Syllabus
Introduction to News Discourse and Its Framework
Approaches to news media discourse process
Actors in News Discourse
Discourse structure for news texts
Critical discourse analysis
News Event Analysis 1. Constructing a News Story
News distribution: How much is enough?
News fragmentation: Getting the news flowing
The perils of oversimplification
The inverted pyramid news story structure
News Event Analysis 2. What do Headlines and Leads Tell Us?
News production: What is a news event?
Gerbner’s communication model and its application
Approaches to Headlines: From traditional media to SEO practices
News Event Analysis 3. Critical Stylistics and Ideological Effects
Principles of intentionality and a text producer’s intents
Applying Lesley Jeffries’ critical set of stylistic tools
The author dilemma: Whose intentions Do We Decode?
News Agenda Analysis 1. News Editorial Practices and Ideology
Media organisations’ standards and practices
News values and story selection
Representing or constructing a reality?
News Agenda Analysis 2. News Framing and Approach to Analysis
Pan and Kosicki’s Framing Analysis: What to Follow
What is foregrounded, backgrounded, and left out?
News Event Analysis 4. Propaganda and Its Devices
What is new in modern propaganda techniques?
Fake news, post-truth, gaslighting - making up alternative realities
Approaches to reality, representation, and appearance
News Event Analysis 5. Opposing, Contrasting and “Us vs. Them”
Power relations in news discourse
Opposing social and cultural constructs in narration
The West vs. the Rest Paradox
News Agenda Analysis 3. Society and Public Opinion
Labelling, castes and roles of societies
SPO model: Actors and Goals
Which audience do journalists serve?
News Event Analysis 6. Factuality and Opinionism in News
What is a fact? What nature does it hold?
Role of facts in news production
Opinions and commentary in the news
Infotainment
News Language: A tool or a weapon?
Editorial standards and language evolution
News language in a digital age
How to stay true to your audience
Media Literacy and Media Education
Are we media literate enough?
Media literacy index
Media literacy practices
Media education as part of the curriculum
Annotation
The primary focus of this course is to familiarise students with a choice of analytical tools and frameworks available for news text analysis from various standpoints (social and political sciences, linguistics, stylistics, media studies, etc.). The overall criticality of developing practical analytical skills for interacting with media messages cannot be overstated, considering current international affairs (Russia’s war with Ukraine and its resultant consequences, climate crisis, global inflation — all this included). Moreover, political and news discourses are substantially interwoven; they both construct social realities, shape public policies, and represent the goings-on in the world in diverse ways. To top it all, the technological advances of the last few decades have also played a critical role in how traditional and new media function. Coupled with opportunities presented by social media, news discourse can be taken metaphorically as a battlefield of contrasting social realities constructed by the media. From there, there’s the need for critical approaches to analysing and decoding news ideological effects.
Throughout the course, in agreement with students, there will be chosen currently running or recently taken place news events within EU-Russia relations that will be studied and analysed in class, given the framework relevant to the seminar. Individually and in groups, students are expected to closely examine a selection of news at various levels, whether it be structural, stylistic/linguistic, cultural, symbolical, political, etc. The end goal of such exercises is to identify ideological effects encoded into news text on multiple planes plus to uncover the complexities of news production that experiences paradigm shifts with the rise of the Internet.