British Broadcasting Corporation Research Articles

The Argumentative Structural Shifts in English-Arabic Translation of BBC News Reports: A Sociolinguistic And Cultural Perspective

The socio-cultural and ideological features of translation have become so prominent that many studies have investigated the translation shifts resulting from the linguistic transference from the source language (SL) into the target language (TL). It is the primary aim of the present article to demonstrate the nature of the structural (morpho-syntactic) shifts in the Arabic written translation of English political British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news, which may be attributable to differences in cultural, ideological and sociolinguistic backgrounds of the target language speakers (Arabic). The heterogeneity of the socio-cultural context in which the English and Arabic political discourses are communicated is reflected in the syntactic shifts in the sentential and phrasal structure in the translation process of BBC News. The target texts (TT) exhibit a substantial tendency to conform to the socio-cultural and ideological context of the target language (TL) at the expense of the morphosyntactic structure of the ST. The research methodology involves analyzing some English BBC news extracts (ST) and their Arabic translation to investigate the structural shifts in translation. The data analysis, conducted with meticulous attention to detail, shows that the Arabic translation alters the (ST) linguistic structures and shifts the socio-cultural and ideological conceptions of the target text (TT) readers. A key aspect of the methodology is the adoption of a comparative approach, which allows for a thorough examination of the structural differences and similarities and their corresponding content. The article also takes cognizance of Hatim's (1997) ideas on translation across different cultures and those of Fishman (1972) on the sociolinguistic reflections of language. The study concludes that the target readers' cultural background, ideological make-up and sociolinguistic perception can be altered due to the structural shifts in translating political news into Arabic. It shows that the structural shifts lead to specific deviations in the argumentative structure of the source text (ST) through argumentation or counter-argumentation.

Social Media Response to the Introduction of the Swallowable Gastric Balloon Treatment for Severe Obesity in the NHS: A Snapshot of Public Opinion.

Swallowable gastric balloons are available in the UK to treat severe obesity. Our hospital introduced this treatment in 2023, the first to do so in the National Health Service (NHS). The event was featured by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on regional television, in multiple radio interviews, and online by numerous news outlets in February 2024. Obesity and the treatment of obesity are often subject to stigma, prejudice and bias. The event gave an opportunity to observe public opinion in response to a new publicly available obesity treatment. Qualitative review of public comments in articles responding to the BBC story about the introduction of swallowable gastric balloon therapy in the NHS. Comments were categorized as positive, neutral, or negative. Out of 2364 comments reviewed from all sources, 16.6% were positive, 48.9% were neutral and 34.8% were negative. Obesity stigma was highly prevalent in the responses and included many derogatory and abusive comments, including towards the patients featured in the BBC articles. Obesity stigma is highly prevalent in those responding by social media and on news websites to a new treatment within the NHS. Negative stereotypes may be a barrier to obesity treatment within the NHS and need to be addressed.

Sophomore Students’ Voice of Web-Based Learning English.

The present study aims to bridge the gaps between limited Web-based Learning English (WBLE) focused on speaking ability enhancement and sophomore multilevel speaking students' perceptions and to design a qualitative narrative study using seven sophomore university students aged 20-24 years old. Students were chosen through purposive sampling and used mobile phones and personal computers for learning purposes. The results demonstrated the use of web-based language learning to encourage students to speak English as a Foreign Language. The students used two WBLE techniques, online and offline, both on- and off-campus. They accessed five recommended WBLE: British Broadcasting Corporation, PhraseMix, VOA Learning English, British Council, and TalkEnglish. Students used online WBLE to attend blended lectures agreed upon by their teachers. This study highlights the potential of WBLE to improve speaking skills among sophomore-level students, emphasizing the need for further research and development in this field.

The Continuous Negative Framing of Africa in the Media: A Content Analysis of Stories sourced by the Ghanaian Times Newspaper from the BBC

This article looked at how the ‘Ghanaian Times’ newspaper, using stories sourced from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), framed Africa to the rest of the world. The study which utilized the mixed approach also employed the gatekeeping, framing and cultural imperialist theories in its attempt to find out which of the regional blocs in Africa dominated the coverage and whether the portrayal was positive or negative. The study found that the majority of the stories that the ‘Ghanaian Times’ sourced from the BBC were negative about Africa hence framing Africa as an unhealthy place for living. Out of the 154 stories the newspaper sourced from the BBC, only 52 stories focused on the positive happenings in Africa while 94 stories painted a catastrophic image about Africa. Also, political unrest and crime were the two dominant themes Africa was associated with. In all, the general image of Africa as portrayed by the newspaper was negative as the editors focused more on negative stories of Africa compared to the positives amidst the abundance of stories published by the BBC. This arguably means that Africa’s negative image could only be corrected if editors are deliberate in selecting more positive stories about Africa for publication. This work will indeed add to the literature on the framing of Africa in the media especially the contribution of the African media to the dominant negative image Africa continues to be associated with. Keywords: Africa, Images, Gatekeeping, Media Framing, BBC Stories, Regional Blocs Coverage

Testing the human superorganism approach tomorality.

