Mainstream Press Research Articles

A moda enquanto espaço da escrita para Júlia Lopes de Almeida

This article aims to examine the intersection between fashion journalism and the mainstream press through the column “A moda” by Júlia Lopes de Almeida, published under the pseudonym Ecila Worms in the newspaper O País (RJ, 1834-1934), between 24 February 1892 and 16 August 1901. I examine how Almeida balanced references to everyday life in Rio de Janeiro with self-references taken from fashion periodicals to construct a dual reality, as suggested by Niklas Luhmann (1886). Moreover, I explore the role of the physical space in her writing. The view from her window, along with the objects on her writing desk – particularly printed and handwritten materials – served as a rich source of inspiration for the texts in “A moda”. I argue that the physical space of her writing, together with the fashion publications circulating in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the 20th century, provided the writer with a new perspective for exploring the intersection between domestic and public spaces in the Brazilian crônica.

On Not Translating: Making History in the French Language Classroom

Published in 1930 by Angus and Robertson, Souvenirs d’une Parisienne aux antipodes was proclaimed the first Australian book to be published in French. A collection of three autobiographical narratives, the book tracks Marie Niau’s life, from the siege of Paris (1870–71) to four years on a selection in the Daintree in the 1880s. Heralded by the mainstream press as worthy of a place in Australian archives yet labelled ‘a delightful little French reader’ elsewhere, the composite nature of the book and its multiple enunciative contexts confounded expectations where both language textbooks and historical narrative were concerned. Drawing on Paul John Eakin’s understanding of autobiography as narrative identity transaction and Claire Kramsch’s concept of multilingual subjectivity, this article focuses on the performative potential of the book in Australian classrooms with respect to learner identity and historical consciousness.

Barbara Broccoli and the Popular Image of the Bond Producer

Of all the women involved in the James Bond film franchise over the years, for the last three decades producer Barbara Broccoli has had the greatest power and influence on its development. Since taking over as co-producer (alongside half-brother Michael G. Wilson) of the Bond films in the mid-1990s, Broccoli is constantly mentioned in relationship to James Bond, yet there has been no academic attention paid to her role as Bond producer. This article will address this oversight in Bond studies and contribute to the growing area of scholarship on the producer in the British film industry by analysing the popular image of ‘the Bond producer’ using promotional materials and press coverage. The approach adopted in this article is framed in terms of a negative stereotype of (male) film producers that is widely generalised, and pressbook evidence showing that the original Bond producers Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were positively caricatured in the Bond film publicity. It will consider the enduring legacy of the ‘Men Behind James Bond’ producer image to examine the role played by Broccoli in the discourses of marketing and promotion during the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig eras. The article will demonstrate that although a high degree of public visibility might be expected to come with the role of Bond producer, the woman behind the image and the day-to-day business of film production largely remains hidden in favour of the authorised narratives shaped by the earlier promotional materials, references made to Bondian character types or popular discourses of gender which the mainstream press reproduce. In so doing the article will reflect on debates about gender and diversity in the Bond franchise to connect to wider discourses around inclusivity in British popular culture that have come to the fore in recent years.

The virus and an enemy within: Construction of an invidious news discourse by the mainstream press in India

Human rights organizations and media watchdogs have expressed concerns about COVID-19 news coverage in the Global South, particularly by the Indian mainstream media, due to the Islamophobic discourse it generated. This study critically examines the first wave of COVID-19 coverage by four major Indian media outlets and argues that the press perpetuates an ideologically driven discriminatory discourse developed over a century. Drawing on past scholarship in Discourse Historical Analysis (DHA), the study finds that the media employs various discursive strategies – nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivization, mitigation, and intensification – to construct a malevolent identity for Indian Muslims. This represents them as the ‘enemy within the nation’, attributing blame for the virus’s spread in the country. Conforming to Hindutva, a dominant ideology that has been shaping Indian national politics for decades, these strategies collectively contribute to an invidious news discourse, contradicting the press’s purported fairness and neutrality.

