Lithuanian Media Research Articles

Psychophysiological Research and its Place in the Lithuanian Scientific Discourse

This article gives a brief overview of the development of psycho-physiological research using the polygraph. The main focus is on the legal regulation of these methods and the evaluation of the scientific discourse of Lithuanian specialists on the problems of psychophysiological research and the application of its methods in comparison with analogous processes in Poland. Already in the inter-war period, so-called lie detection attracted considerable interest, not only from the academic world, but also from law enforcement authorities. In interwar Lithuania, considerable attention was paid to the psychology of testimony and the problems of lie detection, including the apeplication of instrumental methods of psychodiagnostics. V. Lazerson, J. Vabalas-Gudaitis, B. Kalvaitis and others have written about it. It should be noted that at that time there were quite heated debates about the permissibility and effectiveness of psychophysiological tests. During the Soviet era, the issue of psychophysiological (poly-graph) examinations was not the subject of an official broad scientific discourse in the jurisdictional process, even though medical and psychological professionals cooperating with special services were interested in this issue. After the restoration of independence in 1990, the Lithuanian media interest in this issue prompted the law enforcement authorities and their specialists and scientists to look deeper into the possibility, reliability, permissibility and effectiveness of the use of these technical diagnostic tools in foreign countries, as well as into their compatibility with the Lithuanian law in the investigation of crimes. In this article, some aspects of psychophysiological tests using the polygraph in Poland have been analysed for comparison purposes, which in the neighbouring country have attracted considerably more attention, both in the academic world as well as among lawyers and representatives of law enforcement agencies.

The situation of the Polish language in Lithuania: An analysis of Lithuanian media discourse

The aim of this article is to identify thematic contexts in which the Polish language is discussed in Lithuanian online news portals and to analyse how the situation of teaching, learning, and using the Polish language is presented in the media in terms of the rights of language users. The article overviews the status of the Polish language in Lithuania on the basis of analysis of Lithuanian information portals. For this purpose, the three most popular Internet portals were selected: delfi.lt, lrt.lt, and 15min.lt. Media articles were extracted using the Google Chrome Web Scraper tool. Seventy-two articles from the years 2019-2023 were chosen for the study. The articles covered topics such as the results of students’ education in national minority schools, the level of Lithuanian language proficiency in minority schools, the teaching of Polish as a foreign language, public signs in Polish, and court cases concerning the use of the Polish language. During the selected period, the media articles primarily focused on the Polish language in the context of education and legislation, disregarding discussions related to Polish culture .Keywords: Polish language – Lithuanian media – discourse analysis.

Religious Voices Against “Gender Ideology” in the Discourse on the Ratification of the Istanbul Convention in Latvian and Lithuanian Media

Religion plays a public role in gender politics in a variety of ways. In public discussions, religious actors often oppose gender as a concept based on social construction and imposed by what they call “gender ideology.” Concerns that this “ideology” could hijack the legal discourse is a common basis of their argumentation in the discussions on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. This paper presents the main results of the analysis of Lithuanian and Latvian secular and religious media coverage of the Istanbul Convention between 2011 and 2021. Both countries have signed but not ratified the Convention. The analysis shows that actors linked to religious organisations entered the mass media discourse by presenting arguments against the ratification of the Convention, which overlap with and support the opinions expressed by conservative political actors. These arguments are based on the idea that the Istanbul Convention is a threat to the future legal support of the natural rights of men and women, their natural roles and traditional and Christian values. The media discourse and the arguments used are similar in both countries, but the discursive strategies of religious and political actors differ. In Lithuania, where the Catholic Church is supported by tradition, religious actors are more often and more directly involved in the public debate than in Latvia. Nevertheless, in both countries, the religious voices analysed contributed to the rise of antigenderist discourse in the post-secular public sphere and to the politicisation of religion.

