scholarly journals Variability of News Interpretation in Political Discourse (A Case Study of the Internet Materials Covering the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympic Games)

Author(s):  
Nikolay D. Golev ◽  
Lidiya G. Kim ◽  
Irina V. Saveleva

This paper focuses on the analysis of the discourse formed by the ordinary citizens discussing news on the Internet social networks. Conceptualizing the theory of the variability of interpretation, the authors study political discourse emerging on Runet, with the aim of identifying the determinants of variation. The empirical base is the news published on “Newsland.com”, which covers the 2014 and 2018 Olympic Games. These mediated events do not aim to focus on political issues. However, they stimulate the interpretation activity of the addressees who tend to discuss political background of the sports events as well as to disclose major problems in society. As the analysis shows, there are two groups of factors influencing the interpretation activity of the participants of political discussions on the Russian Internet: objective, determined by the text as a sign, and subjective, determined by the interpreter’s attitude towards the mediated event. The authors argue that the semantic and pragmatic presumptions, as well as the implicatures of the media news are among the mechanisms of interpretative variation. Additionally, the paper shows a significant role in the interpretation of such a subjective category as anticipation or expectation, which also refers to the implicatures. This factor largely determines the interpreter’s point of view on the information presented in the article. The methodological pathos of the article is to assert the possibility of identifying, describing and modeling internal and deep categories of everyday political discourse based on the analysis of its external manifestations

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 73-83
Author(s):  
Renata Matkevičienė

Jau gerą pusę šimtmečio mokslininkų tyrimais yra įrodyta, jog žiniasklaida yra aktyvi politinio diskurso dalyvė ir konstruotoja. Praėjusio šimtmečio pabaigoje įsivyravus internetinei žiniasklaidai matomi ir žiniasklaidos turinio formavimo bei informacijos pateikimo pasikeitimai. Įsivyravus informacinėms technologijoms, keičiasi ne tik žiniasklaida, jos veikla, kuriamas ir skleidžiamas turinys, bet ir komunikacija, į kurią yra įtraukti ir kiti viešosios erdvės veikėjai – visuomenė ir politikai. Pastarųjų sąveika politikos komunikacijos sistemoje geriausiai atsispindi būtent per žiniasklaidoje pateikiamą informaciją, jos pranešimų poveikį ir pan., nes daugiausia tik dėl žiniasklaidoje pateikiamų pranešimų yra įmanomas visuomenės informuotumas apie politiką, taip pat tik žiniasklaida įtraukia visuomenę į politinių sprendimų priėmimą ar diskusiją apie politines problemas, priimamus sprendimus. Šiame straipsnyje nėra kvestionuojamas žiniasklaidos, taip pat ir internetinės žiniasklaidos, vaidmuo, jos svarba ar poveikiai, straipsnyje yra teigiama, kad žiniasklaida, o ypač internetinė, yra aktyvi politinės komunikacijos dalyvė, įtraukianti į aktyvią komunikaciją ir politikus per jų pasisakymams suteikiamą erdvę. Dėl šių veiksmų, internetinėje žiniasklaidoje pastebimas ne tik žiniasklaidos formuojamas politinis turinys, bet ir pačių politikų konstruojamas politinis diskursas, kurį žiniasklaida tik moderuoja. Šio straipsnio tikslas – ištirti ir nustatyti internetinėje žiniasklaidoje pateikiamo politinio diskurso kaitą. Aptariamas žiniasklaidos vaidmuo ir jo kaita politikos diskurso konstruotojamame politikos komunikacijos kontekste, taip pat siekiama nustatyti internetinės žiniasklaidos politinio diskurso, konstruojamo pačių politikos veikėjų, kaitą.Changes in the Political Discourse Constructed by the Lithuanian Internet MediaRenata Matkevičienė Summary In the end of the last century when the social media became an important part of the media system, there oceurzed changes in constructing the content the of media and spread of information, as well as news creation, selection and delivery.Changes that occurred in the media because of new information technologies could be seen not only in the mass media, journalism, but also in communication in general, because those changes involved all participants of the public sphere: the media, politicians and citizens. In the system of political communication, the interaction of these participants could be seen via the news that are delivered, and their effects: society receives information about politics and participates in discussions about it. In the article, the role and effects of the Internet are not questioned, because the Internet media are an active participant of political communication; they involve politicians into communication processes, providing space for their voices (publications).The aim of this article is to analyse the change of political discourse in the Internet media content.In the article, the role of the media and its change are discussed in the context of social constructivist theoretical approach; also the political discourse constructed by and in the internet media is analyzed in search of changes in the construction of political discourse, introduced by politicians into the Internet media.The main conclusions made in the article are as follows: 1) the use of the internet by politicians as an arena for discussions is increasing, 2) the main topics discussed by politicians in the internet are politics, economy, energy and social policy, 3) the ways in which politicians are discussing political issues differ depending on the number of years that a politician participates in the political arena, the topic or issue under discussion, 4) economic and political issues are discussed in more sophisticated ways in comparison with discussions of social policy issues which are presented in a very simple, clear way with the arguments that stress the aspects important for society or for some specific groups of citizens, 5) in presenting ideas and in discussions, the politicians prefer to present their own the position instead of presenting position of a political party. These main research findings lead to some conclusions about changes in the political discourse, but they also show quite a strong and manipulative role of the Internet media in selecting politicians and their publications, so it shows that there is still a strong role of the Internet media in constructing the political reality and presenting this “window” to political reality, which is strongly influenced by the position of the media.


Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 1713-1729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep Solves ◽  
Sebastián Sánchez ◽  
Inmaculada Rius

The Paralympic Games are one of the world’s most important multisport events, maybe second only to the Olympic Games. However, research conducted to date shows that the media do not devote as much space to them as would accordingly be expected. This article proposes, through a case study, a new way of approaching this hypothetical discrimination by comparing the attention that the London Paralympic Games received from the Spanish print press with the attention that other sports received (football, basketball, tennis, cycling, motor sports and other minority sports) while those Games were being held. The main finding of our study is that over the period analysed, the Spanish press devoted less space to the Paralympic Games than to any other sport.


Author(s):  
Юйси Му

The article presents the study of the media image of China in the Russian Internet texts. The purpose of the study is to identify the language means of shaping the media image of China in blogs about Chinese opera. The material involves some of the topical blogs published on the Internet version of «Live Journal» and the «Magazeta». In those materials, the media image of China is partially formed by various aspects of Chinese opera as a cultural phenomenon: it is the cultural context in which Chinese opera exists; features of diverse opera genres; images of performers; audience responses; assessments and feelings of bloggers. The possibilities of expression of different kinds of language means are revealed, so is the authors’ perception of this type of art. It is concluded that the media image created in blogs about Chinese opera by various language means represents China as a country with a long history and unique culture. Chinese opera not only occupies an important place in the world art, but also vividly and meaningfully reflects the mystery of China.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 60-70
Author(s):  
Melanie Radue

Everywhere in the media, people talk about the so-called “Twitter and Facebook revolution” in regard to the Green Revolution in Iran or other new social movements which demand democratization in their countries and use the Internet for communication and mobilization. Libertarian advocates of the Internet state that the Internet has democratizing effects because of its reputed egalitarian, open and free technological structure for communication processes. Especially in countries in which the media is under strict control by the government, these characteristics are emphasized as stimulation for political liberalization and democratization processes. This essay critically examines the alleged democratizing effect of the use of the Internet on the Malaysian society exemplified on the social movement Bersih. The Bersih movement demands free and fair elections in Malaysia, often described as an ethnocratic and “electoral authoritarian regime”. 141 The objective of this study is to demonstrate the dependency of such possible effects on context.


Author(s):  
S. V. Moshkin ◽  

The review covers the collective monograph “Communicative Aggressions of the 21st Century” dedicated to the study of destructive manifestations of communicative aggression in the media sphere connected with functional specifics of the contemporary information technologies and, in particular, of Internet. The review deals with the contents of the book and its structure, evaluates the understanding by the authors of communicative aggression, its features and destructive consequences. Special emphasis is laid upon the growing aggressiveness of the political discourse as the Internet becomes more widespread and commonly available. It was concluded that in order to find tools to reduce communicative aggression in the media sphere, the authors should consider and assess the developing censorship practices of Internet communications.


Author(s):  
Līga Romāne-Kalniņa ◽  

Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric as the art of observing the available means of persuasion is one of the most widely used quotations not only in linguistics but also in social, political, and communication sciences. Aristotle, apart from defining the elements of rhetoric (logos, ethos and pathos), has proposed three types of rhetoric that refer either to the present situation (ceremonial), the past (judicial), or the future (political). The current president of Latvia and his language use is one of the most widely discussed topics across the media and academia due to the register, style, and content of his speeches. Moreover, the president of Latvia has a direct impact on how the state is perceived nationally and internationally; thus, it is significant to investigate the linguistic profile of the linguistic expression of the ideas communicated by the president to the wider public. The current study analyses 160 speeches given by president Egils Levits on nationally significant occasions as well as internationally with the aim to investigate whether the speeches of the president of Latvia correspond to the ceremonial, political or judicial rhetoric because the president represents both legal and political discourse as the former judge of the European Court of Human Rights and the former minister of Justice, and as the head of the Republic of Latvia represents the state nationally and abroad. The study is grounded in the theories on rhetoric and Critical Discourse Analysis applied to political discourse and presidential language and discussed by scholars such as Aristotle (1959), Van Dijk (2006), Chilton and Schäffner (2002), O’Keeffe (2006), Van Dijk (2008), David (2014), Wilson (2015) and Wodak and Mayer (2016). The results of the current study reveal that the speeches are a clear representation of a combination of legal, political, and ceremonial rhetoric and cross various semantic fields that are marked by the use of field terminology in combination with topos of definition and name interpretation to explain the terms directly in the speeches. The speeches by Levits are furthermore marked by relatively frequent use of loanwords, neologisms, obsolete words, and compounds that is one of the main characteristics of the linguistic profile of his speeches. Additional characteristic features are the use of parallel sentence constructions, inverted word orders, rhetorical questions, and pronominal referencing to attract the listener's attention and emphasize the thematic areas of the speeches. Nevertheless, it has been concluded that such linguistic techniques as metaphors, metonymies, synecdoche, or hyperbole are used comparatively less frequently, thus making the speeches appear more formal and less emotional from the linguistic point of view.