Current theories in moral psychology do not agree about the kinds and range of offenses that people should moralize. In this study, a new approach to defining the moral domain, Human Superorganism Theory (HSoT), is presented and tested. HSoT proposes that the primary function of moral action is the suppression of cheaters in the unusually large societies recently established by our species (i.e., human 'superorganisms'). It suggests that a broad range of moral concerns exist beyond traditional notions of harm and fairness, including actions that inhibit functions such as group-level social control, physical and social structuring, reproduction, communication, signaling and memory. Roughly 80,000 respondents completed a web-based experiment hosted by the British Broadcasting Corporation, which elicited a suite of responses to characteristics of a set of 33 short scenarios representing the areas identified by the HSoT perspective. Results indicate that all 13 superorganism functions are moralized, while violations of scenarios falling outside this area (social customs and individual decisions) are not. Several hypotheses derived specifically from HSoT were also supported. Given this evidence, we believe this new approach to defining a broader moral domain has implications for fields ranging from psychology to legal theory.

The Effective British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Optimal Pronunciation Vocational School's (OPVS) Podcast

The objective of this initiative is to improve pronunciation fluency in vocational schools by including a British accent. This study utilized the Wilcoxon signed-rank test as a component to collect both quantitative and qualitative data on product moment SPSS. The data was acquired by pronunciation evaluation test and analysis questions. The data employed in this study was gathered from a vocational school consisting of thirty students enrolled in a hospitality industry and cooking programme. The mean test score is 8.00, and the total amount of ranks is 120.00. According to the statistical test output provided, it is referred to as Asymp. The p-value (two-tailed) is 0.001. Based on the test statistics output above, it is known that Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) has a value of 0.001, because the value of 0.001 is smaller than 0.05, it can be concluded there is a difference between learning outcomes using text transcripts and shadowing BBC Podcasts and those that do not use text transcripts and shadowing BBC Podcasts. The podcast produced by the BBC can enhance language acquisition by improving pronunciation skills, stimulating students' motivation to achieve English competence, and assisting listeners in developing a predominantly British accent

Representation of british social and political life in audiovisual content

Representation of british social and political life in audiovisual content

Audiences, automation, and AI: From structured news to language models

AbstractThe appearance of large language models (LLMs) and other forms of generative AI portend a new era of disruption and innovation for the news industry, this time focused on the production and consumption of news rather than on its distribution. Large news organizations, however, may be surprisingly well‐prepared for at least some of this disruption because of earlier innovation work on automating workflows for personalized content and formats using structured techniques. This article reviews this work and uses examples from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other large news providers to show how LLMs have recently been successfully applied to addressing significant barriers to the deployment of structured approaches in production, and how innovation using structured techniques has more generally framed significant editorial and product challenges that might now be more readily addressed using generative AI. Using the BBC's next‐generation authoring and publishing stack as an example, the article also discusses how earlier innovation work has influenced the design of flexible infrastructure that can accommodate uncertainty in audience behavior and editorial workflows – capabilities that are likely to be well suited to the fast‐approaching AI‐mediated news ecosystem.

Media Framing of African Refugee Migration to Europe: An Analysis of Narrative Constructions From Selected Global Media Houses in 2023

