515 research outputs found
Constructing Syriza: The Greek Elections in British Online Newspapers and Blogs
No full textThe steps taken by the EU towards increasing political and economic unification, together with the recent advances in communication technologies, have contributed to making what happens in one of the member states extremely significant for the whole union, thus blurring the border between what is nationally and what is internationally relevant. As a consequence, one cannot underestimate the role of online newspapers, which can be easily accessed throughout the EU and which have incorporated genres native to the Web such as blogs.
At the end of January 2015, the electoral victory of Syriza, a Greek political party which heavily criticizes the idea of Europe vehiculated by the Union’s institutions and its recently-adopted austerity measures, did not simply have national relevance, but aroused interest and generated a lively debate across all member countries as different European notions and narratives entered into play, often conflicting. Quite expectedly, online mass media had a strategic role on this occasion; editorials and journalistic blogs played a big part in the discussion as they presented and promoted their authors’ views. News stories also contributed to orientating the public opinion by conveying covert ideological messages in favour or against Syriza and its idea of Europe.
Drawing on the theoretical premise that news discourse can never offer a value-free representation of the world as news is the result of a process of discursive as well as social construction (cf., among others, Fowler 1991; Fairclough 1995; Jäger 2001), this study sets out to investigate the online media coverage of the recent Greek elections in the United Kindgom. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the discursive representation of the electoral outcome, its significance on the international and local political scenario as well as of its protagonists so as to highlight the different ideological stances at play and the concern over the possible future of the EU.
A combined approach is adopted which integrates Critical Discourse Analysis with Corpus Linguistics: the former activates a “useful synergy” when utilized with the rigorous, data-based tools of the latter (cf. Stubbs 1996; Garzone/Santulli 2004; Baker et al. 2008). The analysis is carried out on an ad hoc-built corpus consisting of news stories, editorials and blogposts posted on the online versions of three British newspapers (The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times).
It was decided to focus on the UK’s online press as this country seems representative of a specific as well as controversial attitude towards the notion of Europeanness: it still uses its own currency and has joined the EU at a later stage, revealing an insular, often self-isolating culture which holds itself unique and different from the rest of the Continent
Media and Public Perception of Opioid Use: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-Linguistic Analysis
No full textAcademic Writing on Twitter: How Microblogging Becomes an Empowering Tool for Researchers
No full textThe relatively recent emergence of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) represents a confluence of trends: the spread of constructivist-based approaches to teaching and learning, the increasingly felt need to provide students with more engaging learning environments, and the development of new digital tools that facilitate the sharing and creation of knowledge and expertise through both teacher/student and peer interaction (Resta/Laferrière 2007: 65). Thanks to its affordances which allow for potentially ubiquitous and synchronous communication, microblogging can be turned into a very efficient CSCL medium. Drawing on recent studies on microblogging interaction (see, among others, Zappavigna 2012; Puschmann 2013), this paper focuses on the textual and rhetorical features of the microblogging platform Twitter as an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teaching/learning tool. Specifically, it explores affiliation and interaction between expert members of the academic community and novices like PhD students, as well as among the latter. The main features of the discourse of scientific instruction on Twitter are explored from a qualitative as well as a quantitative perspective: the combination of the close reading of the tweets and a corpus-based approach arguably represents the best tool to both investigate the online academic identities of PhD students and advisors and identify what is “central and typical” (Stubbs 1996: 233) of their exchanges.
A corpus consisting of tweets hashtagged #acwri (Academic Writing) has been collected and analyzed in order to study the discursive construction of the identity of the academic microbloggers collaborating on Twitter and the rhetoric and language strategies they adopt to enhance both “ambient affiliation” (Zappavigna 2011) and “ambient intimacy” (Reichelt 2007). The last two expressions refer to “a new form of sociality [made possible by the social media environment and] in which language maintains a pivotal role” (Zappavigna 2011: 789).
Preliminary results show that expert academicians portray themselves as facilitators rather than transmitters of knowledge (in line with the constructivist paradigm) as indicated by the frequent use of the terms such as “whisper” or “chat” to refer to the online exchanges they participate in. At the other end of the communication process, PhD students, who often suffer from the isolation, stress and uncertainty that are typical of academic research and writing (Percy 2014), appear to express their gratitude for finding valuable resources and being able to interact in a virtual environment which, differently from the physical one, allows them to be productive as well as to de-stress
Knowledge Dissemination, Ethics and Ideology in Specialised Communication: Linguistic and Discursive Perspectives
No full textIntroduction
No full textMedia and politics have always been mutually influential. The media plays an important political role of its own in promoting and discussing policies, as well as conveying representations of power and ideology. On the other hand, media outlets are themselves subject to political forces that have an impact on their editorial line. This mutual influence comes to light not only in journalistic practices, but also in how news is constructed and conveyed.
This volume explores the relations between politics and various types of media as expressed in different areas of the world, namely Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East.
Such a complex landscape calls for a multiplicity of analytical tools and cannot ignore specific socio-political, geographic, linguistic, and cultural contexts which may be overlooked when approached from a global perspective. In this volume, a combination of senior scholars and young experts from a wide range of disciplines, such as discourse analysis, international relations, and cultural studies, come together in a conversation which recognizes the media as a global phenomenon without neglecting its local specificities
- …