2020 ◽  
pp. 216747952093472
Author(s):  
Olan Scott ◽  
Bo (Norman) Li ◽  
Stephen Mighton

Broadcast commentary of sport programs often is seen as biased for the “home team.” This study sought to determine differences between how the media framed narratives of Australian and non-Australian Olympians by analyzing prime-time coverage of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games across all of Australia’s Seven Network channels. Because Australia is not a traditional powerhouse at the Winter Games, how the media portrays home team and foreign athletes is of interest in this summer sport country. Results revealed that overall, non-Australian athletes were covered and mentioned more frequently than Australian athletes. However, results found taxonomical differences in Seven Network’s depiction of Australian and non-Australian athletes’ successes—Australian success was attributed to athletic ability and courage, whereas non-Australians’ success was more frequently linked to intelligence, experience, and consonance. Differences in the attribution of failure by nationality were also found, with Australian’s failures more likely to be characterized by a lack of commitment and luck compared to their non-Australian counterparts. Athletes’ personalities also were described differently, with Australians receiving comments regarding their emotions, while non-Australians received either more neutral comments or had their appearance and body parts described more often. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are provided.


Author(s):  
Nahida M. Imanova ◽  

The article deals with the virtual identity in the media discourse. It states that there must be information for communication to take place, including virtual communication. The object of research is text-generating language tools in Internet linguistics, and the subject is to determine their participation and role in the formation of the text. The realization of virtual communication is carried out in written and oral form of the language. Any language units such as sentences, texts, discourses (written and oral), non-linguistic units (such as graphemes, grapheme combinations, prosodic means, such as syllable stress, intonation, pause, etc.) can be considered a virtual information carrier. Virtual communication participants must use one of these tools in order to have two-way communication in the communication process. It is important to pay attention to the meaning and content of the communication. For virtual communication there must be a text that is formed for a specific purpose. Until recently, in linguistics, an independent and separate sentence was accepted as the last unit of the syntactic level in terms of hierarchical relations. In our opinion, these shortcomings, which exist at the syntactic level, gives a special impetus to the emergence of such a field as textual linguistics. In the modern world of the Internet, at a time when man-made technology is beginning to open the way to all areas of our lives, it is not surprising that a new field of linguistics � Internet linguistics � is developing very rapidly. The language of the Internet is constantly on the move; it is observed and operates in different types of communication. In the 21st century, the study of the Internet language from a systemic and structural point of view is observed. At present, linguists are focusing on the analysis of different expressions of the new media discourse in the various virtual worlds observed in the process of communication. The formation of an anthropocentric scientific paradigm in linguistics leads to the intensification of linguistic trends related to communication problems. It is noteworthy to note that when approaching communication in a semiotic plan, its consideration as an action carried out with the direct participation of linguo-semiotic means is one of the factors that led to the expansion of discourse. The virtual world is a shining example of the transition observed in the modern Internet world (explicit and implicit) on the basis of communication. The Internet is the most remarkable tool created by living things. Its impact on society and the world is undeniable. In this regard, the formation of Internet linguistics should not be considered a coincidence. Internet linguistics plays an important role in studying the influence of the Internet on language, develops under its own name in modern linguistics and forms the means of communication in different languages.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss

© The Author(s) 2019. This article proposes a new critical framework through which to analyze television period drama, recognizing elements that indicate a more progressive point of view than many previous scholarly responses have acknowledged. It begins by assessing the seminal works of Andrew Higson and Claire Monk in the field of period drama, adopting the latter’s term of “post-heritage” to identify an alternative critical perspective. The five guiding elements of the proposed post-heritage framework are then outlined, with reference to pertinent critical works that identify these in period dramas and other production. A preliminary case study of The Crown is then offered, through which the post-heritage framework is demonstrated as an aesthetic methodological process. The Crown’s use of the media within its narrative and conceptual ambiguity are considered particularly closely. The article concludes by suggesting the wider applications for the post-heritage critical framework, and potential further study relating to The Crown.


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