scholarly journals Construing The Great Fire of London through online media: A case of exploring discourse semantics and register

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 406-419
Author(s):  
Lungguh Ariang Bangga

This paper considers the exploration of genre and register of historical texts recontextualised in online media and school textbooks through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics especially by exploring their discourse semantics and register features. Particularly, this paper shows how the relation between discourse semantics resources and register variables contribute to the overall organisation of the recontextualized history genres. This paper provides a detailed qualitative analysis of discourse semantics as instantiated in the deployment of APPRAISAL, IDEATION, IDENTIFICATION, and PERIODICITY to give a clearer picture of how history genres in the media are established. A set of corpora consisting of historical texts from online media and school textbooks was used as a main source of data in this study. The historical texts collected from online media were from various platforms including online newspapers, online magazines, encyclopaedia entries, and universities websites/blogs. For the illustrative purposes, two texts from the corpora were selected for a detailed analysis using the discourse semantics toolkits to find out similarities and differences in terms how an historical event – The Great Fire of London – was established.  The analysis found that there was a tendency that historical events could be reconstrued in the media through different ways. The first text informs readers about the fire and its significance in a chronological manner. The second text provides an explanation of the influence of the Great Fire to other historical events. This paper also suggests that history genres tend to be ‘evolving’ as reproduced in varied media discourses. Though still at the infancy stage, this paper offers a great insight into how genres are organised in relation to the choices in register variables and discourse semantics.

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 71-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darius Matas

The considerable number of refugees fleeing to Europe has an impact on countries’ economic, political and social agenda, as well as the processes of society. The European refugee (migrant) crisis, which began in 2015, brought out not only different attitudes toward refugees among Eu­ropean Union politicians, but also revealed how diverse the coverage of na­tional media may get on the refugee topic. Refugees flee to Europe from various countries and diverse cultural back­grounds. However, society lacks the knowledge about their religious beliefs, lifestyles and outlooks. Moreover, the media has the power to decide which events and individuals to portray, and in such a way constructs the audi­ence’s perception about the world they live in. Refugee-related messages in the media usually occur in a negative context: terrorist attacks, refugee deaths, criminal activity and protests. However, the media does not only construct, but also has the power to change prejudice toward refugees, ensuring that one of its aims is interaction between diverse social groups. The author combines quantitative and qualitative research methods for media messages and analyzes dominant stereotypes about refugees in Lithu­anian online media. The types of refugee-related publications are also exam­ined. Three research periods were chosen: 1-31 July 2015, 1-30 November 2015 and 1-31 January 2016. The main goals are to theoretically discuss the media’s role and peculiarities in shaping certain images which society main­tains, as well as to define the stereotypes and their role in society. Lithuanian online newspapers are commercial institutions, which – in order to compete in the market – strive to engage consumers. Delivering mes­sages quickly and in large quantities often matters more than their content and the reliability of sources. This, in turn, leads to the information being distorted or superficial. Lithuanian newspapers construct a negative refugee image, where the most dominant images of refugees are as individuals who are uncontrollable, aggressive and prone to commit crime, being either gang members, terrorists or benefit recipients.


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
Vladimír Patráš

AbstractThe main line of the study is bound to the conditions, demonstrations and effects of colloquiality (colloquialization) parameter that has been applied in the current electronic media communication sphere. Colloquiality as a non-verbal, structural and compositional attribute of a piece of communication is primarily present in the open, semi- and non-official communication contacts with direct, immediate involvement of their participants. In traditional print journalism built on the verified principles of printedness/ writtenness, colloquiality occurs as a secondary, accompanying attribute of the media communication pieces. Regardless of the genre affiliation of the newspaper products, it helps perform their, e.g., documentary, persuasive, captivating, characterizing, relieving or aesthetic functions. Apart from the parameter of printedness, both mainstream and alternative (complementary) online media generally calculate upon the advanced options of the visual code systems. Thus, language-based online newspapers are easily supplemented with simultaneous, additional, or substitutional means and procedures of cinematographic origin, e.g., a surprising choice, dynamic edition, purpose-made superposition of the text, audio and video sequences being applied through hyperlinking, audiovisual effects, etc. Besides, accompanying dialogization and consequent de-officialization of online newspapers are changing conventional characteristics of the journalistic style. The expanding zone of colloquiality loosens the standards of codified language in written/printed communication. Boundaries between the varieties in the framework of language stratification are already easily penetrable. The material base and argument platform of the study consist of author texts published in the Slovak online alternative news media.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Savvas Neocleous

Few, if any, rulers in twelfth-century Christendom received as much attention by contemporary chroniclers as the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos (1183–85). Even though Andronikos ruled for less than three years, his rise to power, reign of terror, downfall and gruesome death at the hands of the lynch mob of Constantinople struck contemporaries. In contrast to medieval chroniclers, modern historians have shown little interest in this emperor. While some scholarly attention has been paid to the Greek sources in order to reconstruct the historical facts of Andronikos’s reign, there has been little focus on the Greek historians’ perceptions and representations of their ruler. As to the relatively large number of Latin accounts of Andronikos’s reign, these have been either completely disregarded by historians or dismissed as ‘full of imagined conversations and romantic fictions’ and therefore as being of limited value for the reconstruction of historical events. All these accounts, however, are important, among others, in giving great insight into how a harsh and oppressive rule was viewed in both Byzantium and the Latin world in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. This article examines accusations of tyranny against Andronikos expressed uniformly across Byzantine, French, German–Austrian and English accounts, and explores their meaning and function. To gain a greater appreciation of their significance, these accusations against the Byzantine emperor are subsequently cast against the backdrop of charges of tyranny levelled against other Christian rulers in twelfth-century Christendom. Therefore, the significance of this article extends beyond Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire to the evolution of many other strands of political philosophy of rulership in medieval European history.1