The framing of migrants from Africa to Europe on the global media is complex and quite obscure. The manner in which media tells a story is quite critical as it has the potential to influence the discernment of the public from different parts of the world. The main goal of the study was to examine how the global media houses portrayed African migrants to Europe in 2023.This was guided by two specific objectives:To examine the global media outlets' coverage of African refugee migration to Europe and to analyze the language used by the media to describe African refugees, assessing for bias, stereotypes, or stigmatization. The study was guided by the framing theory. The study employed a qualitative method design to conduct a detailed analysis of media framing surrounding African migration to Europe. Data was collected from all the global media houses with a sampling frame from three major media houses which included: The Cable News Network (CNN), The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and the Eastern Africa. Data was analyzed using thematic content analysis. Findings indicated that, how global media houses cover the migration of people from Africa to Europe exposes the intricate narrative formed by a variety of both negative and positive views. While the CNN and BBC comprise varied perspectives to the issues, The Eastern Africa gives insight into the regional circumstances surrounding the migration problem as well as the humanitarian concerns. Across all the examined media houses (CNN, BBC, The Eastern Africa), there is an inclination towards portraying the African migrants in negative light, underscoring their impact on destination states. There were instances of Bias and stereotypes that could potentially lead to stigmatization. The study recommended that there is need for balanced reporting from media houses, there needs for some ethical considerations in reporting and that media houses should mainly focus on their role of creating awareness and advocacy.

Nemone Lethbridge’s play Baby Blues on BBC television: maternal mental illness narratives, stigma and support in 1970s Britain

ABSTRACT In December 1973, the BBC aired Nemone Lethbridge’s auto-fictional play Baby Blues as one of their influential ‘Play for Today’ (PfT) series (1970–1984). This article explores the impact of Lethbridge’s controversial television play, which drew attention to taboo topics, such as infertility, caesarean section childbirth, infanticide, suicide, and, separately, motherhood ageism and dismissive medical professionals. It will illustrate how Lethbridge’s play Baby Blues was part of a broader change in discussing maternal mental illness and creating support for women experiencing postnatal depression and psychosis, instigated by the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM). The article situates Baby Blues within the wider history of the PfT series, with its focus on socio-political issues, and highlights the challenges Lethbridge faced in bringing the play to production. It analyses the mixed responses to the play, many of which were critical, and how this led to Lethbridge’s launching of a grass-roots self-help group, Depressives Anonymous (DA), in 1974, which was—and still is—a long-lasting legacy of Baby Blues. The article builds on the history of maternal mental illness as explored in women’s narratives and its association with stigma, support and feminism, alongside the British Broadcasting Corporation’s television series PfT, in 1970s Britain.

Image Creation about Africa Within the State-Owned Media Space: A Content Analysis of the Ghanaian Times Newspaper

This study attempted to find out the various images or themes that the Ghanaian Times as a State-owned Print Media in Ghana portrays about Africa through its reportage. Utilizing the gatekeeping, cultural imperialist, and framing theories, the study looked at the selection of stories by the editors and the final images that were portrayed about Africa per the stories selected for publication for five (5) years. Through content analysis, the study sampled 225 stories from the Ghanaian Times newspaper. The study hypothesized that the newspaper would frame Africa positively but the findings did not support that hypothesis. The study further delved into the sources of the African news as it was hypothesized that the Ghanaian state-owned newspaper would also pick the majority of its stories from indigenous African news agencies. The results again caused the claim to be rejected as the newspaper indeed relied more on Western media particularly the British Broadcasting Corporation for news on Africa. While there is the need to periodically research to find out about the state of Africa’s image in the media, it was recommended that the African media must reduce its dependence on foreign news agencies for stories on Africa as the tone of such stories is largely negative. The study contributes to the existing literature regarding Africa’s image in the media especially how Ghanaian media frames Africa. Keywords – Africa, Image, Media Framing, News Sources

Text Document Clustering Using Modified Particle Swarm Optimization with k-means Model

In the present digital era, vast amounts of data are generated by millions of Internet users in the form of unstructured text documents. The clustering and organizing of text documents play a crucial role in the applications of data analysis and market research. In this research manuscript, a new modified version of metaheuristic-based optimization technique is proposed with k-means for clustering the text documents. In the initial phase, the input data are acquired from the three-benchmark databases such as Reuters-21578, 20-Newsgroup and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)-sport. Further, the data denoising is accomplished by using the common techniques: stemming, lemmatization, tokenization, and stop word removal. In addition to this, the denoised data are transformed into feature vectors by utilizing Term Frequency (TF)-Inverse Document Frequency (IDF) technique. The computed feature vectors are given to the Modified Particle Swarm Optimization (MPSO) with k-means to group the closely related text documents by minimizing the similarity in different clusters. The experimental examination showed that the proposed MPSO with k-means model achieved accuracy of 0.85, 0.85 and 0.86 on the Reuters-21578, 20-Newsgroup and BBC-sport databases, which are superior to the comparative models.

