Media, Discourse, and the Public Sphere: Electronic Memorials to Diana, Princess of Wales

Abstract This article explores how hope and visions of the future have left their mark on media discourse in Turkey. Looking back at some of the events that took place in the 1980s, a decade that was shaped by the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état, and considering them alongside what has happened since the ban of Istanbul’s Pride march in 2015, it examines traces of hope in two periods of recent Turkish history characterized by authoritarianism. Drawing on an array of visual and textual material drawn from the tabloid press, magazines, newspapers, and digital platforms, it inquires into how queer hope manages to infiltrate mediated publics even in times of pessimism and hopelessness. Based upon analysis of an archive of discourses on resistance, solidarity, and future, it argues that queer hope not only helps to map out possible future routes for queer lives in (and beyond) Turkey, but also operates as a driving political force that sustains queers’ determination to maintain their presence in the public sphere despite repressive nationalist, militarist, Islamist, and authoritarian regimes.

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Care, Values and an Uncaring Media

Social Policy and Society ◽

10.1017/s1474746404002088 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 439-446 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Angela Phillips

Keyword(s):

Qualitative Research ◽

Public Sphere ◽

Policy Research ◽

Media Discourse ◽

The Public ◽

Growing Body ◽

Research Findings ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

The University

Evidence of ‘dissemination’ is now seen as part of research delivery by grant-giving bodies such as the ESRC and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Drawing on the growing body of research into media sources (Manning 2001, Davis, 2000) and relating it to debates on the public sphere (Habermas 1989), the paper will ask what (if anything) researchers have to gain from involvement with the mass media and whether specialised help can assist in bringing social policy research from the margins into the mainstream of media discourse. It will look in particular at the special difficulties of disseminating ‘fuzzy’ qualitative research findings which do not lend themselves to obviously eye-catching headlines. The paper will draw on an ESRC funded experiment at the University of Leeds as a case study with which to explore these issues.

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Fear Control in Media Discourse

Southeastern Europe ◽

10.1163/18763332-03702005 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 200-219

Author(s):

Davor Marko

Keyword(s):

Public Sphere ◽

Public Space ◽

Power Relations ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Media Discourse ◽

Public Language ◽

The Public ◽

The Media ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

And Control

This article deals with how fear is misused in media discourse. Pursuing the claim that it is impossible to eliminate fear from the public sphere, this paper argues that fear control is a technique widely used by certain interest groups to generate and spread uncertainty among people in order to create an atmosphere in which their goals are easily reachable. This paper will discuss the concepts of discourse, hegemony, and power relations in order to show how public language (both written and spoken) in media discourse reflects, creates, and maintains power relations. In this sense, fear, which is a crucial “energizing fuel” of such public language, could be considered and further elaborated as both a contextual variable and as a tool for facilitating power relations by applying various techniques. Aiming to show how media use and control the nature and level of fear in public discourse, I will discuss two techniques – the commercialization of fear and the method of “othering.” While commercialization implies the mass (re)production and (re)appropriation of fear in a public space, “othering” has been applied when the object of reporting is an out-group individual or community and self-group is using the media as a tool for their negative portrayal, thus creating boundaries and provoking discrimination and violence. The case of Serbia will be used to indicate how techniques of “othering,” linked with the regime’s propaganda, may contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of fear, and make a people seek protection and become easy prey for manipulation.

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The Role of Media Influence in Shaping Public Energy Dialogues

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190633851.013.23 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Aleksandra Wagner

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Public Sphere ◽

Media Discourse ◽

Hegemonic Discourse ◽

Media Communication ◽

The Public ◽

Public Policy Analysis ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

Media Discourses

The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the main mechanisms and processes observed in media discourses with the potential to shape political and economic responses to energy issues. By adopting the discursive approach to public policy analysis, the author attempts to answer these questions: How is energy is discussed? What is said and what is not said? Who speaks and who is absent in media discourse? The focus is on the problems of media communication that are crucial for public dialogue on energy. In conclusion, it is argued that the energy discourse in mass media is a post-hegemonic discourse, while the counter-discourses try to find their place in other dimensions of the public sphere, such as nonfiction literature or social media, and therefore their visibility is limited.

