Discourses Of Blame Research Articles

Dirty lives, wild birds, clean places, and exceptional health: a critical discourse analysis of Danish and Norwegian news coverage of avian influenza risk

Avian influenza outbreaks are recurring worldwide. In Norwegian and Danish media, fluctuating attention has been paid to these outbreaks and the coverage that exists largely portrays the situation as a distant problem, limited to so-called non-Western countries. In the present article, we have analysed news articles from two Norwegian and two Danish newspapers published in 2006/2008, 2017 and 2021 using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). By analysing linguistic articulations of risk and blame for avian influenza in Norwegian and Danish media, we explore how this portrayal creates discursive distinctions between risk and blame ‘here’ in Europe and ‘there’ in Asian and African countries. We discuss these discursive contrasts in light of Bergamo’s theory of ideology of health progress and Douglas’ understanding of hygiene as cultural ideas. Our analysis reveals that dominant portrayals of avian influenza in the news media construct particular discourses of blame, risk, and responsibility for disease emergence and spread that are ideologically underpinned by an understanding of disease management, meat production, and animal health in Norway and Denmark as exceptional. We argue that this may have implications for perceptions of places at risk of emergence and spread of viruses and the nature of responses for pandemic preparedness and disease eradication.

The political stakes of cancer epistemics

We demonstrate a transnationally situated dialogue as a method to bring ethnographic and historical research in Brazil, East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), India, Russia and Spain into conversation to show three cancer epistemics sites (research, detection, and care access) where the politics of cancer epistemics are at play. First, in the field of research, we show how certain ways of knowing, and certain questions about and interests in cancer, are privileged over others. Using examples from Spain and East Africa, we highlight how a shift towards microbiological and high-technology research has outpriced many more locally grounded research agendas, ignoring questions of industrial and capital accountability in cancer aetiology. Second, we look at ways of making cancer visible, how knowledge is mobilised in cancer detection and screening, where and for whom. We discuss the increased individualisation of risk which is reframing cancer surveillance and therapeutic agendas. Using examples from India, Spain and Brazil, we demonstrate how the epistemics of cancer detection generate discourses of blame and responsibility at the individual level and accentuate existing inequities whilst simultaneously absorbing patients and their families into complex networks of surveillance. Lastly, we examine how the epistemics of cancer implicate the very possibilities of accessing cancer care, shaping care pathways and possibilities for patients. With ethnographic examples from India, Russia and Brazil, we demonstrate how an orientation towards the individual shifts attention away from the commercialisation of healthcare and dominance of logics of profit in therapeutics. Throughout the paper, we point towards what is holding these cancer discourses together and grapple with how the politics of cancer epistemics are at play across the globe, even if they appear to be taking many different forms. Our approach highlights how practices are mirrored in the framing, implementation, detection and care of cancer with far-reaching effects.

Examining interactions between dominant discourses and engineering educational concepts in teachers' pedagogical reasoning

AbstractBackgroundEngineering's introduction into K–12 classrooms has been purported to support meaningful and inclusive learning environments. However, teachers must contend with dominant discourses embedded in US schooling that justify inequitable distributions of resources.PurposeDrawing on Gee's notion of discourses, we examine how teachers incorporate language legitimizing socially and culturally constructed values and beliefs. In particular, we focus on the discourse of ability hierarchy—reflecting dominant values of sorting and ranking students based on perceived academic abilities—and the discourse of individual blame—reflecting dominant framings of educational problems as solely the responsibility of individual students or families. We aim to understand how these discourses surface in teachers' reasoning about teaching engineering.MethodWe interviewed 15 teachers enrolled in an online graduate program in engineering education. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, we analyzed how teachers drew on discourses of blame and ability hierarchy when reasoning about problems of practice in engineering.ResultsTeachers drew on engineering education concepts to reinforce dominant discourses (echoing specific language and preserving given roles) as well as to disrupt (utilizing different language or roles that [implicitly] challenge) dominant discourses. Importantly, teachers could also retool discourses of ability hierarchy (arguing for a more equitable distribution of resources but problematically preserving the values of ranking and sorting students).ConclusionsK–12 schooling's sociohistorical context can shape how teachers make sense of engineering in ways that implicate race, gender, disability, and language, suggesting a need to grapple with how discourses from schooling—and engineering culture—maintain marginalizing environments for students.

