1. NCRE Post-Graduate Seminars “Europe in the French Pacific Regions: A Discourse Analysis of the Local Press' Construction of the European Union” Yoon Ah Choi (PhD Research Project)

2. 2 Map of the French OCTs New Caledonia - Wallis/Futuna - French Polynesia

3. 3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS How is the EU’s role in the Pacific represented in the local newspapers of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna? Is France ready to let go? Is there a visible construction of power relations in the discourse? How does the EU’s initiatives and actions of the development plan coincide with local objectives? What is the local conception of the EU as a donor, ‘development’, ‘democracy’, ‘regionalism’, ‘globalisation’…?

4. 4 Key Issues  Development Programme (ACP aid- 9 th EDF)  Good governance (Cotonou Agreement)  Political situation- Independence, regionalism and EU integration  Economic stability and resources

5. 5 Theoretical Framework  Post-Structuralism/Postmodernism Meaning Reality Knowledge Identity Ideology Power Foucault, Derrida Barthes, Bourdieu Habermas, Adorno

6. 6 Methodological Framework Syntactic/semantic analysis Grammatical structure, transformations, functions, transitivity, agency Content Analysis Information structure Lexical Analysis Metaphors, Category labels

7. 7 Sources Corpus- Major local newspapers French Polynesia: Tahitipresse, Les Nouvelles de Tahiti La Depeche de Tahiti New Caledonia:Le Kanak Les Nouvelles Caledoniennes Libre Expression Official documents Cotonou Agreement 9 th EDF Plan Interviews & Surveys

8. 8 Delimitations & Variables  Local press media  Newspaper articles dating after the Cotonou Agreement 23 rd June 2000  Domestic focus  Independent variable: Development strategies, amount of aid  Dependent variable: Discursive structure of EU in the press  Moderator variable: Political situation  Controlling variable: Corpus of press articles  Intervening variable: Regional participation, Euro currency

9. 9 Novelty & Importance GOOD TIMING NON-EUROCENTRIC VIEW INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

10. 10 Hypothesis/Assumptions  Positive-negative evaluations of major issues  Favourable position of the OCTs in regards to regionalism and EU integration  Discursively constructed identities and relations, power hierarchy WILL UNCOVER…

11. 11 Merci beaucoup! Yoonah Choi email: ych23@student.canterbury.ac.nz