Discursive representation of the Article 370 abrogation: A comparative CDA of the headlines of two major Indian online news publications

The Indian government on 5 August, 2019, unilaterally removed Article 370 of its constitution that provided autonomous status to the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir. In order to pre-empt any backlash, the authorities put the entire region under strict lockdown and imposed a complete communication blackout including suspension of internet, mobile, and landline phone services. The Indian media vociferously covered the issue of higher “national interest” with no counter-narrative from local news media in the region. Using Van Djik’s socio-cognitive model, the study conducted comparative critical discourse analysis of the headlines from two major Indian online news publications; the English daily The Times of India and the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran to identify the discursive strategies adopted by these newspapers after the revocation of the Article 370. The study aimed to understand how Indian newspapers were shaping the discourse when the Indian government imposed communication restrictions and lockdown in the region. Through CDA, the study located the discursive strategies in the headlines and the ideological standpoints they reflected while covering the Article 370 controversy. The CDA found that the headline discourse in both the news publications was characterized by aggressive nationalistic assertion reinforcing domestic legitimacy for the government’s decision. The analysis further showed substantial evidence for the cultural distances between the English and Hindi language news discourse. Unlike English headlines, the Hindi headlines contained explicit linguistic subjectivities and were overtly hyperbolic in recognizing and blending itself with the nationalist assertion and socio-political expression around the abrogation of Article 370.

All the Love is on the Radio: Local Media, Cyclone Larry and an Injunction to Care

Local news media play a key role in fostering citizen participation in public life and offer communities forms of supportive action during crisis, which lie at the heart of compassion. Through the lens of emotion, we can see that ‘the story’ of local disaster reporting is one of being local, where the journalist’s position between involved actor and interpretive observer is anchored in compassion for the local. In turn, a focus on compassion illuminates the power of oral history as a means to contextualise the experience of disaster – in this case, how cyclones are made culturally meaningful – and expand media research on climate-related disaster.

The Case for Shared Community Stories

This introductory chapter offers an overview of key concepts and the book’s argument for a model of community-centered journalism to build trust between local news media and communities. It outlines how the book conceptualizes trust (looking at factors including perceived representation and motives), solutions journalism (reporting focused on responses to social problems), and engaged journalism (practices that involve community members in journalistic production). It then sets out key questions tackled by other portions of the book, including how place-based interventions using engaged and solutions journalism practices can present boundary challenges to journalism norms and influence what communication infrastructure theory (CIT) calls community “storytelling networks”—the links between residents, community groups, and local media which can be indicators of an area’s communication health and predictors of civic participation. Finally, it offers an outline of the chapters that follow.

Voicing the organization on Instagram: Towards a performative understanding of employee voice

Much is currently expected from what PR campaigns involving social media can accomplish with regard to strengthening employee voice. Previous research on voice as a specific approach to employee relations has primarily relied on the effects and mechanisms of voice. There is scant research dealing with the processes and practices of employee voice. This article outlines a performative approach to conceptualizing the practice of employee voice. It focuses on how employees perform voice in a PR campaign involving Instagram takeover. The campaign was launched by a complex organization in Scandinavia, aimed at countering negative attention in local news media and improving the reputation of the organization. This article analyses the conditions of voicing concerns in the campaign through the lens of a dramaturgical approach to social life. First, the findings indicate that voicing is a form of individual and collective performance through which the meaning of work and the campaign are negotiated in relation to both other participants and an imagined audience. Second, visual conventions and organizational culture were found to govern performances of voice on Instagram. Third, findings underscore the need to understand employee voice as a socially and culturally embedded practice.

The Language of Dragon Boating in Hong Kong and Singapore

This research draws on elements of systemic functional linguistics to conduct a discourse analysis of dragon-boating in Asia, predominantly in the commercial areas of Hong Kong and Singapore, where this sport has both a long history and strong culture today. It seeks to understand how experiential and interpersonal meanings are related to this sport in a variety of online texts ranging from local news media sites, corporation team websites, sites from dragon boat companies specialising in training corporations, dragon boat paddlers’ websites and other popular sources such as ‘expatliving’. Findings demonstrate that dragon boating has certain unique characteristics which help to give it significance in this region. With the Duanwu Festival held annually, the sport is steeped firmly in mythology and legend. Additionally, the nature of the boat as a synchronised machine is exploited by corporations and linked to competitive performance. As an intense sport, physical and mental attributes such as ‘strength’ and ‘tenacity’ are associated with it; the upper body requirements of the practice also gives it a unique trait for breast cancer survivors. ‘Tragedy’ is also a part of dragon boat’s modern history with a fatal accident for the Singapore men’s team during an international race in Cambodia. In sum, the sport of dragon boating can be seen to have a rich schema of semiotic associations in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Local Democracy and the Media

Local news media in Western countries are undergoing major changes, including cutbacks, centralisation and consolidation. In this study, Sweden has been scanned to map the presence of digital hyperlocal media and to investigate which online channels of communication they offer their readers, in order to determine their set-up for democratic functions. The results reveal that very few hyperlocals are positioned in rural areas; instead, the majority of them favour metropolitan or urban municipalities. The hyperlocal media presence on social networks is limited to a few platforms, and about half of the hyperlocals offer commentary fields on their news sites. As the democratic structure varies, coupled with the fact that hyperlocals favour high-density population municipalities where traditional media already exist, this study indicates that the democracy dialogue in the local public sphere may be at risk.

D.C. news media coverage of the district’s Death With Dignity Act

In 2016, the District of Columbia City Council passed the Death With Dignity Act. Afterward, Congress attempted to block its implementation by first invoking Congress’s power to overturn the law and then, when unsuccessful in that effort, withhold money from the District. Previous studies examining local news media coverage of aid-in-dying legislation have identified several recurrent frames. D.C. news publications invoked those frames as well as others more specific to the District. Understanding how aid in dying and related legislation is portrayed in newspaper coverage is important as more jurisdictions consider legalization of the practice.