Irish Newspapers Research Articles

Prejudice in selected American and Iranian newspaper articles on Gaza crisis: A critical discourse study

Prejudice discourse is considered as one of the most important language uses usually invested in different social situations, particularly by in-group speech communities. This highlights the need to investigate this language phenomenon according to some interdisciplinary perspectives. So, this paper compares and contrasts from critical discourse perspective the prejudiced content used in the news coverage of American and Iranian newspapers' discourse as part of the discursive portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the 7th Oct. 2023 attack. Two articles were gathered from two opposing international newspapers, one is American (New York Post) and another is Iranian (Tehran Times). This paper aims at discovering prejudice's components and function, identifying the discursive strategies to determine the ideologies that allow a journalist to write a prejudice content. So, this helps the researcher to expos the differences and similarities in the selected data. To get a thorough critical comprehend of the nature of prejudice in the selected data, the researcher adopted a model for critical discourse analysis and applies qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The researcher finds that the cognitive, affected and behavioral components which are a reflection of an attitude in the function of publishing prejudiced content in the selected articles include semantic-strategies of lexicalization and aggregation and rhetorical-strategies of topo and contrast. The polarization of positive in-group self-representation and negative out-group representation in a racist and discriminatory way are the most prevalent ideologies that drive the creation of prejudiced content in the selected data. The articles differ in the sense that while the news coverage in Iranian was prejudiced "pro-Palestinians," American newspapers published prejudiced "pro-Israeli" articles. Although these two newspapers have adopted similar linguistic methods, they convey the news coverage of that event in some prejudiced way based on the newspaper's ideological perspective.

First British and Irish Press Reports of Surgical Etherization.

In mid-December 1846, British and Irish newspapers reported the news of surgical etherization far more extensively than previously described. Reports about etherization had appeared at least 20 British and Irish newspapers in the days before Robert Liston's first operations under etherization on December 21, 1846. These reports were based on four separate accounts, 2 of which could be traced to New York, and 1 account had been published in a Parisian newspaper Galignani's Messenger on December 9, 1846.

‘Immune from the germ-laden things’: Immunity and Irish Newspaper Advertising, 1890–1940

‘Immune from the germ-laden things’: Immunity and Irish Newspaper Advertising, 1890–1940

Metaphors to describe sanctions against Iran in American and Iranian newspapers

Abstract Since Iran’s 1979 revolution, Sanctions Against Iran (SAI) has been one of the most crucial issues concerning Iran and the US’ relationships, and both parties employ different metaphors to depict the situation in line with their own ideologies. This study explored the conceptual metaphors (CM) concerning the sanctions against Iran in two corpora of the editorials and news extracted from an international American newspaper (New York Times) and a local Iranian English press (Iran Daily). Following Charteris-Black’s (2004) framework for Critical Metaphor Analysis, sixty editorial news texts (thirty for each), since 2013 until 2021, were scrutinized for the CMs in the two corpora. The findings revealed that although both newspapers took advantage of the metaphors in description of the sanctions against Iran, there were significant differences between them in the employment of the CMs. The American newspaper enjoyed more frequent and diverse metaphors to represent the sanctions compared to the Iranian newspaper, and “SAI is a pain/illness” (22.7%) was the most frequent conceptual metaphor in the New York Times whereas “SAI is a human” (32.4%) and “SAI is a journey” (18.9%) were the common metaphors in Iran Daily. The results suggest how language could be manipulated to serve different purposes.

Irish-American Anti-Imperialism in Patrick Ford’s The Criminal History of the British Empire

Abstract In 1881, Patrick Ford, the Irish-American nationalist editor of the New York Irish newspaper The Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, published The criminal history of the British empire, a collection of five letters that he had written to William Gladstone. In The criminal history, Ford constructed a comprehensive account of British imperial history, beginning with England’s conquest of Ireland, before detailing the colonization of North America, Britain’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade, the American Revolution, British rule in India, the opium wars, and Britain’s contemporary colonization of Africa. This article contributes to scholarship on American views of the British empire in the post-bellum United States. In exploring how Ford constructed a Manichean interpretation of world history, where the British imperial project devastated every region it invaded, the article analyses Ford’s reasons for writing and publishing the letters that formed The criminal history. Finally, the article shows that Ford’s central purpose was to foster a visceral hatred of the British empire among his Irish-American readership, to maintain a commitment to their ethnic heritage as proud Irish people, and to encourage his readers that a better future would soon arrive, when the British empire was finally a relic of the past.

