Talking Tough: Gender and Reported Speech in Campaign News Coverage

Building on the notion of "gendered mediation," we argue that conventional news frames construct politics in stereotypically masculine terms, and we examine the implications of these news frames for the coverage of female party leaders. Content analysis of reported speech in television news coverage of the 1993 and 1997 Canadian elections, combined with the results of an experiment, reveals that the speech of the three women leaders was subject to more interpretation by the media and was reported in more negative and aggressive language. The study concludes that gendered mediation may hinder women's chances of electoral success.     

How Much Is Too Much? Media Attention and Popular Support for an Insurgent Party

It is commonly observed that parties and candidates tend to receive coverage in the news media and attention in proportion to their electoral support. Although this norm serves to ensure that coverage is balanced or fair, news values often produce a different pattern of coverage in the television news media. This article considers the dynamic relationship between coverage in the news media and popular support for an insurgent party - the Reform party - in the 1993 Canadian election campaign. The analysis shows that coverage of Reform in the news media underwent an important change during the campaign that appears to have occurred before any change in popular support. While this change in attention to Reform was critical for Reform's ability to mobilize its potential electoral support, it also provides empirical support for the argument that there is an underlying equilibrium between the amount of coverage a party receives and its political support. Data for this analysis come from a campaign wave survey of vote intentions as part of the 1993 Canadian Election Study and a television content analysis of campaign news. The analysis applies an error-correction approach, which assumes an underlying equilibrium relationship, to model media access and vote intentions. The article thus expands the current applications of the error-correction technique while offering substantively important evidence of the political impacts of media decisions for the electoral support of new parties.     

Following the News? Reception of Uncivil Partisan Media and the Use of Incivility in Political Expression

Partisan, pundit-based media gets blamed for making political discourse more uncivil, and studies on incivility in mediated discourse have found that uncivil political media can induce negative reactions in audiences. However, how use of uncivil media affects the way individuals express their political views has yet to receive substantial scholarly attention. I hypothesize that tuning in to uncivil political media leads to an increased propensity to use incivility in textual political expression. I develop an index to identify incivility in political expressions, and test my hypothesis using panel data analysis and an open-ended survey item in the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey. I find that, consistent with my hypothesis, use of uncivil media—specifically pundit cable news and political talk radio—leads to an increased use of incivility when expressing text-based political opinions. Furthermore, this only occurs with reception of like-minded uncivil political media. I note the implications this has for online political discourse and effective deliberation.     

The ghosts of state terror: knowledge,politics and terrorism studies

Employing a discourse analytic approach, this paper examines the silence on state terrorism within the broader terrorism studies literature. An analysis of this literature reveals that state terrorism is noticeable mainly for its absence as a subject of systematic academic study. Following the textual analysis, the main finding – the silence on state terrorism within terrorism studies – is subjected to both a first- and second-order critique. A first-order or immanent critique uses a discourse's internal contradictions, mistakes and misconceptions to criticise it on its own terms. In this case, the absence of state terrorism is criticised for its illogical actor-based definition of terrorism, its politically biased research focus, and its failure to acknowledge the empirical evidence of the extent and nature of state terrorism. A second-order critique entails reflecting on the broader political and ethical consequences of the representations enabled by the discourse. It is argued that the absence of state terrorism from academic discourse functions to promote particular kinds of state hegemonic projects, construct a legitimising public discourse for foreign and domestic policy, and deflect attention from the terroristic practices of states. The exposure and destabilisation of this dominant narrative also opens up critical space for the articulation of alternative and potentially emancipatory forms of knowledge and practice.     