Listening Projects: The BBC, Oral History, and the Nation in Fractured Times

ABSTRACT This article tunes in to the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) heart-warming radio program, The Listening Project (TLP), aired from 2012 until 2022. Comparing TLP to its source model from the US, StoryCorps, to previous British public access broadcasting initiatives (such as Open Door and Video Nation), as well as to social media, I highlight the interests at stake in the BBC’s presentation of listening in the service of imagined national community, an idea echoed by the British Library’s Oral History department where the TLP interviews are archived. I posit that TLP’s homely chats between family, friends, or caring strangers—about everything from bath times to Brexit—reflect a feminist and forgiving public, nurtured by the BBC civic ideals. This can be enjoyed and valued as a counterweight to social media riven with postdemocratic, divisive nationalism. After introducing the scope and scale of the project, I explore criticisms of TLP as cozy confessions for comfortable BBC audiences. I go on to weigh them against the BBC’s in-house oral history, which reveals the broadcaster’s people and policies, including its struggles to be as well as shape a national community that is multicultural, diverse, and inclusive. I argue that the BBC’s decision through a partnership with the University of Sussex to open the archive as a public catalog and online guided exhibit in Voices of the BBC is a listening project in its own way. These very different forms of interviews confirm, however, the serious civic ambitions behind TLP. The conversations testify to everyday resilience in the face of a troubled and unequal modern Britain, but the project’s closure reflects how difficult it is for the BBC to fulfill its mission, values, and public purposes in fractured times. 1

The Semantic Frame of The Royal Funeral

Any form of life ends in death. Human death is a difficult moment for an individual’s family. Various cultures observe diverse rituals and traditions connected with the end of life and perform different burial rites. Memorial services assume a range of forms depending on the culture and religious tradition an individual was brought up in and followed throughout their life. However, memorial ceremonies are also diversified within a given culture. The funeral of a monarch is much more complex as compared to this of any of his/her subject’s. The death of the British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022 was followed by a period of mourning and state funeral. The analysis in the present paper focuses on the semantic frame of the royal funeral. The methodological framework adopted for the discussion is the cognitive linguistic one, focusing on cognitive-linguistic models such as frames and scripts, exemplified here by the frame of the ROYAL FUNERAL and the [ROYAL FUNERAL] script. Both of the presented models contain unique elements that are not to be found in other contexts. The components of frame and script which are specific to this event are highlighted. The data for the detailed description of the frame are gathered from the online news reports provided by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The study shows how different the discussed model is from the standard description of the frame of FUNERAL and the [FUNERAL] script respectively. Also, many of its elements are culture-specific.

Language sense classification model based on neural network

The common international language, English, is playing an increasingly important role in various fields with the rapid development of artificial intelligence in recent years. Artificial intelligence can improve students' English abilities as an additional teaching tool. Therefore, this study seeks the English language sense between different types of sentences based on Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and BERT model analysis sentences and generates a model to distinguish the types. This paper adapts the LSTM model and BERT model: first, this paper crawls the sentences from British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentaries, podcasts, and YouTube and then constructs a data filter to remove the sentences with low quality and short. This paper analyzes the data set through the BERT module and LSTM model. this paper then compares the differences between different sentences in a large-scale corpus to generate a language model without long-term dependence. A model is expected to be generated after corpus analysis, and the model can be used to analyze new input statements and give their types. This study can help English learners improve their sense of the English language and the types of sentences they need to say in the face of different situations.

News Classification and Categorization with Smart Function Sentiment Analysis

Search engines are tools used to find information on the Internet. Since the web has a plethora of websites, the engine queries the majority of active sites and builds a database organized according to keywords utilized in the search. Because of this, when a user types a few descriptive words on the home page of the search engine, the search function lists websites corresponding to these keywords. However, there are some problems with this search approach. For instance, if a user wants information about the word Jaguar, most search results are animals and cars. This is a polysemic problem that forces search engines to always provide the most popular but not the most relevant results. This article presents a study of using sentiment technology to help news classification and categorization and improve the classification accuracy. We have introduced a smart search function embedded into a search engine to tackle polysemic issues and record relevant results to determine their sentimentality. Therefore, this study presents a topic that involves several aspects of natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis for news categorization and classification. A web crawler was used to collect British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news across the Internet, carried out preprocessing of text by using NLP, and applied sentiment analysis methods to determine the polarity of the processed text data. The sentimentality represents negative, positive, or neutral polarities assigned by the sentiment analysis algorithms. The research utilized the BBC news site to collect different information using a web crawler and a database to explore the sentimentality of BBC news. The natural language toolkit (NLTK) and BM25 indexed and preprocessed patterns in the database. The experimental results depict the proposed search function surpassing normal search with an accuracy rate of 85%. Moreover, the results show a negative polarity of BBC news using the Sentistrength algorithm. Furthermore, the Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) was the best-performing sentiment analysis model for news classification. This model obtained an accuracy of 85% using data collected with the proposed smart function.