Language shift: gender differences in Chaouia use in Algeria

Abstract The paper explored the shift away from Chaouia, a variety of Tamazight, to the use of Algerian Arabic in Batna (northeast Algeria). The Chaouia-speaking community had recently witnessed a large rural exodus and significant social changes and mobility due to economic opportunities, education and ethnic contact. The paper focused on gender differences in language use and considered how socialisation and cultural ideologies regarding men’s and women’s relationship to language shape linguistic decisions and choices. Building upon representations of masculinity and femininity, we investigated the ways in which these gendered practices constrain or restrict Chaouia use among working-class Chaouias. We used a qualitative approach with an embedded quantitative element to analyse interviews and surveys across the domestic setting as well as schools and social networks in Batna to examine the interplay between gender identities and language socialisation at home, language choices at school and among friends. The increase in cross-ethnic contact with the larger Arabic-speaking community had introduced significant re-considerations of social and linguistic priorities in the community. The findings showed a clear impact of parents on the acquisition of a gendered pattern of language choice, with boys being socialised in Chaouia and girls in Algerian Arabic. This pattern was further reinforced at school and among peers through teachers and social networks. Females’ networks were ethnolinguistically heterogeneous whereas males’ networks were Amazigh-oriented. Hence, the traditional link of Tamazight to femininity was re-negotiated to generate a discourse of blame for the ongoing language shift and identity loss.

Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories in Southeast Europe: (Non-)Believers, Social Network Bubbles, and the Discourse of Blame

ABSTRACT Using survey and social network evidence from Southeast Europe, we advance the understanding of conspiracy theories and politics related to the coronavirus pandemic in three ways: (1) we show that beliefs in coronavirus conspiracy theories are related to ideological support for a nationalist vision of society and socialist vision of the economy; (2) we also show that both conspiracy believers and nonbelievers are living in bubbles of the like-minded; and (3) we use the tools of natural language processing to elucidate the unambiguous differences in the discourse related to the coronavirus used by conspiracy believers and nonbelievers.

An interreality study of race and homicide news coverage in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Building on ethnic blame discourse, the social threat hypothesis, and media bias theories, this article makes a quantitative interreality comparison between homicide news coverage and homicide statistics in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the United States of America. Findings reveal that Whites made up 2% of homicide victims in 2018 in Baton Rouge, but represented almost 40% of homicide victims in the news. Press releases issued by local law enforcement also overrepresented White homicide victims, as did follow-up stories. Findings on homicide suspects showed that Whites and Latinos were overrepresented, and Blacks were underrepresented.

Discourses of blame in strategic narratives: the case of Russia’s 5G stories

ABSTRACT Governments spread strategic narratives via media to influence foreign audiences and policy makers. A frequent but understudied feature of strategic narratives is the discursive construction of blame. In this article, we use the coverage of the adoption of 5G cellular technology in Russian state-funded news portals as an example to show how to interpret blame narratives about international security issues. We combine methods and insights from the discourse-analytic studies of blame and the research into the uses of strategic narratives in international relations to reveal how various articulations of blame are used to (de)legitimise particular actors and actions, sow discord, and foster alliances. Our analysis sheds new light on blame discourses that are more sophisticated and indirect than straightforward accusations and may serve multiple strategic goals at once. It also contributes to scholarship on Russia’s strategic communication about China as well as the United States and its allies.

"As Long as I Got a Breath in My Body": Risk and Resistance in Black Maternal Embodiment.

"Mothering while black" in Cleveland, Ohio is a radical act. This highly segregated, highly unequal urban environment is replete with the chronic stressors that degrade well-being and diminish survival for Black mothers and their infants; specifically, a maternal mortality rate two and a half times that of their white counterparts and an infant mortality rate nearly three times that of infants born to white mothers. In the midst of such tragedy and disadvantage, Black mothers strive to love and care for their children in ways that mitigate the toxicity of structural racism. The seventeen pregnant and postpartum Black women in this ethnographic study describe transformational experiences with what we label "betterment:" whereby they center their children's perspective and needs, reconsider their social networks, and focus on the future with an unflinching understanding of the constraints of structural racism. Locating betterment alongside other examples of maternal embodiment and through the rich theoretical lens of Black feminist scholars these participant narratives suggest that the toxic effects of racism and the means to resist them are embodied by Black mothers. A nuanced understanding of Black motherhood disrupts public discourses of blame and responsibility that obscure our collective duty to dismantle structural racism.

A Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis of mothers’ voiced accounts of the “duty to protect” children from fatness and fatphobia

Research has highlighted damaging contradictions in the responsibilisation of mothers over children's health, at once held responsible for tackling “childhood obesity” while being cautious not to encourage children to become obsessive with their bodies. While research has highlighted discourses of blame and elucidated mothers’ experiences, less is known about how mothers negotiate discourse in their voiced accounts. Utilising Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, this study analysed interviews with 12 mothers in England to explore their experiences of a nationally mandated BMI screening programme in schools and how discourses shape their voices and experiences. In negotiating complex and contradictory discourses of motherhood and fatness, participants expressed a “duty to protect” their children from both fatness and fatphobia. Negotiating these responsibilities left mothers feeling guilt at their personal “failure” to protect their children from one or both harms. Mothers did not take up these discourses unproblematically; they resisted them, yet felt constrained by “expert knowledges” of fatness and motherhood that had clear consequences in responsibilising mothers for the “harm” of fatness. This analysis calls attention to how dominant discourses function personally and politically to responsibilise mothers for the harm caused by state-sanctioned fatphobia.

Waste and the neoliberal work of blame: Reading politics from Cape Town’s informal landscapes

Nearly one quarter of Cape Town’s population lives in informal settlements, sites characterized by limited access to basic infrastructure. This article examines how local experiences with waste management reinforce resident understandings of squatted sites as political and material landscapes, emphasizing the structural and spatial foundations of persistent exclusion. Such local understandings are set against the municipality’s neoliberal framing of resident interactions with waste and infrastructure as irresponsible and illegal, implying that residents are to blame for service limitations and using this to justify further restrictions. Drawing from public service campaigns and ethnographic research, this article examines neoliberal ideologies as discourses of blame that erase the political context for marginalized lives, and argues for the need to understand ideologies of governance by setting them against the broad politics of everyday life.

Discourses of Blame: An Analysis of Media Coverage in the Robert Pickton Case

When most Canadians consume their news media, they don't often consider the underlying narratives of colonialism, racism, and classism that can be spread through media representations of marginalized peoples. Such is the case with Indigenous women in Canada, who die violently at five times the rate of other Canadian women, but are given three and a half times less coverage in the media than white women for similar cases. News media articles covering Indigenous women's deaths are also less in-depth and less likely to make the front page. Prior to the apprehension of Robert “Willy” Pickton in 2002, media coverage of the dozens of missing women on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside was minimal, and often portrayed the women as the harbingers of their own misfortune. The Vancouver Police Department also failed to take action, citing the women’s “transient lifestyles” as reason to believe they would return soon. However, even after widespread recognition of the issue began, media coverage continued to attribute a level of “blameworthiness” to the missing and murdered by regularly engaging with tropes and stereotypes that individualized the acts of violence against them. In this paper, I look to explore that phenomenon by asking how the women of the Downtown Eastside are named as culpable or blameworthy in the violence enacted against them, as evidenced in the media coverage of the Robert Pickton case. My analysis found that while an identifiable killer like Pickton provided the news media a temporary cause for the women’s deaths, sex-working and drug using women maintained blame in the public eye both during and long after the case, due in equal parts to their use of drugs, their status as sex workers, and their proximity to “tainted” geographical regions like the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. As evidenced by this research, Indigenous women are continually and systemically blamed for the violence enacted against them. Keywords: MMIWG, sex work, media bias, Downtown Eastside, gendered violence

