A Bridge with Three Pillars

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Dorothee Beck
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Crisis Of Masculinity ◽  
Central Pillar ◽  
Media Discourses

The paper reflects on the externalisation of violence in media discourses about migra- tion in Germany. I discuss in how far news media build discursive bridges to masculist and far-right groups. To this end, I draw on some of the findings of my research proj- ect ‘Genderism’ in Media Debate. Thematic cycles from 2006 to 2016. Soldierly mascu- linity is seen as hegemonic in the far right. By means of an alleged crisis of masculinity and victimisation of men, this is linked to masculist concepts. The far right as well as masculists accuse women, especially feminists, of being to blame for the effeminacy of men. This crisis of masculinity is considered a problem, to which soldierly masculinity is offered as a solution. The findings of the mentioned genderism-project show that news media discuss the crisis of masculinity, as well as the blaming of feminists. Yet, they do not take up far-right concepts directly. Masculist views can be regarded as the central pillar of a discursive bridge between news media and far-right concepts of mas- culinity. I argue that the notion of a discursive bridge only works with masculist views as intermediary between news media and the far right. Thus, masculism is a crucial ideology to link far-right views regarding discourses in society.

scholarly journals “Devil’s Lure Took All I Had”: Moral Panic and the Discursive Construction of Crystal Methamphetamine in Australian News Media

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Fredrickson ◽  
Alexandra Farren Gibson ◽  
Kari Lancaster ◽  
Sally Nathan
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Biomedical Literature ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Crystal Methamphetamine ◽  
Institutional Management ◽  
Media Discourses

Crystal methamphetamine (“ice”) has been a fixture in Australian newspapers since the early 2000s. This study explores discourses at work in constructing the ice “problem” in recent Australian media, possible implications for how people who use ice are discursively positioned, and the resulting significance for drug policy. Twenty-seven articles were selected for discourse analysis, sampled from a larger study of Australian ice-related news items. By critically engaging with sociological concepts of “moral panic” and the “risk society,” we demonstrate how three media discourses produce the subject of the “young person” as both victimized by ice and a catastrophic threat in and of themselves: (1) “ice traps and transforms youth,” (2) “ice does not discriminate,” and (3) “ice perverts sanctuary.” These discourses illustrate the tensions between the meanings of ice use and understandings of safety and risk, speaking to current anxieties in Western, neoliberal societies. Ice use is further constructed as a form of abjection, threatening traditional social boundaries and institutions. However, the agency and determinism simultaneously granted to ice the substance troubles the notion we are witnessing yet another “drug scare” that polices social behavior. Instead, we observe how these discourses mirror those in the biomedical literature, which construct ice as a uniform, agentic, and uniquely dangerous drug. With use attributed to entrapment and/or naturalized as addiction, the drug is constituted as engineering its own, always harmful, consumption. This limits conceptions of any “safer,” “rational,” or “pleasurable” forms of ice use and further justifies state intervention on its users. Overall, these discourses rationalize prohibitionist interventions around ice and singularize drug consumption as a behavior requiring institutional management.

Park’s Supporters Fight Back

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Hyunjin Seo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Psychological Characteristics ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Conspiracy Theories

This chapter examines how supporters of President Park Geun-hye responded to the Park-Choi scandal and impeachment rallies. Park’s diehard supporters organized so-called Taegeukgi rallies suggesting the Park-Choi scandal was a plot by pro–North Korea forces and news media designed to destroy the conservative president. Trafficking in conspiracy theories produced by far-right media outlets, these staunch supporters used social media and physical gatherings to consolidate pro-Park groups. In contrast, some of Park’s early supporters ultimately turned against her, becoming outraged and embarrassed as details of her corruption became widely known. This chapter analyzes information consumption patterns of Park’s diehard supporters along with their demographic and social-psychological characteristics.

An emerging genre of contemporary fact-checking

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amalia Juneström
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Open Coding ◽  
Pedagogical Aspect ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
Shed Light

PurposeBy exploring the social features of contemporary fact-checking this study aims to increase our understanding of fact-checking as a genre and shed light on some of the aspects that underpin the communication that fact-checkers engage in.Design/methodology/approachBy analyzing one snapshot of early COVID-19 coverage by three well-known fact-checkers and another one six months later, this study explores fact-checking as a genre. The material was examined for recurrent characteristics and the findings were categorized into corresponding themes that emerged through an open coding process.FindingsThree aspects were found to underpin a contemporary fact-checking genre. Firstly, the fact-checkers strive to facilitate accessibility. Secondly, the notion of building trust underlies the way fact-checkers promote themselves. Thirdly, fact-checking is underpinned by a pedagogical aspect. While the values and beliefs that are known to characterize traditional news media discourses are predominant in the construction of a fact-checking genre, fact-checkers also draw on conceptions typically found within academia to enact professional practices.Originality/valueContemporary fact-checking is still a fairly unexplored topic of research. This is particularly the case outside the field of journalism and media studies. This study complements earlier research from the perspective of information studies by exploring how fact-checking practices impact the communication and production of news in society.