A Comparative Case Study of Media Coverage of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of Winter Olympic Games Beijing 2022

Establishing a good national image and encouraging Chinese culture to spread out is a particularly important part of China's national cultural soft power construction. Winter Olympics Beijing 2022 is a global event, which is of immense value and significance for showing China's cultural charm and shaping the national image. Recently, research on the combination of framing theory and reports on the Olympic Games has significantly increased. However, there are few studies focusing on the cultural part of the analysis of reports. After making a summary of the coverage on China major events and Olympic Games of mainstream media, this study, based on the theory of cultural resistance and cultural-bound frame, chose mainstream media CNN (Cable News Network), BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), and China Daily as samples, attempting to analyze their reports of the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics Games Beijing 2022. Through the comparative analysis of Olympic coverage, this research shows that foreign media’s attitudes towards China have remarkably changed and investigates how Chinese culture is disseminated in some parts of the world to identify the factors affecting the dissemination of cultural elements. The research findings also revealed that coverage of BBC and CNN concerns more about China’s alleged abused human rights, while the part about Chinese cultural translation is limited. Only by having a comprehensive understanding of the process of transmitting culture can cultural translation be well-achieved. and it can help promote mutual communication and cooperation of the world.

British media policy: Regulations, management, strategies and approaches

The great powers utilized media as a tool of political communication and propaganda after the First World War. The leading role of propaganda during the Second World War enabled them to use media and develop media policy. The United Kingdom, as a pioneer of political communication, used the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in order to influence public opinion. The BBC has developed since its inception and now plays an inimitable role in the UK media policy and diplomacy. This article examines the British media policy including regulations, approaches, management and strategies to clarify how the United Kingdom designs and operates its media-based policies in order to play effectively in the media back grounds. It uses the documentary method to answer the questions: what are the organizational and management structures, regulations, strategies and approaches of the British media policy? And how has the British media policy been developed to surmount the media regulation problems and challenges? This research indicates that the development of a smart-organized and well-regulated system of media policy enables the United Kingdom to utilize media to promote the priorities of the British foreign policy and influence public opinion around the world as well as to play a crucial role in media wars to protect its interests in international system.

Listening to the cultural acoustics of migrant voices: The archived conversations of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the British Library’s ‘Listening Project’

I examine the cultural acoustics of voice and listening in relation to the experience of migration and displacement through an analysis of a selection of digitized audio recordings of intimate one-on-one conversations between asylum seekers originally recorded by local British Broadcasting Corporation’s radio stations in booths set up throughout the United Kingdom, with the unedited recordings digitally archived by the British Library for the public. My approach to this archive is constituted by a concept and practice I call listening to difference. My case studies are two Somali siblings, a Syrian father and son, and two friends from Algeria and the Congo, and their relationality to the norms of Standard British Listening. My aim is to show how listening to these conversations can make us aware of our own limiting preconceptions in our listening and when and why they occur. Listening to ourselves listening will work against aurally mediated racial ideologies as it necessitates reflecting upon our own automatized, enculturated biases, as well as that of technologies of recording and transcription such as automated speech recognition. It challenges preconceptions about those voices marked as deviating from unmarked norms long established by the legacies of European Enlightenment humanism. Critically listening to those who are othered and belong to communities radically different from our own involves the exposure of aural power differentials and is particularly urgent during a time of an unprecedented increase of refugees accompanied by an increased controlling of national borders antagonistic to refugees and immigrants.

The Impact of the British Broadcasting Corporation on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Gladstone Murray, Special Committees on Radio Broadcasting, and the Canadian Radio League

ABSTRACT The British Broadcasting Corporation’s impact on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation coincides with the arrival of Major Gladstone Murray to take on the position of General Manager, lobbyists for a system like the BBC, and the series of Special Committees on Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commissions in the 1930s. Gladstone Murray, a Canadian, who worked for the BBC as its Director of Publicity from 1924 to 1935, was instrumental in integrating BBC’s public service model in the CBC. This connection to the BBC cemented its impact on the CBC.