‘Crazy Chinese’ and the 2017 nuclear crisis: A Peruvian newspaper representation of Kim Jong-Un

This study analyzes the narrative characteristics of graphic and written language regarding Kim Jong-Un in the peruvian newspaper ‘El Trome’. This occurred in May of 2017, when mainstream press in Peru closely followed national corruption scandals, whilst ‘El Trome’ focused on a different news story: the nuclear crisis between the United States and North Korea, popularizing the term “Crazy Chinese” in order to refer to the controversial Asian leader. Grounded Theory precepts were employed, which included content analysis of the newspaper covers as well as in depth interviews of the newspapers with both Trome’s General Editor and Design Editor. The newspaper maximized the fear associated with an impending nuclear war, constructing a journalistic message from a sequence of events with two main protagonists: Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un, unpredictable leaders with access to nuclear weapons. The strategy appealed to black humor and entertainment in order to position an agenda independent from mainstream press, which focused on internal politics at the time.

The Impact of the Initial Teacher Education Reaccreditation Process on Teacher Educator Identity

ABSTRACT This article reports initial findings from a research project that focused on the impact of the reaccreditation process and its outcomes on teacher educators in four institutions in England where Qualified Teacher Status accreditation was removed, despite leading successful programmes as detailed in Ofsted inspections and National Student Survey data. Whilst the outcomes of the reaccreditation process were mentioned in the mainstream press, the impact of this policy on teacher educators had only been reported anecdotally. This research fills a research gap to document impact on teacher educator identity and provides an evidence base to inform teacher education policy debates. Data were gathered through focus groups using a triad collaborative enquiry approach, based on the lesson study model, where researchers took on different roles: clarifier, observer, and questioner. This method formed part of a constructed focus group and built on a process of semi-structured and unstructured creative tasks. Initial findings identified the shifting context university educators perceived in relation to policy constraints, including a greater top-down, centralisation that negated the opportunity for teacher educators to provide a contextualised, evidence informed approach to teacher preparation. This contributed to the impact of the reaccreditation process on teacher educators’ professional identity, self-efficacy and agency.

The mediated construction of “woke”: Emerging discourses and primary definers in the Flemish press

From 2021, “woke” became an omnipresent term in Flemish public debate. In this paper, we explore how the mainstream press contributed to the emergence and construction of discourses on wokeness. First, we ask how the topic of “woke” reached the media agenda in Flanders. Second, we analyze the respective role of journalists and their sources in constructing discourses on “wokeness”, drawing on the notions of “primary” and “secondary definers” . We collected all newspaper articles mentioning “woke” in four newspapers for 6 months from 2021 to 2023. After a preliminary quantitative content analysis, we conducted a discourse analysis to identify the themes and terminology associated with woke as well as the key (journalistic and non-journalistic) actors talking about it. This allowed us to, first, reconstruct a timeline of the emerging discourses on woke; and second, to identify underlying discursive and journalistic patterns. The chronological analysis disclosed how a few “critical discourse moments” put woke on the media agenda. In each instance, an elite person created a stir, drawing attention to the (supposed) threat of “wokeness”. Woke was generally framed negatively as a “movement” threatening freedom of speech. Although journalists aimed to provide a balanced view and many op-eds offered counterarguments, the mainstream press did give a broad platform to actors deliberately instrumentalizing woke for (often political) purposes. By responding to anti-woke voices and not taking a side, most journalists did take over and reconfirm the framing of “woke” as a movement and threat proposed by elite primary definers.

The use of the term Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic in The Voice and Eastern Eye newspapers, a discourse analysis of Covid news stories in the UK press

This study finds that during the pandemic the UK mainstream press presented a blame narrative in their news stories when discussing BAME communities in relation to Covid-19. Articles from The Voice and Eastern Eye newspapers aimed at diasporic readers were contrasted with stories from UK mainstream press, published during the first lockdown in the UK. An intersectional approach was taken to examine news articles published between March and July 2020. The analysis revealed a failure in the British mainstream press to recognise structural and systemic racism when reporting Covid related stories. In contrast, the ethnic press looked for solutions and tried to examine structural racism. A deficit approach is evident in the mainstream press that sought to apportion blame to cultures, faith, and customs. There is a focus on the terminology BAME (Black Asian and minority ethnic) used as a formal descriptor by the UK Government and media to describe minority communities. The term is now defunct. It is acknowledged that Covid-19 accentuated differences that already existed in society, particularly those pertaining to race. Research has also evidenced that mainstream news organisations can be overly critical of minority communities, conflating their perceived flaws and condemning minorities as a method to delegitimise claims of mistreatment or differential outcomes.

