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1 – 10 of over 29000Rodica Lisnic and Anna Zajicek
Trafficking in women is among the most serious human rights challenges. Extant studies of the media images of trafficked women suggest that these images emphasize women’s…
Abstract
Trafficking in women is among the most serious human rights challenges. Extant studies of the media images of trafficked women suggest that these images emphasize women’s victimization and contribute to the reproduction of existing gender inequalities and power relations. In this case study of Moldovan media and scientific discourse, the authors sought to identify the images of trafficked women that are presented in the print media, on the one hand, and the scientific discourse, on the other. The authors also asked whether those images portray trafficked women in a stereotypical manner. The findings of this chapter revealed that the most prevalent images in both discourses are trafficked women as victims, commodities, and slaves. Both media and scientific discourses include gender oppression, domestic violence, and poverty as dimensions of the victim image. However, these three aspects of the victim image are treated more comprehensively by the scientific discourse. Some of the most prominent differences between the two types of discourses are the absence of women’s agency in the media discourse and absence of the men’s nature as a dimension of the victim image in the scientific discourse. The authors conclude by suggesting that, despite these differences, the images present in both types of discourse could be used to justify policies that would limit the migration of women but fail to effectively address the root causes of sex trafficking in women.
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Wallace Chigona, Johannes Willem Vergeer and Andile Simphiwe Metfula
This study aims to analyse how the media plays its role in the information communications technology (ICT) debate in a developing country context, by way of analysing the media…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyse how the media plays its role in the information communications technology (ICT) debate in a developing country context, by way of analysing the media discourse surrounding the South African Broadband Policy.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a critical approach and uses critical discourse analysis, employing Habermas's theory of communicative action. Data for the study include the media reports on the South African Broadband Policy.
Findings
It is noted that: the media discourse was systematically distorted; the discourse was driven mainly by the government; and many actors were systematically excluded from the discourse, or opted not to engage in the debate. The low‐income category, the very group that should benefit from the policy, was excluded from the debate. The study notes further that the status of key actors in the policy affected the media's perception of the policy.
Originality/value
To increase the chances of success for policy, there is a need to include all stakeholders in the policy debate. This study notes how some actors were left out, and how others opted not to engage in the debate, which points to the need for strategies to promote participation in policy debate. It is noted, too, that the distortions could have resulted from lack of skills in the media, the enhancement of which could address the problem.
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Beldina Owalla and Aziza Al Ghafri
This paper aims to critically analyze media discourses on women owner-managers/entrepreneurs (OMEs) in the Kenyan and Omani newspapers.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to critically analyze media discourses on women owner-managers/entrepreneurs (OMEs) in the Kenyan and Omani newspapers.
Design/methodology/approach
A critical discourse analysis is carried out on a total of 408 online media articles (174 articles from Omani newspapers and 234 articles from Kenyan newspapers) on women OMEs over the period 2010-2018. Articles are also classified based on their framing of women’s entrepreneurship.
Findings
Five main categories of media discourses are identified, i.e. discourses on government/institutional initiatives; women OMEs’ dependency; women OMEs’ femininity; women OMEs’ societal impact; and normalization of women OMEs. These gendered media discourses and underlying assumptions further perpetuate women OMEs’ subordinate position in society, weaken their social legitimacy and trivialize their roles as managers and leaders in society.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis was limited to online articles published in mainstream media. Future research could focus on offline print media from smaller media distributors or other distribution channels.
Practical implications
Policymakers and media houses need to pay greater attention to the subtle mechanisms reproducing gender stereotypes. Women OMEs should also take a more active role in constructing their identity in the media.
Originality/value
This paper highlights the underlying assumptions of media discourses regarding women’s empowerment that negatively impacts their social legitimacy. This paper also draws attention to media’s role in the trivialization of women OMEs’ leadership and managerial roles and subsequent marginalization of their social status.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social media in communication discourse in the Islamic Middle East and North African (MENA) countries.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social media in communication discourse in the Islamic Middle East and North African (MENA) countries.
Design/methodology/approach
By applying the theory of social networks and a method known as critical discourse analysis (CDA) this study investigates the role of social media in the recent waves of popular unrest in the MENA region.
Findings
This study finds that social media not only played an important role in citizens’ participation in communication discourse and mobilization, but also that these media activities intensified in part because of the authorities’ failing rationales against protesters, as shown in the four‐part CDA validity test.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to a particular time frame covering the recent democratic discourse in the MENA region for the period 2009‐2011. While this research is limited to the case study of the MENA region, the author believes that lessons learned from this case study can be applied to other developing countries across the globe.