scholarly journals Québec News-Print Media Portrayals of Immigrants During the Reasonable Accomodations Commission

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Hall
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
News Media ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Media Portrayals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
Reasonable Accommodations ◽  
Critical Content ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses

Media and public discourses are constantly changing as a result of their effect on one another. The Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences which roamed the province of Québec in late 2007 was widely reported on in the mainstream news-media. This paper provides a critical content analysis of 105 articles in three Québec daily newspapers (La Presse, Le Soleil, and The Gazette) during the months of September to December 2007 when the public forums discussing the reasonable accommodation of minority groups took place. By making theoretical linkages with the data collected, the findings show that the media discourses between the three newspapers vary slightly and are not accurate representations of the public discourses surrounding the issue of reasonable accommodations amongst the Québec population.

scholarly journals Representations of Indigenous Peoples and Use of Pain Medication in Canadian News Media

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E Nelson ◽  
Annette J Browne ◽  
Josée G Lavoie
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Pain Medication ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Problematic Substance Use ◽  
Problematic Substance ◽  
Media Discourses

Using media coverage of the withdrawal of OxyContin in Canada in 2011 and 2012 as an example, this article describes a systematic analysis of how news media depict First Nations peoples in Canada. Stark differences can be seen in how First Nations and non-First Nations individuals and communities are represented. In First Nations communities, problematic substance use is discussed without considering the context of pain management, broad generalizations are made, and language of hopelessness and victimization is employed. An analysis of the differences in language, tone, sources of information, and what is left unsaid, makes visible the ways in which misinformation about First Nations peoples and communities is constructed and perpetuated in media discourses.

scholarly journals WhatsApp Disruptions in Brazil: A content analysis of user and news media responses, 2015-2018

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Pereira ◽  
Iago Bojczuk ◽  
Lisa Parks
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Media ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
National Infrastructure

Brazilians have adopted WhatsApp as a national media and communication infrastructure over the past several years, although it is controlled by its private U.S.-based owner, Facebook. To contribute to critical analysis of WhatsApp usage in Brazil, this article explores the diverse, contentious, and influential roles the app played in the country during disruptions to its use from 2015 to 2018. Using content analysis the article critically engages with user-generated memes and news media coverage responding to these disruptions. Brazilians self-reflexively questioned the app’s role in their everyday lives and country, reassessing what it means to rely on a national infrastructure owned by an unaccountable global media conglomerate. This situation compels scholars to engage further with the nationalization and localization of U.S.-owned platforms and to assess their political, economic and cultural impacts, given their connection to the rise of far-right populism in Brazil and elsewhere.

scholarly journals Activism, Advertising, and Far-Right Media: The Case of Sleeping Giants

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 68-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua A. Braun ◽  
John D. Coakley ◽  
Emily West
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Online Advertising ◽  
Media Campaign ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Us ◽  
Twitter Account ◽  
The Eu

This study examines the international activist movement known as Sleeping Giants, a social-media “campaign to make bigotry and sexism less profitable” (Sleeping Giants, n.d.). The campaign originated in the US with an anonymous Twitter account that enlisted followers in encouraging brands to pull their online advertising from <em>Breitbart News</em>. The campaign achieved dramatic success and rapidly spread to regions outside the US, with other anonymously run and loosely allied chapters emerging in 15 different nations (as well as a regional chapter for the EU). Many of these were initially created to take on <em>Breitbart</em> advertisers in their home countries, but in a number of cases they subsequently turned their attention to disrupting financial support for other far-right news media in—or impacting—their home countries. Based on interviews with leaders of eight Sleeping Giants chapters, as well as the related UK-based Stop Funding Hate campaign, this study examines the Sleeping Giants campaign with respect to its continuity with media activism of previous eras, while also seeking to understand its potential as one of the first high-profile activist campaigns to grapple with the impacts of programmatic advertising on the news ecosystem. In particular, we consider how the campaign’s interventions speak to the larger debate around the normative relationship between advertising and the performance of the news ecosystem.

scholarly journals The discursive construction of HIV stigma in Irish print media

2021 ◽  
pp. 136345932110385
Author(s):  
Elena Vaughan ◽  
Martin Power
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
National Level ◽  
People Living With Hiv ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
Living With Hiv

As interlocutors in national level discourse with the power to influence public opinion and inform policy, the news media are an important data source in understanding the constitutive roles played by culture and discourse in shaping health experiences and outcomes. This paper reports on a critical discourse analysis of news media coverage of HIV in the Republic of Ireland between 2006 and 2016. This period is significant because of the considerable increase in new HIV diagnoses that occurred in Ireland after the 2008 recession. Analysis of articles ( n = 103) demonstrated a pattern of dividing practices whereby people living with or affected by HIV were frequently positioned as somatically and morally deficient via discourses of risk and responsibility. Little focus was given over to examination of the structural drivers of HIV, occluding the social context of the epidemic. The findings suggest that media discourses on HIV have the potential to other people living with HIV and generate stigma by invoking a dynamic of blame and shame frequently implicated in the stigma process.

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