Appreciation for Agriculture in Public Communication. A Content Analysis of the Influence of the First Lockdown on Reporting About Agriculture in the Mass Media

The call for greater societal appreciation of agriculture has been a recurring theme in recent years, both within and outside the sector. The following article examines the extent to which social value communication can be found in media articles compared to other evaluative statements about agriculture and the effects that occurred at the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis. Using quantitative analysis and based on a theoretical concept of recognition, statements of social esteem and disrespect are collected and contrasted with acceptable and critical statements in issues of the mainstream, regional and farming press in 2019 and 2020 and evaluated in terms of their authorship and references to agricultural issues. In this context, it can be shown that even before the Coronavirus crisis, the level of social esteem accorded to agriculture in public communication was higher than the level of disrespect. It then increased during the first pandemic lockdown, combined with a significantly higher number of references to the issue of security of supply. At the same time, it is clear that the type of statement most often published in the media is not a direct expression of social esteem or disrespect, but rather a perception of disrespect for agriculture. The sources of these statements most often come from the agricultural sector itself.

From Scientific Journals to Newspapers in Spain: Interest in Disinformation (2000–2023)

As disinformation has become a topic of conversation in the media in recent years, the theory of agenda setting is once again making its presence known. The aim of this research is to verify the degree of interest in disinformation by the media (mainstream press) and in academic writing (scientific communication journals) according to frequency and whether or not such disinformation can be observed in the field of science. The primary research has been carried out through quantitative content analysis of three Spanish newspapers (El País, Abc, El Mundo) and 32 Spanish scientific communication journals included in the SJR-SCImago Journal Rank database from the year 2000 to 2023. The results were 732 units of analysis. From those, it can be concluded that once again, the pandemic represents a before and after. Firstly, a general increase in disinformation has been observed, as well as a corresponding rise in false information in certain fields of science, especially that of health. Secondly, a gradual increase in public interest in disinformation has also been detected, which indicates that the issue is on the agenda of both the media and citizens.

Is China an imperialist power?

Among the mainstream press, western political elites and sections of the Left, China is accused of exploiting the Global South and even being an imperialist power. China argues it is pursuing a ‘win-win’ policy. To explore this question, this article looks at several factors, including labour exploitation, debt, environmental damage and military activity. Imperialism today operates through a vast network of integrated transnational investments and expansive global assembly lines, overseen by a transnational capitalist class. China’s position in the global capitalist system needs to be assessed in this context. It is certainly a major power within that system and its capitalists engage in the super-exploitation of labour, for example in Africa. At the same time, Chinese development loans have so far helped countries in the Global South build infrastructure and reduce neoliberal austerity, even as associated projects have been beset by corruption and environmental harms. China has not yet used its military in imperialist adventures, but it does apply regional pressure and cultivates military relationships with countries where it has investments. Overall, the picture that emerges is complex and contradictory.

Alvin Dark and the Chipmunks: Racism, Baseball, and the Press in 1964

ABSTRACT In 1964, Newsday columnist Stan Isaacs quoted San Francisco Giants manager Alvin Dark making disparaging comments about his team’s Black and Latino players. This article analyzes the controversy over the Newsday column, with a focus on the interpretations of sports journalists. Most baseball writers excused Dark and attacked Isaacs, who was one of the “Chipmunks”—a cohort of young, socially conscious columnists for East Coast afternoon newspapers. The San Francisco press protected Dark out of regional identification, while New York’s veteran writers resented the style of the upstarts. The mainstream press muffled the genuine grievances of Black and Latino players, and it manipulated the statements and actions of superstars Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays. Although Black columnists saw Dark’s comments as indicative of racism in sports, most sportswriters downplayed the conflict, reflecting baseball’s prevalent biases in this era.