Representations of transnational childhoods and childhoods abroad in Lithuanian media discourse

Representations of transnational childhoods and childhoods abroad in Lithuanian media discourse

Winter Olympic Games in Lithuanian Media

The Winter Olympics Games is the most important sports event which is reported in Lithuanian media. There are no researches which would show how Lithuanian sports journalists publicate news about Winter Games. The first task is to find out the concept of media, tthe functions and tasks of media, genres and titles of media texts. The second task is to discuss the Winter Olympics and sports media functions. The third task is to elucidate the models of agenda setting and framing theories. The fourth is to perform quantitative and qualitative analysis of content research. In order to implement the first, second and third tasks, an analytical descriptive method is used. In order to implement the fourth, the methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the content are used. The results of the research examining the relationship between agencies and authorial publications in the online news dailies Delfi.lt and Lrytas.lt published the most agency news. Sports journalists used the most used the interview genre – 116 times. It turned out that sports journalists mostly published news about Lithuanians competing in the Olympics, rather that foreign athletes. It became clear that sports journalists, when writing publications about Lithuanian athletes used expressive headlines at the Winter Olympics. Analyzing the tone of the presentation of expressive headlines, it became clear that mostly used the negative tone in their authorial publications about Lithuanian athletes.

Features of the Transformation of the Decade of the Lithuanian Media

World events, the development of information technology and other factors have increased the flow of information and changed the nature of journalists’ work over the last 10 years. However, journalists, despite the transformation and increased opportunities to expand the range of news, can still cover only a certain part of the information. Media workers, due to limited space, time or human resources, select just part of the events that become news. Selected news published in the media influence how society perceives and interprets reality.
 In this article content analysis and in-depth interviews were used to investigate the transformations that Lithuanian media has undergone over the last 10 years, also the aim was to identify which news media has paid and are paying the most attention to, how and why the specificity of news has changed.

Lithuanians’ perception of terrorism: Are Muslims “folk devils” for Lithuanians?

ABSTRACT A considerable amount of research in Western countries during the past 30 years has found a strong tendency to associate Muslims with violent acts. This has resulted in an increase in Islamophobia. This article examines Lithuania’s media, politicians, and public perceptions on terrorism-Muslims in order to understand the correlation between Lithuanian media and political discourse on Muslims and their connection with public discourses. I propose that the weaker the linkage between media and political portrayals associating terrorism with Muslims is with public perceptions of terrorism and Muslims, the less likely the latter will see Muslims as folk devils. My analysis of the data supports this hypothesis and conclusively shows that media and political discourse do not have a hegemonic power to control the portrayal of Muslims and to create a sense of moral panic among Lithuanians.

Ukraine’s Voice Makes Russia Angry; Lithuania Speaks Boldly... Constructing attitudinal stance through personification of countries

AbstractPersonification, one of major types of metaphors often employed to express an attitude, is also an argumentative tool, especially in media texts on politically contested events. The present investigation aims at disclosing the attitudinal stance in personifying Ukraine, Russia, the Western countries and Lithuania in a corpus of texts collected from Lithuanian media in 2015–2018. The study relies on the three-step Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA, Charteris-Black 2004), involving three levels: linguistic, cognitive and rhetorical. More specifically, they include (1) identifying personification cases, (2) interpreting personification through cognitive metaphorical scenarios (Musolff 2016), and (3) explaining ideological implications encoded in the scenarios. The findings indicate that in the scenario of COMMUNICATION, Ukraine is mostly presented positively: active defender and in need of support, with occasional scepticism whether it is capable to change. The West, Lithuania including, is presented as a supporter, whereas Russia is viewed as a negatively evaluated antagonist.

Audience and Revenue Concentration in Lithuanian Media Markets (2008–2019)

The article examines the change in audience and revenue concentration in the Lithuanian television, radio, internet, and newspaper markets in 2008–2019, as well as discusses the factors that determined the changes in media concentration and market structure. The study revealed that without any special measures to regulate media concentration in Lithuania, all four media revenue markets (television, radio, internet, and newspapers) have become highly concentrated. In terms of audience (circulation) concentration, the concentration of newspaper and television markets was divided between un concentrated and moderately concentrated areas, the radio audience was moderately concentrated, and the audience of internet news websites was highly concentrated. The results of the analysis show a tendency for audience concentration in media markets to be generally lower than income market concentration. Therefore, when legally defining a dominant position in media markets, it is recommended to set a lower value for audience share than for revenue market share.

