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Media

Although the Chinese media’s construction of unmarried citizens as ‘leftover’ has incited much controversy, little research attention has been given to the ways ‘leftover men’ are represented in discourse. To fill this gap, this study performs a critical discourse analysis of 65 English language news reports in Chinese media to investigate the predominant gendered discourses underlying representations of leftover men and the discursive strategies used to construct their identities. The findings show that the media perpetuate a myth of ‘protest masculinity’ by suggesting that poor, single men may become a threat to social harmony due to the shortage of marriageable women in China. Leftover men are represented as poor men, troublemakers and victims via discursive processes that include referential, predicational and aggregation strategies as well as metaphor. This study sheds light on the issues and concerns of a marginalised group whose predicament has not been given much attention in the literature.

Maximising Soft Power: the Role of Digital Diplomacy in Building Trust with Nation-Branding

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jess Gosling
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
Building Trust ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Digital Diplomacy

Perceptions of attractiveness and trustworthiness impact the prosperity and influence of countries. A country's soft power is not guaranteed. Countries have their brands, an image shaped by the behaviour of governments, by what they do and say, whom they associate with, and how they conduct themselves on the global stage. Increasingly, digital diplomacy plays a crucial role in the creation and application of soft power. This paper argues that digital diplomacy is increasingly vital in the articulation of soft power. Digital diplomacy is a new way of conducting public diplomacy, offering new and unparalleled ways of building trust with previously disengaged audiences. Soft power is now the driving force behind reputation and influence on the global stage, where increasingly digital diplomacy plays an essential role.

Embracing a New Day

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-38
Author(s):  
Phillip Joy ◽  
Matthew Numer ◽  
Sara F. L. Kirk ◽  
Megan Aston
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The City

The construction of masculinities is an important component of the bodies and lives of gay men. The role of gay culture on body standards, body dissatisfaction, and the health of gay men was explored using poststructuralism and queer theory within an arts-based framework. Nine gay men were recruited within the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants were asked to photograph their beliefs, values, and practices relating to their bodies and food. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, using the photographs as guides. Data were analyzed by critical discourse analysis and resulted in three overarching threads of discourse including: (1) Muscles: The Bigger the Better, (2) The Silence of Hegemonic Masculinity, and (3) Embracing a New Day. Participants believed that challenging hegemonic masculinity was a way to work through body image tension.

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