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Social Media, Populism, and Migration

Media and Communication ◽

10.17645/mac.v8i4.3212 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 73-83 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mario Datts

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Public Sphere ◽

Social Web ◽

Media Discourse ◽

The Public ◽

New Public ◽

The Social ◽

Research Gap ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

And Migration

Several scholars have attributed high hopes to social media regarding their alleged ability to enable a nonhierarchical and freely accessible debate among the citizenship (Loader & Mercea, 2011; Shirky, 2011). Those hopes have culminated in theses such those describing the social web as being a ‘new public sphere’ (Castells, 2009, p. 125) as well as in expectations regarding its revitalizing potential for the ‘Habermas’s public sphere’ (Kruse, Norris, & Flinchum, 2018, p. 62). Yet, these assumptions are not uncontested, particularly in the light of socially mediated populism (Mazzoleni & Bracciale, 2018). Interestingly, research on populism in the social web is still an exception. The same is true for the populist permeation of the social media discourse on migration, as a highly topical issue. This study seeks to elaborate on this research gap by examining to what extent the Twitter debate on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) was permeated by populist content. For this purpose, almost 70,000 tweets on the most important Hashtags referring to the GCM that took place in Marrakesh in December 2018 were collected and the 500 widest-reaching tweets analysed in terms of their populist permeation. Against initial expectations, the empirical findings show that populist narratives did not dominate the Twitter debate on migration. However, the empirical results indicate that ordinary citizens play an important role in the creation and dissemination of populist content. It seems that the social web widens the public sphere, including those actors who do not communicate in accordance with the Habermasian conceptualization of it.

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Media discourse and the public sphere

DELTA Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada ◽

10.1590/s0102-44502005000300005 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 21 (spe) ◽

pp. 45-71

Author(s):

Lilie Chouliaraki

Keyword(s):

Public Sphere ◽

Prime Time ◽

Media Discourse ◽

Democratic Deliberation ◽

Communicative Practices ◽

The Public ◽

The Right To Privacy ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

The Right ◽

Empirical Material

In this paper, I am attempting to throw into relief significant aspects of the function of television debate as a public sphere. My working assumption is that public dialogue, including its televised versions, involves primarily the establishment of a meaning horizon which delimits what is to be said and known, and which authorises as true certain meanings and knowledges at the expense of others. Put differently, there is a 'politics of truth' at play in every mediated debate which is central in the constitution of the debate as a public sphere. It is precisely this politics that I want to examine in this article. Using empirical material from a prime-time debate programme in Danish television, which is concerned with the right to privacy of public personalities, I analyse the forms of interactional control and dialogic organisation employed in the debate, so as to address the following questions: What are the communicative practices which confer upon the television debate genre the legitimacy of public debate? Which are the principles by which communication is regulated? Which are the domains of meaning construed by this regulation? And which is the potential for democratic deliberation released in these domains?

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“Why are you interrupting me?” Change of overlaps and interruptions in talk programmes 1960–2011

Taikomoji kalbotyra ◽

10.15388/tk.2016.17514 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 265-291

Author(s):

Laima Nevinskaitė

Keyword(s):

Quantitative Analysis ◽

Public Sphere ◽

Transitional Period ◽

Soviet Period ◽

Media Discourse ◽

The Public ◽

New Period ◽

The Media ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

The Right

The article deals with one of the features of media discourse connected to conversationalization—speaking at the same time, i.e. speech overlaps and interruptions. The article focuses on overlaps and interruptions in talk programmes in Lithuanian radio and television in 1960–2011. Theoretically, overlaps are treated as an objective (audible) category, while interruptions are regarded as an interpretative category that can be analysed in terms of the talk sequence analysis or from the perspective of participants on the basis of their comments on interruptions (metadiscourse). In the empirical part of the article, the data of radio and television corpus were used to compare the change of overlaps and interruptions over three periods (Soviet, transitional and present-day).The quantitative analysis has shown that the number of overlaps increased considerably with every new period. The analysis also reveals an increased variety of situations where overlaps and interruptions occur. In the Soviet period overlaps and interruptions were associated with neutral and collaborative functions; in the transitional period they started to be used as turn-competitive device; in the present-day period, overlaps and interruptions are strongly competition- and power-oriented and also reflect the commercial nature of the media (entertainment function, interruptions for commercial breaks). These trends are also reflected in metadiscourse. In the present-day period there are relatively fewer apologies for interruptions but more verbal defence of one’s right to speak. This means that the competition for turn and the right to interrupt is taken as a norm. The identified changes should be interpreted not as a shift, but as an increase of variety, since in later periods programmes with many overlaps and new functions of overlaps and interruptions appear as an additional feature, without making the earlier types of programmes and functions of overlaps and interruptions disappear.The change of overlaps and interruptions can be associated with more general changes in media discourse, e.g. increased dialogicality. These changes were brought about by political changes in the public sphere, and changes in radio and television (shift to the commercial model of broadcasting). In the late present-day period changes must be also influenced by global (Western) trends of media development.

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