2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela D. Schulz

This article, which is built on media discourse analysis, provides an insight into how public opinion on the work of courts has developed into a discourse of disapproval. The discourse of time is often used to evaluate the work of courts and tends to meet with disapproval when related to sentencing and when the Family Court fails to deliver equal parental access to children. The Family Court is also the subject of discourses of fear within the media, with stories often focusing on child abuse and horror stories of neglect designed to attract and recruit an audience to media outlets. In addition, the discourses facing the Family Court are now firmly tied to time as a major aspect of decision-making. Because of this contested view, child protection may be reduced to a secondary perspective. This paper recommends a change to discourses surrounding courts by all parties in order to facilitate better understanding.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Adi Saputra ◽  
Anis Endang SM ◽  
Bayu Risdiyanto

The news delivered is various, including news about crime. Crime is always interesting to broadcast and of course a lot of public interest and is constructed to produce interesting news and broadcast in the media, including online media. This study aims to explain and find out the discourse from the news of the case of one family in CurupTimur conducted by the online newspapers BETVNews.com, Harian Rakyat Bengkulu.comand BengkuluToday.com. This research uses descriptive qualitative method andTeunA Van Dijk's discourse analysis theory by conducting interviews, observations and documentation. The results of this study indicate that between the three media each gives an overview of the discourse of the case BETVNews.com focuses more on the chronological facts of events in more detail. Whereas Harian Rakyat Bengkulufrom the point of news is more balanced between the perpetrators and victims, it is more about how to get balanced news, and for a more flexible title, it is not limited by space and the format must be interesting to read. And finally, BengkuluToday.com reporting is made by prioritizing dramatic news writing, because this case is a criminal incident..


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 230-244
Author(s):  
Iryna Denysenko ◽  
Olena Skalatska ◽  
Oleg Parkhitko

The specificity of misinformation about Covid-19 which was outspread in the media landscape of Ukrainian society was demonstrated in the article. The authors relying on the basics of postmodern theory within interdisciplinary discourse trace the means of forming misinformation and its influence on changing worldview landmarks of humanity. The authors underline that information in the postmodern conception of Jean Baudrillard is also capable to destroy its own content, communication and social ground. Misinformation about Covid-19 is «a stage setting of communication» since it only creates insight into sense and is outspreaded with different channels (traditional and new media) with usage of photographic and video materials, emotional headlines and messages. Fake materials which have been outspreaded in online media and social networks are analyzed in the article. The authors found out that fake messages outspreaded in Ukrainian media refer to the following topic (the origin of Covid-19; frauds under the guise of doctors try to get the money of nationals; fictional money penalties for breaking the rules of quarantine; pseudomedical recommendations for taking some medicines and means of diagnosis Covid-19; statements of public authorities about strengthening the regime of quarantine; the speed of spreading Covid-19 in other countries; insufficient readiness of the Ukrainian society to Covid-19, etc.). It is stated that the quick expansion of misinformation was facilitated by the fact that the nationals of Ukraine took information without criticism, without fact-checking, since they moved to a new space of life of the individual and made «a stage setting of sense».


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-588
Author(s):  
Irina I. Volkova ◽  
Alina G. Chernyavskaya

The goal of this study is to identify gaming slang terms in the news articles of highly rated Russian media. Three online newspapers of various types were used as an empirical material: Kommersant (the first private business newspaper in Russia), RBC (a socio-political analytical newspaper) and Rossiyskaya Gazeta (agency of the Russian Federation government). With help of the content analysis of the media texts, all cases of using the slang gaming terms such as achievement, noob, easter eggs etc. have been discovered and described. The results of the study show that over the past five years the popularity of the gaming terms usage in the media has been growing; this increase can be described as a linear progressive growth: gaming slang is becoming an integral part of the Runet online resources and is gradually entering common vocabulary. It can be assumed that with the increase in the number of media managers from the generation of digital natives and their transition to the category of decision makers, the growth of gaming slang terms in online media will become exponential.


Author(s):  
Siti Aeisha Joharry ◽  
Nor Diyana Saupi

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.  


Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This chapter presents the book’s macrolevel findings about the architecture of political communication and the news media ecosystem in the United States from 2015 to 2018. Two million stories published during the 2016 presidential election campaign are analyzed, along with another 1.9 million stories about Donald Trump’s presidency during his first year. The chapter examines patterns of interlinking between online media sources to understand the relations of authority and credibility among publishers, as well as the media sharing practices of Twitter and Facebook users to elucidate social media attention patterns. The data and mapping reveal not only a profoundly polarized media landscape but stark asymmetry: the right is more insular, skewed towards the extreme, and set apart from the more integrated media ecosystem of the center, center-left, and left.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174804852199056
Author(s):  
Baruch Shomron ◽  
Amit Schejter

This study examines how media representations of Palestinian-Israeli politicians, can help community members realize their capabilities. The study’s database is comprised of 1,207 interviews conducted with Palestinian-Israeli politicians on news and current affairs programs on the three national television channels and the two national radio stations in Israel, for 24 months (2016-2017). We identified and analyzed the differences in the modes of representation between national and local Palestinian-Israeli politicians and between Palestinian-Israeli parliament members in the Joint List and Palestinian-Israeli parliament members in Zionist parties, all through the capabilities prism. In this study, we demonstrated how different types of Palestinian-Israeli politicians may potentially affect the realization of different political functions and capabilities. Analyzing political representations in the media through the theoretical framework of the ‘capabilities approach’ contributes to a more comprehensive insight into the roles the media can play promoting people’s wellbeing and human rights, relative to traditional media theories.


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