Practical implications
Social media tools available via the internet have provided web users across the globe effective tools and services to share and disseminate information by interactively collaborating with each other in digital communities through blogs, social networking and video sharing sites. In this context, social networks are considered to be effective media for communication discourse. The intensive use of social media networks among citizens’ of the MENA region indicate that the internet has the potential to be a multivocal platform through which silenced and marginalized groups can have their voices heard.
Originality/value
While the existing literature focuses largely on deploying Habermasian critical discourse analysis to media discourse within the context of democratic and well developed nations, this paper presents one of the few studies that extends the CDA method to non‐democratic countries. As such it contributes to the existing knowledge and understanding of the mobilizing effects of social media in communication discourse.
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Filipa Perdigão Ribeiro and Kate Torkington
This study aims to explore the ways in which Portuguese online news reports and opinion studies have framed the discussion about overtourism in Lisbon and its impacts on the city…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the ways in which Portuguese online news reports and opinion studies have framed the discussion about overtourism in Lisbon and its impacts on the city and its inhabitants.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on critical discourse analysis applied to media texts, this paper discusses the discursive representations of overtourism by focusing on how an emerging new discourse which constructs tourism as problematic began to challenge the established discourse – in which tourism is perceived as beneficial.
Findings
As a consequence, and to maintain the status quo, many media texts deploy strong legitimating strategies focusing on the benefits of tourism growth. These are juxtaposed with de-legitimating strategies which serve to deny problems of overtourism. Findings highlight the role the media play in shaping tourism discursively and uncover the complexities of discourses on the effects of (over)tourism and the ways in which they are constructed, disseminated and discussed.
Social implications
This research is particularly relevant when newspaper opinion articles from 2021 voice the Portuguese Government’s concern in bringing back to Portugal the pre-pandemic tourist numbers as soon as possible.
Originality/value
This study attempts to reveal the conflicting interests and imbalances of power among different tourism stakeholders by taking a qualitative, critical approach to the analysis of media discourse as a social practice within the broader socio-political context. This study argues that from an analytical-methodological perspective, media discourse is an optimum research site to critically explore how conflicting interests are positioned in the mass media and how this shapes public opinion.
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Seong Eun Cho and Dong-Hee Shin
– This study aims to examine the impact of news frames associated with traditional media and with Twitter discourse on social issues.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the impact of news frames associated with traditional media and with Twitter discourse on social issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Using semantic network analysis, it identifies the role of new alternative channels as well as discussing ways of understanding and consuming news content in the changing media environment. Additionally, it focuses on the dominant Twitter communicators who rank high in betweenness centrality.
Findings
The results confirmed that traditional news media tend to superficially describe main events and media strikes without comment. They tended to consciously or unconsciously favor media corporations by engendering anxiety and conflict or by restraining reports on the rationales of the strike. Twitter discourse, on the contrary, positively represents the striker's arguments and frequently reveals support of the strike.
Research limitations/implications
The data set of this study was specialized, not generalized. However, the findings extend literature relating to the role of journalism and alternative channel. For example, this study indicated that the change of media environment has reinforced partiality of news, including both traditional and alternative channels.
Practical implications
The findings imply that the advent of new media does not purely represent a laymen's voice and rather tends to strengthen the partiality of media, including both traditional and new media, beyond selective exposure on content of the receiver.
Originality/value
By clarifying the influence of alternative channels, this study suggests the counterpart of traditional journalism in the near future.
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Chi Kit Chan and Anna Wai Yee Yuen
This study scrutinizes the convergence between commercial advertising and the political vision of social movement in media advertisements. This study deliberates how commercial…
Abstract
Purpose
This study scrutinizes the convergence between commercial advertising and the political vision of social movement in media advertisements. This study deliberates how commercial advertisement could be compatible with movement discourses and social resistance. Such hybridization between commercial narration and movement discourses is different from political advertising sponsored by political and civic organizations. This study uses an advertising campaign in Hong Kong which expressed outcry against police search on an outspoken media as a case study to conceptualize advertising activism with the thematic analysis of the movement discourses shown in printed advertisements. This study aims to engage with scholarly dialogue surrounding social movement studies and discuss how movement discourses could hybridize with commercial advertisement.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examines the discourses and textual features of an advertising campaign initiated by the public instead of political elites and social movement organizations in Hong Kong, in which various individual citizens, anonymous participants, business enterprises and civic organizations expressed their anger over a police search against an outspoken media (Apple Daily) by Hong Kong police. This bottom-up advertising campaign shows how the narration of commercial advertising could be hybridized with the activism for social resistance, which is conceptualized as advertising activism in this paper.