Presidential Authority and the Legitimation of Far-Right News

What position do far-right news outlets occupy in contemporary U.S. politics, and how did Trump use the power of the presidency to contribute to their rise among Republican legislators and mainstream American media? We posit that Trump’s position as president, in conjunction with his populist communication style that favored far-right outlets, contributed to the legitimation of such outlets. We first analyze Trump’s tweets during his presidency (January 2017–January 2021) mentioning three far-right outlets (One America News Network, Newsmax, and Breitbart), conceptualizing these messages as authority signals that symbolically lend legitimacy to the media sources. We then provide rich descriptive information regarding subsequent mentions of the far-right outlets in four national mainstream newspapers as well as appearances by GOP (Republican) members of Congress in the far-right outlets. We find significant and positive correlations between Trump’s tweets and mainstream media coverage of One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax, and significant and positive correlations between Trump’s tweets and GOP Congressional interviews on OANN and Newsmax. Together, these results represent an example of presidential authority signals that bolster far-right outlets and aid in their legitimization among legislators and the mainstream press. The findings shed light on the role of political leaders in the recent mainstreaming of the far-right across many democratic countries.

Analysis of the Impact on the Labour Market after the British Prime Minister and Government Policy Change

Britain's economic situation is facing severe challenges following the failure of Liz Truss's mini-budget policy, and a series of fallouts is affecting the UK. After taking office, the Rishi Sunak government's policy direction should be necessary for workers' lives. This article focuses on the Labour market and analyses the factors contributing to the current state of the UK labour market. Economic development and labour interests should be balanced. The article is mainly based on qualitative analysis and economics theories. Data are sourced from the UK’s Office for National Statistics, mainstream press institutions, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, etc. In conclusion, the policies are suggested to ensure the interest and basic living standard of laborer’s as it is better for long-term development and future construction.

Análise Histórico-Discursiva do Editorial “1964” da Folha de São Paulo

Abstract The article aims to analyze the Folha de São Paulo editorial "1964" in the light of the historical-discursive approach (HDA), basing the discussion on the concepts of discourse, media and history, and the historiography of the press and dictatorship. This text, published on March 30, 2014, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the 1964 coup, is part of a broader movement that also includes other newspapers of the mainstream press to reassess and rewrite their history during the period of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). The methodology used was the eight stages of the HDA and its five central questions. By identifying three dichotomous macro-topics (support for the military dictatorship as a mistake versus support as a long and painful learning process; the regime's violence versus its economic achievements; and the dispute between revolutionary socialism versus the market economy) and the discursive strategies used (predication, argumentation, perspective, intensification, and mitigation), it was possible to observe that the newspaper discursively: (a) makes the problems caused by the military regime invisible; (b) emphasizes the economic growth that the country experienced during the period; and (c) justifies its actions by linking them to the context of the time, which raises questions about the examination of its position. The main conclusions suggest that the ambiguity with which the company positions itself, attenuating its contribution to the military regime and at the same time intensifying its democratic role, makes sense in the light of a contextualized business strategy and should be considered in the discussion about the interfaces between discourse, media and history.

MINERAL EXPLORATION IN INDIGENOUS LANDS: THE DISCURSIVE NORMALIZATION OF ILLEGAL MINING IN BRAZIL

In 2023, the world faced a humanitarian tragedy in Brazil involving the Yanomami people. In addition to the result of criminal conduct of public policies aimed at indigenous peoples in the last four years, the case highlights a culture of erasure of Brazilian native peoples that permeates society, institutions, and the mainstream press. In this work, we discuss how mining in indigenous lands has been approached discursively in Brazil. For this, we analyze the conversations on Twitter related to #AtoPelaTerra, a protest in defense of the environment and against the bill that authorizes mining in indigenous lands, held in Brasília in March 2022. To understand the conversation dynamics of the publications collected, we performed a network analysis (WASSERMAN & FAUST, 1994) and to analyze the speeches produced by the subjects who participated in the debate, we adopted the Analysis of Connected Concepts (LINDGREEN 2016). Our results demonstrate that the conversation about the indigenous agenda has been polarized and with a strong misinformation content, especially in the field of the extreme right. In addition, the defense of native peoples and environmental preservation has a limited scope to its most active militancy. In the mainstream media, both the environmental agenda and the indigenous agenda are softened by replacing the term “mining” with “mineral exploration”, which ends up normalizing (FOUCAULT, 2003) practices that are harmful to the environment and indigenous peoples, as an effect of a crossing of the economic and supposedly developmentalist debate that prevails in these spaces.

