scholarly journals Scare-quoting climate: The rapid rise of climate denial in the Swedish far-right media ecosystem

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Kjell Vowles ◽  
Martin Hultman

Abstract The final years of the 2010s marked an upturn in coverage on climate change. In Sweden, legacy media wrote more on the issue than ever before, especially in connection to the drought and wildfires in the summer of 2018 and the Fridays for Future movement started by Greta Thunberg. Reporting on climate change also reached unprecedented levels in the growingly influential far-right media ecosystem; from being a topic discussed hardly at all, it became a prominent issue. In this study, we use a toolkit from critical discourse analysis (CDA) to research how three Swedish far-right digital media sites reported on climate during the years 2018–2019. We show how the use of conspiracy theories, anti-establishment rhetoric, and nationalistic arguments created an antagonistic reaction to increased demands for action on climate change. By putting climate in ironic quotation marks, a discourse was created where it was taken for granted that climate change was a hoax.

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (04) ◽  
pp. A01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Asplund

This article examines communicative aspects of climate change, identifying and analysing metaphors used in specialized media reports on climate change, and discussing the aspects of climate change these metaphors emphasize and neglect. Through a critical discourse analysis of the two largest Swedish farm magazines over the 2000–2009 period, this study finds that greenhouse, war, and game metaphors were the most frequently used metaphors in the material. The analysis indicates that greenhouse metaphors are used to ascribe certain natural science characteristics to climate change, game metaphors to address positive impacts of climate change, and war metaphors to highlight negative impacts of climate change. The paper concludes by discussing the contrasting and complementary metaphorical representations farm magazines use to conventionalize climate change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lily Chimuanya ◽  
Ebuka Elias Igwebuike

In response to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, different religious-immune conspiracy theories emerged to explain the increasing scary situation in Nigeria. Emerging multifarious narratives of the contagion, which are embedded in peculiar Nigerian socio-religiosity and religious economy, reconstructed the discourses into two complexities: corona disease is an invention of the devil and other dark evil forces, and corona disease is a sign of the end of times. The obvious fabrications escalated uncertainties surrounding the pandemic as well as generated anxiety and fears among potential believers who sermonize spiritual vigilance for the ‘final battle and journey’. Drawing insights from critical discourse analysis, moral panic and frame theory, this study explores discursive means through which the pandemic is represented and reconstructed as long-awaited ‘doomsday’ warning in Nigerian online communities. Findings reveal instances of varying descriptive names, lexical derivations and discursive frames that reflect counter belief and quasi-religious ideologies. The study argues that complex religious doctrines rooted in antichrist or mark of the beast view, socio-religious ideologies of dominionism and overcommernism, cultural and personal linguistic processes have all contributed in shaping and institutionalizing the viral ‘apocalyptic’ world-view of the outbreak.


First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Recuero ◽  
Felipe Soares ◽  
Otávio Vinhas

This paper aims to analyze and compare the discursive strategies used to spread and legitimate disinformation on Twitter and WhatsApp during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. Our case study is the disinformation campaign used to discredit the electronic ballot that was used for the election. In this paper, we use a mixed methods approach that combined critical discourse analysis and a quantitative aggregate approach to discuss a dataset of 53 original tweets and 54 original WhatsApp messages. We focused on identifying the most used strategies in each platform. Our results show that: (1) messages on both platforms used structural strategies to portray urgency and create a negative emotional framing; (2) tweets often framed disinformation as a “rational” explanation; and, (3) while WhatsApp messages frequently relied on authorities and shared conspiracy theories, spreading less truthful stories than tweets.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1018-1027
Author(s):  
Dr. ELHAM Ghobain

In this paper, I attempt to present an example of following Hallidays grammatical system in analysing a text that can bear racial references. Doing so, the text analysis can be viewed from a critical discourse analysis perspective. The text chosen, titled Europe Must Close Its Borders or be Swamped by Third World, published in 2009, exhibits a typical example of the political rhetoric used by far-right political parties represented by one of its leaders in Britain, Nick Griffin. My assumption is that every word, every verb, and every phrase used is carefully chosen to convey the intended agendas of the party to its prospect voters in a clever way, which achieves its maximum effect with little or no apparent violation to the press guidelines. I also believe that such a stirring text, as far as the paper is concerned, would benefit from the use of various types of verbs and phrases that should suffice the requirement of the analysis. The paper may be of good use to students interested in studying this system of analysis as it deeply goes into the details of the used text.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-339
Author(s):  
Megan E. Cullinan

This article explores intertextuality, research questions, and arguments scientists use to articulate the legitimacy of geoengineering practices as “good science.” I employ critical discourse analysis to draw out patterns in articles from an invited special forum about the validity of geoengineering technology as a solution to climate change. Articulation theory guides my study of how scientists define what counts as “good science” by analyzing how geoengineering scientists legitimize their research as methodologically strong and beneficial to society. This project serves as a first step in clarifying how scientific debate influences broader circles and the potential social impacts of these debates.


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