Connections built and broken: The ontologies of relapse

‘Relapse prevention’ has become a familiar concept and practice for those engaged with drug treatment services. The ways that ‘relapse prevention’ is currently practised and talked about departs primarily from research produced within the discipline of psychology, and especially by researchers and practitioners adopting cognitive behavioural (Marlatt & Donovan, 2005; Witkiewitz & Marlatt, 2009) and neurocognitive approaches (Tapert et al., 2004). The outcome has been the production of ‘tools’ and ‘mechanisms’, put in place to ‘prevent’ people from relapsing. This way of thinking about relapse has generated the assumption that once access to these ‘tools’ has been granted, relapse becomes a problem of the individual, a personal ‘success’ or ‘failure’, depending on how these tools are used, a measurement of how much one ‘really’ wants to recover. This system of thought reproduces longstanding discourses of blame against AOD users and fuels the discussion on the ‘revolving doors’ of recovery (White & Kelly, 2010), holding treatment services accountable for ‘failing’ to produce and maintain ‘recovered’ bodies. In this paper my aim is to challenge the production of relapse as a ‘threat’ and to rethink it as a desire to connect, a desire that can be either enhanced, or broken. Drawing on empirical data produced in two recovery services, one in Liverpool (UK) and one in Athens (Greece), analysed through a Deleuzo-Guattarian system of thought, I discuss relapse in two different ways: (a) as part of the temporality of recovery, a way to start building connections with services; as the expression of an emerging desire under exploration, and(b) as the consequence of broken and interrupted connections when policy fails to support the encounters emerging in the recovery space, disrupting thus the recovery process.

Failure as Learning: Photovoice as Methodology in Research with Marginalised Young People


 An unpublished pilot study at a charitable youth organisation in the North East of Scotland found that young people (aged 16 to 25) accommodated by the organisation consumed a diet high in sugar and low in levels of foods such as meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables (Perry, 2013). The Foodways and Futures project (2013-2016), combining ethnographic and action research methodology, set out to explore why the diet of young people was sub-optimal, despite the organisation having a number of support services in place that would—it was perceived—encourage better eating habits amongst the young people housed within the organisation. Photovoice (PV) was identified as a participatory research method that was suitable, and that would encourage young people to participate as co-researchers in the investigation. However, despite young people getting involved in other research methods that were employed in the study, PV was generally not taken up as anticipated. This article explores how the method was employed, and argues that what could be deemed the ‘failure’ of PV instead may be interpreted as evidence of young people’s awareness and sensitivity about the potential judgements of others on personal food choices. In this sense, poor uptake of PV actually reveals much more about young people’s lived experiences than the data that it generates. The use of PV as a research method is therefore powerful, in that it allows participants to indicate, through inactivity, their sensitivity to ‘discourses of blame’.

Dengue Fever and the Discourse of Blame: An Ethnographic Study in a Thai Village That Produces “Lucky Bamboo”

Dengue Fever and the Discourse of Blame: An Ethnographic Study in a Thai Village That Produces “Lucky Bamboo”

Culpability, blame, and stigma after pregnancy loss in Qatar

BackgroundFollowing a miscarriage many women report feeling guilty and culpable for what has happened particularly when aspects of societal blame and stigma are involved. This research investigated the impact of cultural context on the experience of miscarriage. In particular, it focused on how elements of stigma and blame are linked to notions of miscarriage etiology and risk among Qatari women.MethodsThe research used an ethnographic approach. The data was collected over 18 months of fieldwork in Qatar, using semi-structured face to face interviews, and participant observation. A purposive sample of 40 women (primary participants) who had recently miscarried, participated in the study. Potential subjects were initially identified in the Women’s Hospital and were consented, and then interviewed in Arabic either in the hospital or at their preferred location. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and translated into English. Additional key interviews were performed with 20 secondary participants related to the miscarriage cohort including family members and husbands. Inductive thematic analysis of content was performed manually to extract themes.ResultsTwo main themes emerged from the material looking specifically at miscarriage aftermaths: rhetorics of blame, self-blame and feelings of guilt; and miscarriage attitudes. Overall society is sympathetic and miscarriage is seen as normal and not particularly worrying, but understood to be upsetting to women. However, findings suggest there is some ambivalence around blame, culpability and stigma applied to miscarriage; some participants perceived miscarriage as a relatively normal and common event, whereas, others felt that miscarriage is resounding stigma and shame.ConclusionMiscarriage aftermaths are embedded in social, cultural and religious frameworks in relation to notions of risk and causation. Attention should be paid to ensure women and those around them are given appropriate and robust information about miscarriage causation to deflect discourses of blame that may be employed and reduce harm to women who suffer miscarriage.