The Attitude of Norwegian Lithuanians Towards Migration to Norway

Based on the data of an empirical research conducted in 2021, the article discusses the attitudes of the Lithuanians living in Norway towards this country. It analyses what encourages Lithuanians to emigrate to this country and stay there permanently; why Norway seems attractive; what associations Norway raises for Lithuanians; whether this country is a good place to raise and bring up children, and other relevant issues often discussed in the Lithuanian media. The results of the survey are compared with the results of previous research done by other researchers. The majority of the Lithuanians living in Norway are satisfied with their living conditions in this country and would not change their country of immigration even if they had such an opportunity. For the Lithuanians living in Norway, this country is more often associated with positive (such as beautiful nature, peace, security, freedom, stability, friendliness, tolerance, and equality) rather than negative aspects of Norway. In 2021, at the time of the study, most Lithuanians residing in Norway felt fully integrated and said that they were trying to accept Norwegian culture and traditions as much as it was important for communicating with the locals. Nevertheless, Lithuanians try to uphold their Lithuanian identity and traditions while living in a foreign country. In comparison with the results of the surveys of previous years, the present study shows that Lithuanians in Norway are less and less ashamed of their nationality and increasingly express pride in their homeland.

LEGAL AND ETHICAL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USER PROVISION OF INFORMATION TO THE PUBLIC REGULATION: THE VIEW OF MEDIA REGULATORY AND SELF-REGULATORY BODIES IN LITHUANIA

Social media users are recognised to be a new actor in the field of public information. Their activities along with professional journalists’ activities of providing information to the public differ. The changing field of public information and peculiarities of providing information to the public by social media users prompt scientific discussions on social media regulation in relation to information provision to the public. The aim of the research is to determine the criteria for equating activities of information provision to the public by social media users with activities of public information professionals in the context of legal and ethical regulation of professional media. The research is carried out by analysing legal documents regulating the activities of Lithuanian media and social media, as well as decisions adopted by self-regulatory bodies and other institutions. Having conducted the research, it was established that in Lithuania the criteria for equating SM users to journalists are the criteria of journalistic activity (functionality) and journalistic professionalism. For acknowledgment that SM users provide information to the public like journalists, criteria of information publicity, dissemination, accessibility, and possibility of information control are raised.

Lithuanian Online News Media Role in the COVID-19 pandemic

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Strategic Analysis Model outlines areas where the role of the media is important during a pandemic, so these areas may be selected to examine how the Lithuanian media perform their public information function during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study of the content of the Lithuanian media clarifies whether the media take into account the areas that, according to the WEF strategic analysis model, the media has an impact during the COVID-19 outbreak. This should provide new insights into the priorities and communication strategies of the Lithuanian media, especially in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The aim of the article is to present three Lithuanian online newspapers quantitative and qualitative research and, in the context of the WEF Strategic Analysis model and, based on the data obtained, to assess the role of the Lithuanian media during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been established that during the pandemic, Lithuanian online media pay sufficient attention to the topic of general governance: good and bad cases of health crisis management are shown to the public. However, during the research it became clear that international news on the topic of global governance dominates in Lithuanian news media: the media pay more attention to events in the international arena, and the challenges of Lithuania‘s internal management account for only a fifth of all information in the researched online newspapers. The article was prepared by Vilnius University journalism master students (2020).

The Attitude of the Regional Editors of Lithuanian Periodicals to the Principles of Distribution of State Support for the Media

It is often maintained that there is no one consistent mass media policy in Lithuania. There are, indeed, many mechanisms of state financial aid and support, and the allocation of funds itself is rather inconsistent and accidental. There is no data or information available as to how the strengths and weaknesses of the particular mechanisms created and aid/funding opportunities available are perceived by the target audience of such efforts – the staff of the editorial boards of the news outlets and the particular business owners. Having conducted a questionaire-based study and a series of in-depth structured interviews with selected typical representatives from the industry, here we delineate the perception: the editorial staff maintain that the most impactful mechanism of allocating state support for the press are direct payments, especially those distributed by the Lithuanian Media Support Foundation, though the principles regulating its decision-making should be amended so as to allow for more transparency. One should also ensure that whatever is being funded has a case for continuity, sustainability and long-term future in regard to its activities. Additionally, especially inasmuch as any allocation of funds is related to an attempt to ensure the long-term success of democratic governance, the funding is to be targeted at local news rather than national or international news. These findings are shown to be comparable to tendencies observed abroad.

