1. Using Discourse Analysis on News Media Content
Issues and Challenges
By Shan Wu

2. Overview Defining discourse analysis Discourse and Power
Three key discourse analytical frameworks
Michel Foucault
Teun A. van Dijk
Norman Fairclough
Flaws of existing frameworks for analysis of news media texts
Critique of suggested improvements

3. Defining Discourse Analysis
Two main definitions
As social action and interaction between human agents
As social construction of reality that creates a knowledge system; influences our social practice and relations
Effective qualitative supplement to quantitative content analysis
Considers link between media content and wider sociopolitical framework

4. Discourse and Power Discourse linked to power and social interests
Language use and social practice framed by institutions
Institutions determine rules and and positions of agents

5. Three Key Scholars Michel Foucault’s system of representation
Teun van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach
Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis

6. Foucault’s System of Representation
Discourse as system of representation
Discourse – Knowledge – Power
Discursive formation can sustain “regime of truth”
Subjects constructed through discourse
Opposes Marxist theory of ideology
Intertextuality and interdiscursivity

7. Foucault’s System of Representation
Criticisms:
No structured and comprehensive methodology
Subject as mere product of discursive practices

8. Van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Approach
Reducing textual info to fundamental themes
On thematic level:
Looks at overall description of text/ macrostructures
Reduces complicated info to macro-propositions
On schematic level:
Analyse schematic structures that influence form of the text

9. Van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Approach
Criticisms:
Ignores intertextual relations
Difficult to compare across large number of texts
Uncritical reproduction of power relations and ideologies

10. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis
Discourses influence social relations and knowledge systems through language
Group together to form discursive order
Discourse analysis = analysis of discursive event + analysis of discursive order
Three dimensions:
Analysis of 1) language texts, 2) discourse practice, 3) discursive events as instances of sociocultural practice
Impt terms: Discourse practice, intertextuality

11. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis
Criticisms:
Textual-oriented approach
Over-ambitious methodical frame
Questionable linkage between textual description and interpretation
Lack of understanding of human agency

12. Discourse Analysis for News
Shaping presentation of media texts
Professional ideology of journalists, news organizations
State and corporate pressures
Ownership of media
Profit motivation of news organization

13. Discourse Analysis for News
Key considerations neglected in current frameworks
Origins of competing discourses
Presence of divergent social accounts
Influence of external factors
Meaning of the text to different audiences

14. Discourse Analysis for News
Other issues
Accuracy of representations
Views included/ excluded in a text
Rhetoric of political stories
Time-sensitivity
Interaction between discourse and social realities: Circulation of meaning

15. Suggested Improvements
Carvalho (2000)
Textual analysis
Language and rhetoric
Discursive strategies and processes
Ideological standpoints
(Surface descriptors, objects, actors)
Contextual Analysis
Comparative-synchronic analysis
Historical-diachronic analysis

16. Suggested Improvements
Pros
Intertextual and contextual
Time-sensitive
Accounts for journalistic intervention
Cons
Neglects production processes of text and audience reception

17. Suggested Improvements
Greg Philo (2007), Glasgow University Media Group
Interviews and focus groups with journalists and audiences
E.g. Coverage of Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the UK

18. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Reports on killing of young Palestinian boy Mohd Al-Durrah in Oct 2000
Images of him and his father crouched against wall widely shown

19. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Israelis issued statement that boy’s death was unintentional
Israelis focused on “war on terror”: Israel as threatened and “responding” to attacks
Palestinians rejected this account
Israeli view dominant in news

20. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Influences on UK journalists
Strong support in US for Israel
Close political link between UK and US
Well-organized lobbying and public relations
Views of political and public figures
Aim for balance: Sympathetic, acknowledge boy killed by Israelis

21. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Audience reception of messages
Reproduced content and structure of news progs
Little reference to Palestinian viewpoint
Reproduced structure and sequence of accounts based on news reports
Reorganized memories to give meaning to the event

22. Conclusion Need to analyze media texts against total system
Consider processes of production, content, reception and circulation
Comprehensive discourse analysis: Better understanding of generation and reproduction of social meanings through news media