Reconstructions of the Rhetoric of the American Dream

This research explores mainstream and diasporic media coverage and discourses surrounding the Venezuelan economic and political crisis from late March 2017 until early May 2018. A comparative content analysis was applied to a total of 256 news articles, editorials, and stories from the Toronto Star, one of Canada’s largest newspapers, and from La Portada Canadá, a Spanish-language Latin American newspaper in Toronto. The results demonstrated diasporic media’s appropriation of journalistic biases such as human impact, dramatization, and national interests and the reframing of dominant discourses from international news agencies about the Venezuelan crisis. Whereas there are significant similarities between both media’s content regarding the crisis, La Portada Canadá stressed the transnational component of the Venezuelan diaspora through discourses about political and civic engagement in Canada. The Toronto Star focused more on the economic and political components of the crisis, which are closely linked to the country’s national agenda. Keywords: diasporic media, mainstream media, media coverage, media discourses, international crises, humanitarian crisis, Venezuela, Toronto

This research explores mainstream and diasporic media coverage and discourses surrounding the Venezuelan economic and political crisis from late March 2017 until early May 2018. A comparative content analysis was applied to a total of 256 news articles, editorials, and stories from the Toronto Star, one of Canada’s largest newspapers, and from La Portada Canadá, a Spanish-language Latin American newspaper in Toronto. The results demonstrated diasporic media’s appropriation of journalistic biases such as human impact, dramatization, and national interests and the reframing of dominant discourses from international news agencies about the Venezuelan crisis. Whereas there are significant similarities between both media’s content regarding the crisis, La Portada Canadá stressed the transnational component of the Venezuelan diaspora through discourses about political and civic engagement in Canada. The Toronto Star focused more on the economic and political components of the crisis, which are closely linked to the country’s national agenda. Keywords: diasporic media, mainstream media, media coverage, media discourses, international crises, humanitarian crisis, Venezuela, Toronto

On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ from around the nation for a Muslim Summit in response to the London bombings in July of that year. One of the outcomes of the two hour summit was a Statement of Principles committing Muslim communities in Australia to resist radicalisation and pursue a ‘moderate’ Islam. Since then the ill-defined term ‘moderate Muslim’ has been used in both the political and media discourse to refer to a preferred form of Islamic practice that does not challenge the hegemony of the nation state and that is coherent with the principles of secularism. Akbarzadeh and Smith conclude that the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘mainstream’ are used to describe Muslims whom Australians should not fear in contrast to ‘extremists’. Ironically, the policy direction towards regulating the practice of Islam in Australia in favour of a state defined ‘moderate’ Islam signals an attempt by the state to mediate the practice of religion, undermining the ethos of secularism as it is expressed in the Australian Constitution. It also – arguably – impacts upon the citizenship rights of Australian Muslims in so far as citizenship presents not just as a formal set of rights accorded to an individual but also to democratic participation: the ability of citizens to enjoy those rights at a substantive level. Based on the findings of research into how Australian Muslims and members of the broader community are responding to the political and media discourses on terrorism, this article examines the impact of these discourses on how Muslims are practicing citizenship and re-defining an Australian Muslim identity.

‘Moderate Islam’

The article highlights the problems of political discourse, saturated with manipulative techniques that prevail especially in the media space and vividly illustrate the various manipulations of public consciousness in pre-election debates. The purpose of the study is to identify the means of manipulative techniques implemented in the US political media discourse. The material of the analysis is the debates of D. Vance and T. Waltz, which were held in the summer of 2024 and which are an actual example of the clash of two different positions on current and important issues related to US domestic and foreign policy. The real debate caused a great resonance among political scientists and the public due to the expertise and experience of D. Vance and T. Waltz, who, representing different points of view, stimulated a keen discussion of the debate in the media space. The methodological basis is the work of A. P. Chudinov, E. I. Sheigal, J. S. Altynbekova in the field of political discourse, as well as the ideas of A. N. Glushchenko, E. L. Dotsenko, O. C. Issers on issues of manipulative techniques in media discourse. It has been established that in American media discourse, speech manipulation often uses means of expression, such as political metaphors, hyperbole, allusions and comparisons, as well as various types of comic, which indicates the importance in the socio-cultural space of the linguistic aspect, which embodies the ideological objectives of political leaders. The novelty of the research lies in the results obtained, which give an idea of modern strategies and tactics of political communication used to achieve an effective translocative effect. Conclusions are drawn about the patterns of language development and change, and its dynamics in political rhetoric, which are a multifaceted process that includes various aspects of linguistics, sociology, and political science. In addition, language, as a means of communication, is a powerful tool of influence in the political media space.