Findings
Based on the textual features and discourses embedded in the advertisements, this study investigates the printed advertisements mushroomed in Apple Daily since the police search in August 2020 by the thematic analysis under the concept of advertising activism: frame construction, identities mobilization and decentered solidarity. Advertising activism differs from commercial and political advertising from two ways. Firstly, its advertisements are cosponsored by numerous nonpolitically well-known individuals or organizations. Secondly, advertising activism feature with hybridization between commercial narration and political or movement discourses. Discourses of advertising activism aim to mobilize the commercial identity of consumers for noncommercial means by their consumption behaviors.
Originality/value
The findings illustrate a hybridization of commercial narration and movement discourses stemming from social movement and identity politics, which is coined by our conceptualization of advertising activism. While commercial and political advertising focus on business promotion and political messages, respectively, advertising activism demonstrates multiple layers of cultural meanings on the consumption behaviors which hybridize with political and movement discourses. The authors hope this study could unleash further intellectual dialogue on the social role of advertising in social movement and how movement discourses “spillover” from social events to the commercial advertisement.
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Edward Rock Davis and Rachel Wilson
This paper aims to analyse contrasting discourses on education and competitiveness from four countries to show the different national values that are a key driver in economic…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse contrasting discourses on education and competitiveness from four countries to show the different national values that are a key driver in economic development.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses content analysis to compare and contrast the newspaper discourse surrounding the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in four countries with above OECD average performance: Japan and South Korea (improving performance) and Australia and Finland (declining performance). PISA has attracted much government and public attention because it reflects education and the economic value of that education.
Findings
There are key contrasts in the discourses of the four countries. Despite shifts to globalised perspectives on education, strong national and cultural differences remain. Educational competitiveness and economic competitiveness are strong discourses in Japan and South Korea, while in Australia and Finland, the focus is on educational competitiveness. The media in Finland has few references to economic competitiveness and it does not feature in Australia. The discourse themes on PISA from 2001 to 2015 are presented with trends in educational attainment and shifting national perspectives on education.
Research limitations/implications
Analysis is limited to the top two circulation newspapers in English language in each country over 2001 to 2015. These newspapers in Finland, Japan and South Korea include translated content from local language papers.
Originality/value
The paper provides longitudinal perspectives to understand the contrasting societal values placed on education and how these relate to perspectives on competitiveness. This media evidence on national discourses can inform education policy orientations in the four countries examined.
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Alessandra Sossini and Mats Heide
This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.
Findings
This study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.
Research limitations/implications
The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.
Practical implications
The findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.
Originality/value
This paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.
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Sri Pujiningsih, Ani Wilujeng Suryani, Ika Putri Larasati and Sharifah Norzehan Syed Yusuf
This study aims to discover the role of accounting and media in hegemonic discourse for divestment valuation of PT Freeport Indonesia shares.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to discover the role of accounting and media in hegemonic discourse for divestment valuation of PT Freeport Indonesia shares.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs data from 608 news articles from 5 national media. This study uses Gramsci's concept of hegemony and Laclau and Mouffe's hegemonic discourse to explore the ideological role of accounting in the formation of historical blocs and investigate the contestants' discursive strategies through the chains of equivalence and difference.
Findings
The incumbent presidential candidate, by involving political and intellectual actors, has succeeded in taking over and shifting PT Freeport Indonesia's hegemony to maintain its power, through the ideology of divestment and accounting. The media played a role in the victory of the pro-divestment bloc in the hegemonic divestment discourse contest. The pro-divestment bloc's discursive strategy uses more formal and technical language styles than the anti-divestment bloc, which uses informal language styles. The pro-divestment bloc uses the key signifiers of low price, improved financial performance, nationalization and welfare, as opposed to the anti-divestment bloc, with the key signifiers of high price, declining financial performance and neoliberalist colonization.
Practical implications
The implications of this research may encourage accounting academics to contribute to emancipatory social movements in the struggle for hegemony. The implication for policy makers is the importance of involving the public, intellectual actors, political actors and the media in supporting diverse state strategic policies in the national interest.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to Gramsci's theory of hegemony and Laclau and Mouffe's hegemonic discourse to understand the role of accounting and media in a nationalization project as an emancipatory social movement, as well as a hegemonic shifting political movement.
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