Coverage of the 2008-2009 Economic Crisis in the Media and Relationship of the Coverage to Actual Situation

The primary goal of this paper is to examine the coverage of the 2008-2009 economic crisis in the Lithuanian online media as well as its relationship to the actual economic situation and perception of media consumers. The theoretical basis for this research is made up of the theories of agenda-setting and framing. The coverage of the media is assessed on the basis of the corpus of economic reporting in 2006–2014 in two Lithuanian media sources, the news agency BNS and DELFI news website, by analysing the volume and the tone of the reports. The coverage in the media is then compared to some statistical economic indicators.The main findings of the paper are the following:1. The coverage of the crisis in the media reflected rather accurately the actual situation: the fluctuations of the volume of the reports largely followed the timeline of the main events of the crisis. The correlation between the reporting tone and industrial production index as a gauge of the economic situation was rather high, which supports the adequacy of the coverage. The relationship between the reporting and economic indicators was found to be stronger in the case of the BNS than in DELFI.2. Negative reports were found to be dominating over positive ones. It is partially inevitable due to the context of the crisis, but the effect of the general media negativity bias cannot be ruled out either.3. During the year of the worst economic situation, the number of the reports of both highly negative and highly positive tone increased, but the volume of the two extremes decreased with the improvement of the economic situation. This might suggest that the media was aiming to counterweight the flow of very negative news during the crisis.4. On average, the tone of the BNS news agency coverage was more positive than that of DELFI. The factors behind this trend could be the linguistic features of the reporting style (usage of intensifying modal words as well as negatively or positively image-evoking lexis) and the intention to attract attention from the audience.5. Certain asymmetry was noticed in the public reaction to the coverage of the crisis in the media as media consumers reacted more rapidly and for a longer time period to the deterioration in the reporting tone than to its improvement.6. The correlation to media coverage was stronger in the case of the consumer sentiment indicator rather than in the case of the indicator for consumer behaviour (retail trade turnover index).It should be noted that the analysis was limited to only two media channels, so the inclusion of other media channels, especially television, could make such research more informative. Further research could include an additional corpus of reports with such keywords as “recession”, “recovery”, “growth”, “unemployment” and similar items. An analysis of the effects of linguistic factors alone on the reporting tone could also provide some interesting insights. Research on the coverage tone in relation to different subjects (economy, companies and political events) could be another valuable addition to the study.

Antraštės COVID-19 pandemijos kontekste: erzulio komunikacija

The media attention to COVID-19 was phenomenal in Lithuania as well as worldwide. Information about the coronavirus accounted for almost 56% of the total information flow in Lithuania during the pandemic. Compared to how other events of national importance were covered in the media, the number of media reports about the new virus was more than double. The increasing consumption of media content also increases the threats associated with this phenomenon: the uncritical selection of information, the impact of negative news, etc. The even greater consequences of such threats are implied and imagined in cases where addressees are limited to fragmented information, i.e., headlines rather than articles, media-covered texts found on the front pages of news portals, rather than constructive searchbased news items. This paper presents a study in which headlines were chosen as a research object. The goal of the research was to analyze the headlines on the topic of COVID-19 in different Lithuanian news portals and to find out what functions they perform in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four Lithuanian news portals, namely, 15min.lt, alfa.lt, delfi.lt, and lrytas.lt, were selected as research sources. The research material consists of headlines under the headings “Lithuania” and “Health” during two periods – the first week of the first quarantine in Lithuania (March 16–23) and the first week of the second quarantine in Lithuania (November 7–14). The total number of headlines analyzed is 2178, and their number in different news portals is as follows: 15min.lt – 824, alfa.lt– 334, delfi.lt– 725, lrytas.lt– 295. The study is pilot and purely qualitative: the content of the headlines on the topic of COVID-19 was analyzed with the aim to discover their recurring forms, to capture the tendencies of informing about the COVID-19 phenomenon in the Lithuanian media, and to evaluate the possibilities of further – larger – research in this field.

