A framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries: What makes a “good” picture gallery?

The development of digital technology in recent years has led to a revolution in news production and dissemination. In terms of production, we have witnessed a fundamental shift towards visual story-telling. Images dominate the verbal story space and have the potential to become the story themselves. Beyond this, they are also creating unique spaces for themselves (e.g. the online news gallery), with new multimodal genres posing challenges for practitioners and analysts alike. The potential effects of such fundamental shifts on the professional news story-telling practices of the legacy news media provide a rich research opportunity for understanding both how and whether news organisations fulfil their mandate of making sense of the plethora of information that is now available. In this paper, we concern ourselves with one particular innovation in visual news reporting – the online news gallery, or picture gallery in journalism terms. We report on a qualitative analysis of 35 galleries from 12 English-language newspapers with online presence from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, and interrogate the choices made by institutions in composing this particular type of multimodal “text”, as it is situated in a professional, news story-telling context. In doing so, we explore how a systemic-functional semiotic approach to multimodal news discourse may help us to access the meaning potential of this emerging genre as a vehicle for multimodal digital news reporting, present a framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries and consider its implications for the education of media practitioners.     

A multimodal discourse analysis of international postgraduate business students’ finance texts: an investigation of theme and information value

Thematic progression patterning and the composition of information value facilitate the development of well-structured messages. The text-based research of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) into textual features has been confined to language learning and workplace contexts. Empirical research studies involving finance have investigated students’ performance in finance courses and the effects of class attendance on their performance. However, no published studies have yet explored or analysed the textual features of tertiary finance texts. This study investigated the Theme and information value in 6 group assignments in finance, written by 19 Master's students in accounting. Underpinned by Halliday's SFL and Kress and van Leeuwen's system of the composition of information value, this study employed a systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) of the texts. The SF-MDA revealed a high frequency of Theme reiteration patterns, the rare occurrence of a linear Theme pattern, and the minimal use of a multiple-Theme pattern. These findings have both theoretical and pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of writing, particularly in the context of teaching English for business purposes.     

Understanding the Social Media Strategies of U.S. Primary Candidates

This paper examines the social media strategies of candidates seeking their party’s nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We use textual analysis to understand what candidates focused on. We assess eight themes covered in Twitter posts. For example, Clinton focused on GUN CONTROL, while Sanders focused on climate change. Using Facebook data, we introduce a topic modeling approach, latent Dirichlet allocation, to the political marketing literature. This allows us to uncover what topics the candidates focus on without researcher intervention and, using a dynamic model, show how this changes over time. We note that Clinton’s focus on Trump increases toward the end of the primary campaign.     

Intersemiotic Texture: analyzing cohesive devices between language and images

Recent research on multimodal discourse has explored the nature of semantic relations between different semiotic resources. Drawing on the interpretation of language as a social semiotic resource, this article proposes Intersemiotic Texture as the crucial property of coherent multimodal texts and presents a preliminary framework for cohesive devices between language and images. The framework is illustrated through examination of print media to demonstrate how the image–text relations are meta-functionally orchestrated across experiential, textual and logical meanings at the discourse stratum. A discourse-based model is suggested to analyze image–text logical relations complementary to existing grammar-based approaches. This research also develops a meta-language to describe Intersemiotic Cohesive Devices from two complementary perspectives: Intersemiotic Cohesion not only functions to integrate different modes together when multimodal discourse is conceptualized as a finished product, it also constitutes essential text-forming resources for semantic expansions across language and images during the ongoing contextualization of meanings in real time.     

Policy or person? What voters want from their representatives on Twitter

Social media have the potential to transform democracies as they allow for direct contact between representatives and represented. Politicians can use social media to show their policy positions but they can also give insight into their private lives. Based on survey experiments in Germany and Switzerland we show that social media messages about politicians’ private lives rather deter voters. Instead, we find that voters prefer candidates that communicate policy positions. The effect of a policy-oriented communication style on Twitter can even lead to appreciating a politician from a different party in Switzerland, which has an electoral system that gives a strong incentive to cultivate a personal vote.     

Multimodal narratives in SIA's “Singapore Girl” TV advertisements – from branding with femininity to branding with provenance and authenticity?