‘Ageing well’: Discursive constructions of ageing and health in the public reach of a national longitudinal study on ageing

Established in 2006, the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) investigates the health, economic and social circumstances of a nationally-representative sample of people aged fifty years and older in a series of biennial data collection waves. Irish newspapers have been reporting the results of TILDA for over a decade and a half, and their texts represent reports of scientific research distilled through the pen of journalists. In their totality, their texts constitute a public discourse on ageing and health. Using critical discourse analysis, we examined the discourse within the texts of a purposive sample of two national daily newspapers. As sites of public discourse, newspapers reflect social life and are influential in forming and legitimating public attitudes. Like other sites of discourse, their language-in-use is contextually located, is rarely neutral and may employ strategies to discursively construct, sustain and privilege particular social identities, including ageing identities.Discursively constructed as ‘ageing well’, our analysis of newspaper texts revealed a discernible meta-discourse on ageing and health in which ageing was framed as a life course stage that may be cultivated, diligently self-nurtured and exploited for its positive aspects. When considered in light of literature on health and social inequalities, the consequences of this broadly positive ageing discourse can, somewhat perversely, frame older adults in unintended negative ways, including homogenising them and attributing to them capacities for ageing well that they may not possess. Discursively constructing older adults as a social and economic resource can also impose unrealistic expectations on them and may legitimise exploitation and demonstrate how normative ideologies of ageism and ableism are conveyed through legitimising language. Despite these potentially unintended consequences, the available media resources associated with TILDA may represent one of the most important contributions of the study, in terms of informing positive public attitudes towards ageing.

Enhancing optical character recognition: Efficient techniques for document layout analysis and text line detection

AbstractIn recent years, automatic document and text analysis has gained significant importance, driven by advancements in optical character recognition (OCR) technology and the need for efficient processing of large volumes of printed or handwritten documents. This article specifically focuses on document layout analysis (DLA) and text line detection (TLD), both of which are crucial components of OCR systems. Our objective is to develop an effective method for extracting both textual and non‐textual regions, addressing challenges unique to the Persian (and Persian‐like) language(s). In the DLA stage, we employ deep learning models and a voting system to accurately determine the regions of interest. Additionally, we introduce methods such as optimum font size concepts, angle correction, and a line curvature elimination algorithm in the TLD process to enhance OCR accuracy. Comparative evaluations against state‐of‐the‐art methods demonstrate the superiority of our approach, showcasing a 2.8% improvement in the accuracy of Tesseract‐OCR 5.1.0 (a well‐established commercial OCR system) on the official Iranian newspapers dataset. These findings underscore the importance of addressing DLA and TLD challenges to advance OCR technology for Persian language documents and provide a solid foundation for future research in this domain.

Post-War Anglo-Irish Relations

This paper explores how the broadcasts delivered by Winston Churchill on 13 May 1945 and Éamon de Valera on 17 May 1945 were portrayed in the Irish press between May and August of that year. Specifically, it analyses how Irish newspapers justified the policy of neutrality, which was considered morally questionable during the battle against totalitarianism; how they explained the Anglo-Irish relationship in a way that defended Ireland's position in the post-war world; and how they reported on small nations under threat of the USSR to legitimise Ireland's situation. By studying the media coverage of these broadcasts, this paper reveals how Irish newspapers imagined the course of the nation.