On the Margins of the Motherhood Discourse: Childlessness in Lithuanian Women’s Magazines during 1991–1996

Foreign scholars highlight that despite the modernization of social life, cultural attitudes towards thefamily are changing slowly, and women remain closely tied to the role of motherhood (McKennon Brody, Frey,2017). The media has the power to reflect on and change the attittudes prevailing in society, thereby reducing the stigmatizing ones. Researchers discover the domination of pronatal discourse by analyzing images of childlessness, which supports parenthood in many ways, and individuals, especially women, who do not raise children and are underestimated and often stigmatized (Gibb, 2019; Grill, 2019). In order to understand the current cultural attitudes towards childless women and to analyze changes in comparison to other countries, it is important to examine them from a historical perspective.The representation of childlessness in Lithuanian media during the last decades of the 20th century was not studied yet. The scholars (Marcinkevičienė, Praspaliauskienė, 1999; Maslauskaitė 2001; 2002) who had analyzed Lithuanian women’s magazines during the late Soviet period and after the Independence in 1990 focused mainly on the representations of familial and romantic relationships. This research, based on a qualitative content analysis of 224 articles from the most popular women’s magazines of 1991–1996, showed that sex education and abortion prevention were the prevailing topics covering the lack of public knowledge about reproductive and sexual health. The aim of the media was to consolidate motherhood as the main expression of femininity within the framewok of declining birth rates; therefore, infertility and voluntary childlessness were stigmatized.

Does prescriptivism work? Non-standard lexis in Lithuanian radio and TV in 1960–2010

Does prescriptivism work? Non-standard lexis in Lithuanian radio and TV in 1960–2010

Depiction of Childlessness in Lithuanian Mass Media from 2011–2016: A Catalyst of Modernization

Demographic research shows the increase of childlessness rates among women born in 1970 in comparison to those born in 1953 in Lithuania, but cultural aspects influencing reproductive behavior are under-explored. To our knowledge, the representation of childlessness in the Lithuanian mass media has not been studied yet. The aim of this article is to analyze how childlessness is depicted in the most popular mass media from 2011-2016. Our research revealed that the discourse of childlessness is undeveloped, and the depiction of voluntary childlessness is dominating. It is portrayed favorably as a modern behavior, space for which consolidation is created challenging traditional social norms. Thus Lithuanian media appear as a part of global media that promotes imitative trends of social change.

Lithuanian media and young adults’ health perceptions: socio-linguistic approach

With the rising anxiety levels among young adults, mainly caused by their daily use of social media), it is hypothesized that one of the major reasons why young adults are becoming more physically passive is determined by implicit media influence on shaping their perceptions of health and healthy lifestyle. This study aims to clarify how media created reality in the context of health and healthy lifestyle can be affecting Lithuanian young adults and their perceptions of health. To achieve the above, two procedural steps were followed. First, 30 articles from the Lithuanian media sources such as Delfi, Lrytas and 15min. were collected and analysed in the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics and Critical Metaphor Analysis by procedurally applying Metaphor Identification Procedure. The media texts were analysed by using the bottom-up approach to deconstructing systematic metaphor and its ideological functions. Second, 44 young adults (aged 18–20) participated in the online health survey, where they provided answers to both closed and open questions. The findings have shown that the prevalent media scenario correlates with young adults’ responses, whose underlying narrative is driven by such frames as health is a (luxurious) commodity, people are passive observers and recipients of services provided by health experts etc. Thus, it can be argued that media consumerist approach to health negatively affects young adults’ perceptions and resonates with an idea of health as an obtained commodity, which deprives young adults of conscious attempts to become healthier and make their own conscious decisions about a healthy lifestyle.

Communicating attitudes through metaphor

AbstractMetaphor analysis in real-world discourse is increasingly becoming the focus of many cognitive studies. Accordingly, this paper seeks to investigate how euro adoption in Lithuania in 2015 was metaphorically communicated by the media. The study is carried out within the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA), which was developed byCharteris-Black (2005, 2011),Musolff (2008),Hart (2010). Thus, a three-step metaphor analysis procedure (Identified→ Interpreted→ Explained) was employed in order to analyze the attitude towards euro adoption presented in Lithuanian media. The findings show that the euro is most frequently conceptualized as aliving organismwith different scenarios (active agentandpassive agent) being realized linguistically. In the final stage – explanation – metaphors were analyzed from a rhetorical perspective, which means that an attempt was made to look into how metaphors communicate positive or negative attitudes about euro adoption in the media. The results demonstrate that personification of the euro makes the idea of euro adoption more understandable, it activates a range of emotions and evaluates it. This leads to further insights about the way the media exercises its power in an attempt to persuade people and manipulate their attitudes, emotions and opinions.