Labelling the innocent: how government counter-terrorism advice creates labels that contribute to the problem

The Labour government's counter-terrorism advice sought to distance ‘terrorism’ from Islam, but in doing so actually created an imagined relationship that potentially alienates those who follow the Islamic faith. This study works within the framework of labelling theory to demonstrate that the state's counter-terrorism advice was detrimental to its own goals. The study identifies labels within counter-terrorism discourse and argues that these create ‘the Islamic community’ using shared labels found in Islamist discourse and places the ‘threat’ within this imagined community. Identifying with a singular ‘other’ denies participation in multiple groups, creating an insular imagined society that constructs barriers and encourages persecution. Placing the ‘terrorist’ within this larger isolated community increases the possibility that the badge of honour found within its own group is seen as a status symbol to be mirrored within the wider community. Removing labels and empowering the individual, rather than creating artificial collectives, could provide a means of addressing the problem.     

The literal truth about terrorism: an analysis of post-9/11 popular US non-fiction books on terrorism

More books with the word ‘terrorism’ in the title have been published in the twenty-first century than the combined total of all such books prior to that. Over half of these were on the subject of ‘Islamic terrorism’. The sheer volume of such texts, without even taking into consideration their contents, contributed to rendering as ‘true’, the existence of the phenomenon they publicised. Such an increase in the literature on the subject of Islamic terrorism was made possible by an overall relaxation of usually strict enunciative rules and regulations governing discursive production. This article explores the effects of the loosening of the latter controls through an analysis of popular non-fiction books published on the subject of terrorism in the United States in the early years of the ‘war on terror’ and the authors of these books, as the existence of these texts – never mind their influence – has been ignored by terrorism scholars to date.     

Obstacles for Changes within the (Swedish) Police Force: Professional Motivations,Homosociality, and Ordering Practices

This article discusses how professional motivations and homosociality within the Swedish police (training programme) become obstacles to both a changed police norm and diversity within the police force. This issue is discussed on the basis of two studies: one focused on the professional motivations of police students; the other focused on the issue of norms and normation within the police training programme. The norm regarding how a police officer should be is viewed as a manifestation of ordering practices as a form of continuous, on-going normation processes that emphasize practical, physically demanding, and violent working conditions focused on combating crime. This produces powerful conceptions of the types of body that are suitable for the profession, a normative (male) body. This normative body effects those bodies that are assumed to contribute to diversity in a police force dominated by white, Swedish, heterosexual males. This together moulds a culture founded on the conceptions of physically demanding and action-focused work that promotes a muscle culture that emphasizes the work as practical, rather than moving towards an intellectual and reflective approach to police work.     

The rise of a hesitant EU host? Examining the Greek migrant integration policy and its transformation during the crisis

Greece lately, as a result of the crisis, has been transformed from a migrant receiving (host) country to a simultaneously migrant sending and receiving one. At the same time, processes of migrant de-integration from the economy and society have been manifesting too. This paper attempts to draw light on Greek migrant integration policy, which through the years has been characterized by a contradiction between policy narratives and concrete actions on the ground. More specifically, this paper brings to the fore a policy change that occurred during the period 2012–2015 and possibly continues up to now. According to this policy shift, special emphasis was put on the acquisition of the European long-term resident status from the part of already settled migrants as a passport to their intra-European mobility. Politically speaking, such developments were heralded as a win–win situation for both migrants, but also, Greece as a host country. Nevertheless, this rise of a hesitant EU host, who turned its integration policy into a managing migration endeavour, might be indicative of broader tendencies and trends within an expanded EU migratory landscape that includes both migration, but lately most importantly, asylum too.     

A discourse–design approach to multimodality: the visual communication of neoliberal management discourse

This paper takes a discourse–design approach to communication, providing a framework as to how this should be done. Design here is how individuals and institutions realize their interests in the world. We show how it is fruitful to link design more closely to the way discourse has been used in critical studies which draws attention to the motivated use of design, for thinking about design in terms of socio-political context. Due to their affordances, semiotic modes such as photography, graphics, layout, colour, numbers and writing will be deployed and co-articulated. The aim, using a discourse–design approach, is to show how we can best identify the very different affordances of such modes and how they rely on the principled design of a discourse. We illustrate this using examples from management documents at a university which draw on these different affordances in different ways to communicate the same discourse. Through this analysis we see how a neoliberal discourse based on a general design principle of coordination enters everyday practices and become very difficult to challenge.