British and Irish newspapers implicitly support single-use masks over reusable face coverings

IntroductionThe environmental impact of waste caused by single-use masks or face coverings is an under-considered effect associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The combination of the protective purpose of face masks and their potential environmental impacts through littering or waste management means the wearing of face masks is simultaneously associated with the health crisis and creation of a new environmental challenge, combining two strands of journalism.MethodsOur study demonstrates how the discourse in British and Irish newspapers in the March 2020-December 2021 time frame relates to this problem. By a combination of quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis, we identify concepts commonly associated with the terms “face-covering” and “mask,” particularly concerning whether they refer to a disposable or reusable item.ResultsResults suggest that the newspaper discourse generally favored references to single-use surgical masks. Newspapers reported on the environmental impact of face masks only in very limited ways.DiscussionWe propose that the increase in waste caused by face masks can be related to prevailing representations of single-use surgical masks and limited attention paid to environmental concerns.

Iran’s Regional Transnational Water Partnerships: Unclear Rules, Unstable Partnerships, and an Unsettled Future

Water resources are the most contentious, scarce, and contestable natural resources at any geographical scale. Where water resources cross international boundaries, additional uncertainties arise for access to and distribution of available water. Here, we examined three transnational water partnerships by focusing on Iran as a dryland country with a developing economy. Thus, Iran has a key interest in water policies and the development and governance of water resources. Within Iran’s regional context, we considered whether the country obtained a geopolitical advantage from three regional water partnerships, involving the Caspian Sea, the Helmand River, and the export of hydroelectricity. We used a global database and several years of Iranian newspaper articles to explore possible linkages between contemporary and historical challenges while looking at international laws and conventions. We highlighted (a) the transboundary Helmand River as the most unstable partnership; (b) the complexities of the relationships between the Caspian Sea’s beneficiaries, including Iran, in utilising its vast resources in an environment with unclear rules; and (c) the rainfall- and geopolitically dependent hydroelectricity exchange agreements with neighbouring countries. Although Iran pursued such international involvement through treaties and economic initiatives, its water-based geopolitical influence in the region remains constrained by domestic demand, hydrometeorological geography, and the involvement of major world powers.

Irish newspapers and the creation of the 1922 constitution of the Irish Free State

This article attempts to recover perceptions of the Constitution of the Irish Free State at the time of its creation through analysis of Irish newspapers published in 1922. The comparative analysis of contemporary perceptions is intended to serve as a counterweight to perceptions of this Constitution presented in scholarship written in the years after 1922 that have been heavily influenced by knowledge of subsequent events. This article includes analysis of the 1922 Constitution in newspapers based in all regions of the island of Ireland. It covers the jurisdiction of ‘Southern Ireland’, that was evolving into the ‘Irish Free State’, and the jurisdiction of ‘Northern Ireland’ that was destined to remain a part of the United Kingdom. The comparative analysis examines differing viewpoints within and between these two jurisdictions. The conclusion argues that the difficulties and relatively short lifespan experienced by the Constitution of the Irish Free State could not have been easily predicted from the vantage point of 1922.

Interfaith Dialogue Reflected in The Irish Times. A Defence of Romanian Immigrants in Ireland

This article draws the portrayal of the church support for Romanians as depicted in articles from the most important Irish newspaper, The Irish Times (1992-2020). The articles analyzed show: the help of the Church of Ireland for the Romanian people in the aftermath of the 1989 fall of the communist regime; the interest that the Irish society showed for the Orthodox Church in the context of an increase in the number of immigrants from Romania, a predominantly Orthodox country; the efforts of the churches in Ireland to establish an interfaith dialogue for the benefit of the Romanian immigrants; the focus that remarkable Orthodox priests, such as Father Irineu Crăciun and Father Godfrey O’Donnell, benefitted from in the Irish press due to their constant work for the benefit of the Romanian community in Ireland.

