16Jun 2018

ACTIVATING NEWS POWER: A CASE STUDY ON THE SYRIAN ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE.

Crossref Cited-by Linking logo

  • Abstract
  • Keywords
  • References
  • Cite This Article as
  • Corresponding Author

This paper attempted to critically analyze the Syrian elections news coverage by media during the Syrian war from a critical discourse analysis perspective. It aimed to explore how discourse in general and news discourse in particular produced and reproduced power relations. Three reports from three channels; CNN, RT and the Syrian Satellite Channel (SSC); were downloaded from the websites of each channel. The channels were chosen based on their political orientations. The downloaded reports, which covered the Syrian election of 2014, were analyzed for their thematic structures and schematic structures. The analysis showed significant differences in the hierarchal arrangement of themes and schematic categories along with differences in the vocabularies used, which indicates the influence of the ideological background and political interest of each channel. The results also showed that the channels depend on different strategies to influence their audience and enhance their point of view.

  1. Allen, A. (2012). Using Foucault in education research. British Education Research Association.
  2. Atai, M. R., & Mozaheb, M. A. (2013). The representation of Iran's nuclear programme in newspaper editorials: A critical anallytic perspective. International Journal of society, culture and language.
  3. Balan, S. (n.d.). Foucault's view on power relatios. Bucharest: Institute of Phillosophy and Psychology.
  4. Beaugrande, R. (1996). The story of disourse analysis. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Introduction to Discourse Analysis (pp. 35-62). London: Sage.
  5. Beaugrande, R. (2006). Critical discourse analysis: hisyory, ideology, methodology. In Studies of Language & Capitalism (pp. 29-56).
  6. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Usng thematic analysis in psychology. In Qualititive Research in Psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 77-101).
  7. Brewer, W., & Nakamura, G. V. (1984). The Nature and Function of Schema. In Handbook of Social Cognition (pp. 2-87). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
  8. Brown, G., & Yule, G. (1986). Discourse Analysis. London: Cambridge University Press.
  9. Bruff, I. (2009). The social context of our discourse: a plea fo essentialism. Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference.
  10. de Vreese, C. (2005). News framing: theory and typology. Information Design Journal, 13(1), pp. 51-62.
  11. Dor, D. (2003). On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers. Journal of Pragmatics(35), 695-721.
  12. Eldridge, J. (200). The Contribution of the Glasgow Media Group to the Study of Television and Print Journalism. Journalism Studies, 1, pp. 113-127.
  13. Entman, R. M. (2005). Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power. Journal of Communication , pp. 163-173.
  14. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. New York: Longman.
  15. Fairclough, N. (2003). Ananlysing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge.
  16. Foucault, M. (1980). power/ Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon.
  17. Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to Discourse analysis: theory and method. London: Routledge.
  18. Glasgow Media Group. (2004). Bad News From Israel. Retrieved April 2, 2016, from Glasgow Media Group: http://www.glasgowmediagroup.org/downloads/17-war-and-conflict
  19. Goodween, C. (1981). Conversational Organization: interactions between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press.
  20. Graham, L. J. (2005). Discourse analysis and the critical use of Foucault. 2005 Annual Conference. Sydney: Australian Association for Research in Education.
  21. Harrington, S. (2008). Popular news in the twenty-first century : time for a new critical approach. In Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism (Vol. 3, pp. 266-284).
  22. Henry, F., & Tator, C. (2000). Racist Discourse in Canada's English Print Media. Toronto: The Canadian Race relations Foundation.
  23. McCombs, M. (2010). The Agenda-Setting Role of the Mass Media. Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237394610
  24. Mckee, A. (2001). A beginner's guide to textual analysis. Metro Magazine, 138-149.
  25. Philo, G. (1993). Political advertising and popular believes. Media, Culture and Society, 15, pp. 407-418.
  26. Quinn, A. (2006). Research evidence and media bias: reflections on a 1980s dispute. In Media, Culture & Society (pp. 407-418). London: Sage.
  27. Rehmann, J. (2007). Ideology Theory. Historical Materialism, 15, pp. 211-239.
  28. Rumelhurt, D., & Ortony, A. (1977). The representation of knowledge in memory. In R. C. Anderson, R. J. Spiro, & W. E. Montague (Eds.), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge (pp. 99-135). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
  29. Sadan, E. (1997). Empowerment and Community Planning: Theory and Practice of People-Focused Social Solutions. (R. Flantz, Trans.) Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers.
  30. Scollan, R. (1996). Intercultural Communication Studies. City University Hong Kong.
  31. Thomson Rueters Foundaton. (2008). Rueters Handbook of Journalism. Thomson Rueters.
  32. van Dijk, T. (1980). Macrostructures: An Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structures in Discourse, Interaction, and Cognition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  33. van Dijk, T. (1985). Introduction: discourse analysis as a new cross-discipline. In Discourse Analysis. Academic Press.
  34. van Dijk, T. (1986). news schemata. In Studying writing linguistic approaches (pp. 155-186). Beverly Hills: Sage.
  35. van Dijk, T. (1988c). News analysis: case studies of international and national news in the press. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
  36. van Dijk, T. (1991). Racism and the press. london: Routledge.
  37. van Dijk, T. (1995). power and the news media. In Political communication in action (pp. 9-36). Cresskill: Hampton Press.
  38. van Dijk, T. (1996). discourse power and access. In Texts and practices: readings in crirtcal discourse analysis (pp. 84-104). London: Routledge.
  39. van Dijk, T. (1998). Ideology: a new approach. London: Sage.
  40. van Dijk, T. (2006). Discourse, context and cognition. In Discourse Studies (Vol. Vol *, pp. 159-177). London: Sage.
  41. van Dijk, T. (2008). Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  42. van Dijk, T. (2009). Society and Discourse: How social context influencetext and talk. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  43. van Dijk, T. (2012). A note on epistemics and discourse analysis. British Journal of Social Psychology, 15, pp. 478-485.
  44. van Dijk, T. A. (1992). text and context: explorationsof semantics and pragmatics of discourse. London: Longman.
  45. van Dijk, T. A. (2012). structures of discourse and structures of power. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 12 (pp. 18-59). London: Routledhe.
  46. van Dijk, T. A., & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York: Academic Press.
  47. Wendland, E. R. (2010). Framing the Frames: A Theoretical Framework for the Cognitive Notion of ?Frames of Reference?. Journal of Translation, 6, pp. 27-50.
  48. Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2008). Critical discourse analysis: history, agenda, theory and methodology. In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 1-33). London: Sage.
  49. Yule, G. (1996). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  50. Zhang, X., Pan, Y., & Zhang, M. (2014). Superstructure Analysis in News Stories-A Contrastive Study of Superstructure in VOA, BBC, and NPR News. Asian Social Science, pp. 200-209.
  51. Zhuge, X. (2005, July). The Application of Schema Theory within Discourse Analysis. US-China Foreign Language, 3(7), pp. 51-54.

[Hanan Ghareeb Ismaeel and Naser Abdul Hameed. (2018); ACTIVATING NEWS POWER: A CASE STUDY ON THE SYRIAN ELECTION NEWS COVERAGE. Int. J. of Adv. Res. 6 (Jun). 474-484] (ISSN 2320-5407). www.journalijar.com

Dr. Naser Abdul Hameed
Tishreen University

DOI:

Article DOI: 10.21474/IJAR01/7234      
DOI URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.21474/IJAR01/7234

Download Full Paper

Download PDF No. of Downloads: 8 | No. of Views: 56