This paper analyses the multimodal narratives in Singapore Airlines (SIA)’s TV advertisements. Adapting the concept of the foreground–background continuum in multimodal interaction analysis, the first section of this paper analyses the narratives in 10 TV commercials available online from 1970s to 2013. Following the comparative analysis, a close investigation from a social semiotic perspective is conducted on SIA's latest TV advertisement in 2013. Through the analysis, this study shows how gendered representations of the Singapore Girl are manipulated in SIA's advertisements. It also reveals how these gendered representations adopted by SIA are married with contemporary branding philosophies, which also work to cloak them in relation to the use of increasingly well-rounded narrative structure. This study hopes to shed light on the understanding of how gender and sexist ideologies and representations are discursively embodied in contemporary branding strategies used by large-scale advertisements and campaigns spanning a long period.     

Mobilization in the European Public Sphere: The Struggle Over Genetically Modified Organisms

The objective of this study is to investigate the extent to which supporters and opponents at the European Union (EU) level strive to mobilize the public with regard the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). To this end, it addresses two research questions: First, to which concepts do GMO opponents and supporters refer when seeking to mobilize the public? Second, do GMO opponents and supporters differ in the coherence of the concepts they use to attain public mobilization? The empirical findings show that the pro‐GMO coalition is composed of biotechnology companies as well as representatives of Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the World Trade Organization. The anti‐GMO coalition consists of environmental nongovernmental organizations and representatives from most of the EU member states. Altogether, the anti‐GMO coalition has been more coherent in the concepts they invoke in the last few years.     

140 characters to victory?: Using Twitter to predict the UK 2015 General Election

This paper uses Twitter data to forecast the outcome of the 2015 UK General Election. While a number of empirical studies to date have demonstrated striking levels of accuracy in estimating election results using this new data source, there have been no genuine i.e. pre-election forecasts issued to date. Furthermore there have been widely varying methods and models employed with seemingly little agreement on the core criteria required for an accurate estimate. We attempt to address this deficit with our ‘baseline’ model of prediction that incorporates sentiment analysis and prior party support to generate a true forecast of parliament seat allocation. Our results indicate a hung parliament with Labour holding the majority of seats.     

Habermas and the Holy Grail of reason: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity between theatre and theory

A critical discourse analysis of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity demonstrates that Habermas's discourse on modernity is theoretische Fiktion (a term Freud used to describe a given theory for which no evidence can be found and no arguments validated). Theatrical narrative strategies from drama are identified that not only organise the logic of the text, but also position readers. The choice of mise en scene—the Oedipal cross‐roads where older and younger protagonists meet in conflict—is seen to position readers as mere spectators. The choice of the narrative trope of the romance of lost opportunity (the road open but not taken) is not merely illustrative, but necessary for the claim that Habermas has redeemed the enlightenment project.

The paper critiques Habermas's theorising on discourse ethics because it distinguishes categories of discourse into scientific/analytical, moral/interpretive and aesthetic/expressive, which operate in three different spheres of value. In particular, it challenges the notion of an “inner logics” for what, in Habermas's stable of discourses, he labels the scientific/analytical. Readers of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the paper demonstrates, are not so much pulled along by the force of the better argument, but seduced by that unbridled beast: the aesthetic/expressive.     

Political discourse networks and the conflict over software patents in Europe

In 2005, the European Parliament rejected the directive ‘on the patentability of computer‐implemented inventions’, which had been drafted and supported by the European Commission, the Council and well‐organised industrial interests, with an overwhelming majority. In this unusual case, a coalition of opponents of software patents prevailed over a strong industry‐led coalition. In this article, an explanation is developed based on political discourse showing that two stable and distinct discourse coalitions can be identified and measured over time. The apparently weak coalition of software patent opponents shows typical properties of a hegemonic discourse coalition. It presents itself as being more coherent, employs a better‐integrated set of frames and dominates key economic arguments, while the proponents of software patents are not as well‐organised. This configuration of the discourse gave leeway for an alternative course of political action by the European Parliament. The notion of discourse coalitions and related structural features of the discourse are operationalised by drawing on social network analysis. More specifically, discourse network analysis is introduced as a new methodology for the study of policy debates. The approach is capable of measuring empirical discourses both statically and in a longitudinal way, and is compatible with the policy network approach.