"Martial Law Travels": Gothic Internationalism and Irish Nationalist Newspapers

Abstract: In the nineteenth century, Irish newspaper culture became more experimental in nature. The form of Irish nationalist newspapers as an assemblage of various registers and genres embodied the politics of Irish nationalism and anti-colonialism in the period. These media innovations, as well as the forms of writing disseminated, transformed again during the Great Famine in Ireland (1846–51). During and after the Famine, the gothic was mobilized in newspaper columns, often in service of producing critiques of empire. Examining Irish newspaper writing on famine in India and on the Morant Bay Rebellion, this essay argues that engagement with the gothic in the anti-colonialist press in Victorian Ireland allowed for the emergence of powerful and distinctly internationalist critiques of colonial capitalism and its violent apparatuses.

The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable, by Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus

<i>The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable</i>, by Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus

Reporting on Vital Agricultural News in Ireland – a Comparison between Mainstream Print Media and the Farming Press

The purpose of this paper is to compare the reporting of vital agricultural news between the mainstream print media and the farming press in Ireland. To achieve this, this study examined coverage of a recent and significant agricultural news event by mainstream Irish newspapers and the Irish farming press. Taking the 2018–2019 Irish beef sector crisis as the case study for examination, researchers conducted a comparative content analysis of the most widely circulated mainstream national newspapers’ (n = 5) and farming newspapers’ (n = 2) coverage of the story over a 14-month period. We analyzed the timing, frequency, and placing of some 294 articles published to communicate issues regarding the beef crisis at three specific stages—before the national farmer protests, during the farmer protests, and after the farmer protests. We found mainstream newspapers to be significantly slower to start reporting on the Irish beef sector crisis of 2018–2019 compared to the country’s farming newspapers—although national print media coverage of the event increased as the crisis escalated. This early underreporting of the event by mainstream newspapers is compelling considering the importance of the agri-food sector, and beef farming in particular, to Ireland’s economy. Building on existing international, but very limited Irish, research on agricultural journalism, we concluded that farming newspapers are more in touch with the critical issues affecting Irish farmers while mainstream newspapers appeared slower to cover a vital agricultural issue of public importance.

Representations of the experiences of people with dementia in Irish newspapers.

The aims of the study were to explore what personal narratives in Irish broadsheet and tabloid newspapers reveal about the lived experience of people with dementia. The sample included twenty narratives collected from five Irish newspapers between 2011 and 2017 inclusively. The relative absence of narratives of people with dementia in Irish newspapers is shown as only twelve of the twenty narratives contained the voice of the person with dementia themselves. Inductive analysis and thematic analysis generated four main themes with a total of thirteen subthemes. The main themes are: (1) Dementia as a personal journey, (2) stereotypes and stigma, (3) barriers and (4) awareness. This study highlights the under-representation of personal narratives of people with dementia in Irish newspapers which is seen as a contributing factor in the lack of understanding and awareness of dementia in society in general. Exploring mediated representations of the lived experience of people with dementia through personal narratives provides insight into the naturalised discourses of dementia which impact on people’s lived experiences. (172)

Climate Change and Urban Citizens: The Role of Media in Publicising the Conservation of Green Spaces and Mitigation of Air Pollution

Urbanisation has become a challenge as the urban population grows while cities’ land areas, amenities, and green spaces have remained relatively unchanged or even declined. While urban areas are growing, the link between humans and nature is fading. Increasingly, cities are being affected by climate change impacts and so, the role of media in providing updated and correct knowledge to the public is becoming more valuable. Based on this theoretical ground, the research evaluated two printed Iranian newspapers’ functionality in informing the public on Tehran climate based on two main themes of air pollution and greenery spaces, spanning seven years (2007–2014). The paper evaluated the tone, style, and outline of messages publicised by the press media to explore the following questions: Which types of news are dominantly conceptualised as the significant debates and concerns on Tehran’s climatic issues? Who is mainly writing about Tehran’s climatic issues? Is the public being informed effectively on the surrounding arguments and issues by reading newspapers? As such, five self-descriptive indicators were developed: ‘Layout’ (Title, Subject, Content), ‘Message’ (Public Awareness, Educating, Alarming), ‘Contributor’ (Columnist, Researcher, Authority), ‘Spatiality’ (Local, Provincial, National, International), and ‘Allocated space’ (10% to 100%). A text analysis of Persian newspapers using a Structured Query Language (SQL) was employed to extract data. It was found that the news articles mostly covered public awareness, followed by alarming messages on climate. The findings highlighted the critical role of researchers in generating scientific news while encouraging media for disseminating more educating messages on climate change in urban areas.