Analyses of media discourses on judicial verdicts in sexual violence cases offer critical insight into how this topic is mediated. This study explores post-verdict mainstream and social media reaction to two high-profile verdicts in sexual assault cases in Ireland and Spain: #IBelieveHer, launched in March 2018 following the acquittal of four men accused of rape in Belfast, and #YoTeCreo which coalesced online after five men were given a lesser sentence for sexual abuse in Pamplona in April 2018. This study first identifies the stance taken by mainstream media where verdicts were contrary to “popular” opinion. Secondly, it analyses dominant hashtags that emerged on Twitter following both verdicts. Finally, it traces similarities and differences in discourse patterns identified on mainstream and social media platforms across both countries. For analysis, we employed a Critical Discourse Analysis-based theoretical framework (e.g.,KhosraviNik 2017, “Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS).” In Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis, 582–596) with resources from Framing Analysis (e.g.,Goffman 1974, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Vancouver: Harvard University Press) for methodological purposes. Findings suggest Spanish print media contained greater debate around legal understandings of sexual violence while the Spanish Twitter campaign was outward-oriented and explicitly feminist. #IBelieveHer displayed a narrower focus, with the “celebrity” dimension to this case contributing to a personalised, less nuanced, discourse on social and print media and more polarised discussion.

The article is devoted to the verbal representation study in socio-cultural stereotypes as "American Dream" achievement models. Sociocultural stereotypes are considered to be verbalized conventionally evaluative groups' images that emerge in the social categorization process. The stereotypes study in the linguocognitive perspective is aimed at describing categorization verbal means and evaluation with taking into account extralinguistic information. The stereotypes manifestation in media discourse conditioned the language material choice , which was selected from "glossy" magazines. These priodicals are considered to be extremely powerful means to spread stereotypes by people, who have realized their "American dream". The "American dream" is a stereotypic prosperity symbol , which, above all, is understood as getting comforts: a rich home, unlimited funds, success and compliance with beauty standards. The paper presents women’s verbalized "American dream" realization models, which are evaluated by society in different ways. The stereotype about successful woman, who achieved her "American dream" through her hard work is highly appreciated in American society, while comforts received through marriage or rich men’s support are assessed negatively. The stereotypes about women, who received wealth without any efforts, are expressed in the language by metaphors means, that reflect their subordination to men for the comfortable life sake. The "glossy" magazines' entertaining orientation and commercial character influence implicit socio-cultural stereotypes assessment. Raising important ethic issues, the authors turn to a diary form or confession to make the narrative more expressive and vivid for the readers. Irony is an implied negative assessment expression of sociocultural stereotypes. It is often used in "glossy" magazines. Future advances are concerned with expression linguistic means analysis of socio-cultural stereotypes, as well as discursive strategies comparison in different media discourse genres.

Is energy policy a public issue? Nuclear power in Poland and implications for energy transitions in Central and East Europe

Socio-political transitions prompt shifts in public sphere discourses on key issues (Krzyżanowski, Michał, Anna Triandafyllidou, and Ruth Wodak. 2009. ‘Introduction’ in the European Public Sphere and the Media: 1–14. London: Palgrave Macmillan.). Opportunities to change abortion legislation constitute examples of this in stimulating renewed debates around gender and human rights. Media discourses on abortion are worthy of study for their ideological role in transmitting messages and shaping public opinion. This comparative study investigates mainstream media discourses on the Irish referendum for the legalisation of abortion (May 2018) and a similar vote in the Argentine Senate (December 2020). Using the methodological approach of Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) (Bednarek, Monika, and Helen Caple. 2017. The Discourse of News Values: How News Organizations Create Newsworthiness. New York: Oxford University Press.), this article explores news values in media coverage leading up to and directly after the vote in the two countries. Both corpora demonstrated a shift in news values before and after the key events although this was more pronounced in the Irish context. Mainstream media news values in Ireland promoted legislative change overall while Argentine newspapers differed in their construction of news values reflecting their opposing positions on the proposed legislation.