Paws for thought? Analysing how prevailing masculinities constrain career progression for UK women veterinary surgeons

The structure of veterinary medicine is changing rapidly from that of traditional small privately owned practices to one of corporate franchises, often positioned within retail outlets. Accompanying this trend has been the increasing presence of women, such that they now dominate clinical practice. To what extent are these two issues, increasing feminisation and corporatisation, linked? Since the mid-1990s, corporate providers have largely displaced the traditional self-employed practice ownership/partnership model. This has informed a blame discourse whereby feminisation is associated with industry restructuring given women’s alleged preferences for predictable, flexible corporate employment, plus a lack of entrepreneurial ambition towards practice ownership. Drawing upon in-depth semi-structured interviews with women veterinary surgeons and key industry stakeholders, we critically analyse such arguments. We illustrate that diverse notions of corporate masculinity, operating in parallel with the entrepreneurial masculinity of traditional practice, generate this blame discourse and underpin women’s limited progression into self-employed practice ownership. This has implications for the future structure of the profession and the careers of forthcoming generations of veterinary surgeons.

Anti-poverty Policies and Discourses of Blame in China

Anti-poverty Policies and Discourses of Blame in China

Talking About Food Choices of Former Homeless Young People: Making Sense of Conflicting Discourses of Blame Through Social Worlds Theory

After a pilot study at a charitable youth organisation in the North East of Scotland found no considerable improvements in the food choices of former homeless young people accommodated by the organisation (Perry, 2013), the Foodways and Futures project (2013-2016) set out to explore why. Both members of staff at the same organisation as well as young people were invited to voice their views and opinions on the factors influencing young people’s food choices. Whilst everyone’s contribution was considered equally informative for our findings, I was attentive to where the information originated from. In this, I found that three conflicting discourses of blame pervade the participants’ expressions of the rationales underlying young people’s food choices. Trying to make sense of these, I employ Strauss’ Social Worlds Theory (1978). I find that the different discourses of blame make sense in the context of the complex organisational structures. In objecting to a tendency in the literature to assign standardised discourse of blame primarily to youth workers’ practice, these discourses showcase mutual understanding instead.

Blame and fear: Roma in the UK in a changing Europe

Anti-Gypsyism is not a new phenomenon. For centuries Roma have been blamed and feared; their social identities constructed to fulfil a function to be the visible ‘other’. The Brexit debate offered fertile, but well-trodden, ground for negative discourse. Gypsies, Travellers and Roma (GTR) embodied three key gripping anti-EU arguments: sovereignty of policy making, immigration control and potential cost savings of withdrawing from the EU. The research shows the felt hostility by GTR and suggests that the successful performance of the social construction of Roma in the debate was vital to the hegemonic, anti-EU, fear and blame discourse of Brexit.

Health dispossessions and the moralization of disease: the case of diarrhea in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Abstract Despite the swift development of Vietnam's water supply and sanitation (wat/san) sector, over the last ten years there have been 1.5 million annual documented cases of diarrhea. Western perspectives blame insufficient medical or economic advancement for failing to prevent diarrhea and its treatment, failing to grasp how disease is shaped in the cultural, moral and political domain. This article examines the nature and function of public health policy and discourse against the spread of the disease in Can Tho City, Mekong Delta. Some 94 qualitative interviews were conducted with government representatives, medical staff and water experts, and a survey of 131 households in urban and rural areas. Focusing only on improving the construction of wat/san 'hardware' does not improve 'cultural software', and ignores the needs of vulnerable minorities, compromising the control of diarrhea. I also show how state discourse follows neoliberal approaches in individualizing health responsibilities, and moralizing disease. Local (mis)perceptions and risky behaviors emerge as the result of structural constraints that include poverty, a lack of access to useful health information, and the cultivation of stigma around diarrhea. These types of health dispossessions serve a political purpose, where the state escapes responsibility for public health failures, and thus enhancing its efforts to maintain legitimacy as a good implementer and a 'caring head.' Keywords: Vietnam, public health, health individualization, moralization of disease, blame discourse, diarrhea.