“СТІВЕН ДЖОЙС СЛУХАЄ”: ЦІ СЛОВА ЖАХАЛИ НЕ ОДИН ДЕСЯТОК ЖУРНАЛІСТІВ

The Ukrainian translation of Terence Killeen’s article “The Words Many a Journalist Dreaded Hearing: «This is Stephen Joyce»” is provided. Terence Killeen is the James Joyce Centre’s research scholar (Dublin). He is the author of numerous publications devoted to James Joyce’s oeuvre. Among them, there are “«Ulysses»’ Unbound: A Reader’s Companion to James Joyce’s «Ulysses»” (2004), an essay on the earliest version of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (2020) and others. He is a former journalist although still continues to publish his works on the pages of “The Irish Times”, a leading Irish newspaper (Dublin). The above-mentioned translation made by Ukrainian scholars E. Honcharenko and L. Baisara is accompanied by the detailed and meticulously collected explanatory notes to the article. This piece of work deals with Stephen James Joyce (1932-2020), a grandson of the outstanding Irishman, James Joyce. An eminent Irish writer wrote the poem “Ecce Puer” to commemorate the birth of his grandson and the death of his own father John Joyce, the translation of which is also presented in this article. Stephen Joyce was the only son of George [Giorgio] Joyce, James Joyce’s son. Stephen was a grandson and the last surviving direct descendant of James Joyce. The article highlights Stephen’s real attitude to the literary inheritance of his late grandfather. The translation of the article is published with the Terence Killeen’s kind permission. The original version of the article was published in the Dublin’s newspaper “The Irish Times” on February 23, 2020. Key words: Irish scholar, Joycean, translation, translator, notes, language of original, author, Dublin newspaper, journalist

Political economy of media: An income-expense analysis of state aids to Iranian newspapers

Iranian newspapers have traditionally relied on state aids and public budget to survive. The dependency has still lingered amid a change of policy that has affected the newspapers’ financial status. This article invokes the available data on governmental support to examine the political economy of newspapers in Iran during the two decades of 1990s and 2000s. The data were collected from official releases by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance as well as several nonconfidential internal bulletins of the newspaper organizations. Having applied an income-expense analysis, the paper explains the government’s role in newspaper economics and discusses the policy of repurposing the existing subsidies.

Communicating water availability to improve awareness and implementation of water conservation: A study of the 2018 and 2020 drought events in the Republic of Ireland

Public communication on water availability is pivotal in highlighting water conservation needs as droughts impact water resources for critical use, such as drinking water quality and accessibility. This paper presents the results of research into public communication on water availability and the implementation of water conservation measures in the Republic of Ireland. The paper analyses social media (Twitter and Facebook) communication and newspaper publications from 2018 to 2020 on water conservation and drought events, in addition, to undertaking six key stakeholder interviews made up of journalists (n = 4), political representatives (n = 1), and a water and communication expert (n = 1). Our analysis indicates that Irish newspapers' coverage of drought and water availability was greater in 2018 compared to 2020. Uncertainty and risk was also identified as the prevalent frame, used by newspapers to cover drought events. Although the sentiments in communications on drought by the national utility, Irish Water, were scored as positive (63%), its engagement with the public on social media was considerably limited. Accessible information platforms that provides data and information on water resources were also found; nevertheless, no comprehensive national drought information management system nor national drought plan have been developed. Based on our findings, we demonstrate the need for public engagement and collaborative efforts to communicate drought and water conservation measures led by An Fóram Uisce|The Water Forum. Recommendations made in this study also aim to influence decision-making and awareness among stakeholders regarding drought communication on water conservation and resources availability.