This article examines the discourse about race and racism that ensued in the US media after the shooting death of an African American youth, Trayvon Martin, by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, in February 2012. The analysis examines news programs from the three major cable television channels in the United States: CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. The theoretical framework builds upon Hill's (2008) discussion of the ‘folk theory of race and racism’ in contrast to critical race theory, and asks, to what extent does the mainstream media's discourse about race remain embedded in folk ideas and to what extent (if at all) does the conversation move beyond those ideas? The paper aims to unpack the ideologies of race and language that underpin talk about race and racism in an effort to expose the hidden assumptions in the discourse that hinder more productive dialogue on the topic. (Critical race theory, folk theory of race and racism, George Zimmerman, ideology, language ideology, media discourse, race, race talk, racism, slurs, Trayvon Martin)*

PurposeThis paper aims to critically analyze media discourses on women owner-managers/entrepreneurs (OMEs) in the Kenyan and Omani newspapers.Design/methodology/approachA 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.FindingsFive 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/implicationsThe 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 implicationsPolicymakers 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/valueThis 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.

Increased sharing of untrustworthy information on social media platforms is one of the main challenges of our modern information society. Because information disseminated by political elites is known to shape citizen and media discourse, it is particularly important to examine the quality of information shared by politicians. Here, we show that from 2016 onward, members of the Republican Party in the US Congress have been increasingly sharing links to untrustworthy sources. The proportion of untrustworthy information posted by Republicans versus Democrats is diverging at an accelerating rate, and this divergence has worsened since President Biden was elected. This divergence between parties seems to be unique to the United States as it cannot be observed in other western democracies such as Germany and the United Kingdom, where left–right disparities are smaller and have remained largely constant.

Survey studies show that popular support for democracy is strong in democratic and non-democratic countries. Naturally, the question is if democracy actually means the same thing in different linguistic, cultural, and political contexts. Mass media is often mentioned as decisive in forming citizens' understandings of democracy, but the media discourse is rarely in focus in comparative studies on popular conceptions of democracy. This article contributes to the debate by analysing data collected from online media in 93 countries. By utilizing tools from natural language processing, we provide new insights based on methods that are both extensive, flexible and cost-efficient. Our analysis shows that the media discourse revolves around democracy as governance, as outcomes and as values, but that these abstract understandings have additional dimensions. Our main contributions are three: (i) we show that the media discourse is related to popular understandings of democracy; (ii) our results indicate that there are common denominators of how the D-word is discussed in media across the globe, but when analysing the dimensions in more detail, common denominators are few and (iii) by relating democracy to everyday politics, media seems to legitimize any regime as democratic rather than being a beacon for liberal democracy.

This study undertakes a systematic analysis of media discourse on migration in Sweden from 2012 to 2019. Using a novel data set consisting of mainstream newspapers, Twitter and forum data, the study answers two questions: What do Swedish media actually talk about when they talk about “migration”? And how do they talk about it? Using a combination of computational text analysis tools, I analyze a shift in the media discourse seen as one of the outcomes of the European refugee crisis in 2015 and try to understand the role of social media in this process. The results of the study indicate that messages on social media generally had negative tonality and suggest that some of the media frames can be attributed to a migration-hostile discourse. At the same time, the analysis of framing and sentiment dynamics provides little evidence for the discourse shift and any long-term effects of the European refugee crisis on the Swedish media discourse. Rather, one can hypothesize that the role of the crisis should be viewed in a broader political and historical context.

This paper presents an attempt to analyze the relationship between social Darwinism ideology and American literature at the turn of the 1920th centuries. According to philologists, critical realism was customary of that period in literature. The famous authors nowadays such as Theodore Dreiser and Jack London or less well-known, for example, Edward Bellamy and Robert Herrick, presented their plots against the same intellectual background and described them using similar expressions and clichs. Such expressions as struggle for existence, natural selection, survival of the fittest became the usual ones in American public life at the turn of the 1920th centuries. Social Darwinism rhetoric united the worlds of politics, science and literature. The language determines our ideas about what can be right or wrong, fair and unfair. Ideology and the language played a fundamental role in shaping behavior in the context of the American dream especially. The American dream contained an idea of equality of opportunities for individuals, provided that they have talent and diligence. The author analyzes the language used in American literature and the influence of social Darwinism ideology on public consciousness. This discourse reveals the essence of social problems and attitudes of the American society in that historical period.