News Coping and Resistance: An Examination of Entertainment as Self-Care in the Digital Black Press

ABSTRACT Scholarship on the mainstream press in the United States has argued that in the new media age, consumers prefer entertainment while journalists prefer hard news—yet digital Black press journalists and readers value both types of content. In the Black press, entertainment is produced and consumed as an alternative to mainstream media's often unfavorable hard news coverage of African Americans. The race-based trauma that African Americans experience through news consumption can negatively impact mental health and cause news avoidance, but some are resisting this by creating spaces for Black joy online. This research uses interviews with journalists and focus groups with readers to investigate the utility of entertainment news content in the Black press. I find that entertainment in the digital Black press contributes to positive and comprehensive coverage of the African American community, gives consumers a means to cope with or protect themselves from reading traumatic news coverage on topics such as Black Lives Matter, and can act as a form of self-care. I conclude that digital Black press entertainment content can counteract communal stress for African Americans who may experience high levels of news-related anxiety.

Quantifying the ideational context: political frames, meaning trajectories and punctuated equilibria in Spanish mainstream press during the Catalan nationalist challenge

ABSTRACT This article presents a quantitative method for mapping semantic spaces and tracing political frames’ trajectories, that facilitate the analysis of the connections between changes in ideas and socio-political phenomena. We test our approach in Spain, where the Catalan conflict fostered a competition in terms of decontestation of meanings of key political concepts. Using unsupervised machine learning, we track the salience, level of semantic fragmentation and fluctuations in meanings of 216 frames in the two largest Spanish newspapers, El País and El Mundo, throughout 8 years. This is achieved via the extraction, vectorization, and comparison of over 70,000 words. We apply Latent Semantic Analysis, an innovative methodology for the alignment of semantic spaces, and new institutional theory. Our exploratory study suggests that the evolution of many nationalism-related frames resembles a punctuated equilibrium model, and that political events in Catalonia, acted as critical junctures, altering the meanings reflected in the Spanish press.

Jurnalisme Kebencanaan Berbasis Advokasi dari Media Mainstream di Tengah Maraknya Penggunaan Media Sosial (Studi Kasus Pemberitaan Gempa Bumi Kabupaten Cianjur di Harian Umum Pikiran Rakyat)

ABSTRACT
 This study aims to find out how the mainstream media (mainstream) in presenting journalism-standard news in reporting about earthquake natural disasters in Cianjur Regency, West Java Province. This is because the information that is widely consumed by the public actually comes from social media which is colored by the presence of hoaxes, misinformation, and disinformation.
 This study uses the case study method, through purposive sampling with the subject of this research is news about the earthquake natural disaster in Cianjur Regency, West Java Province which is present in the Bandung People's Daily Mind as a representation of the mainstream media. This research is expected to obtain a model of disaster journalism (disaster journalism model) from HU Thoughts of the People of Bandung regarding the earthquake natural disaster in Cianjur Regency.
 
 Keywords: Disaster Journalism, Mainstream Press Media, Social Media

Images of Mediterranean Crossing

What do photographs of small boats crossing the Mediterranean construct as they circulate as privileged signifiers of the 2015 “migrant crisis”? While it is sometimes assumed that these images mobilize sympathy and, perhaps, intervention, this article queries how one such image has circulated and constructed notions of crisis in ways that center Europe and Europeans while passing over migrants. The analysis is grounded in a close engagement with Massimo Sestini's widely reproduced photograph Rescue Operation, selected for its status as a privileged signifier of this crisis. The article first examines how the photograph circulated in the mainstream press, showing how the image is made to stand for general conditions, while those who appear in the image are displaced from the stories the photograph is used to tell. It then shows how contextual and representational choices that shaped the image, and what was obscured from it, are structural to how it comes to depict “rescue” as a limited frame centering European intervention. The article argues that this photograph and its receptions work to reduce images of migrants to evidence for tales of European response and rescue.