The Discourse of News Values: How News Organizations Create Newsworthiness

by Monika Bednarek, Helen Caple

Overview

The Discourse of News Values breaks new ground in news media research in offering the first book-length treatment of the discursive construction of news values through words and images. Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple combine in-depth theoretical discussion with detailed empirical analysis to introduce their innovative analytical framework: discursive news values analysis (DNVA). DNVA allows researchers to systematically investigate how reported events are "sold" to audiences as "news" (made newsworthy) through the semiotic resources of language and image.

With an interdisciplinary and multi-methodological approach, The Discourse of News Values analyzes authentic news discourse (both language and images) from around the English-speaking world through three new case studies: one that analyzes newsworthiness around the topic of cycling/cyclists; another that analyzes news values in images disseminated by news media organizations via Facebook; and a third that focuses on news values in "most shared" news items.

Introducing readers to the possibilities of both DNVA and corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis (CAMDA), The Discourse of News Values brings together corpus linguistics and multimodal discourse analysis in a stimulating and unique book for researchers in Linguistics, Semiotics, Critical Discourse Analysis and Media/Journalism Studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190653941
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Monika Bednarek is Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Helen Caple is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Table of Contents

Table of contents

List of tables
List of figures
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Introduction
1. The discourse of news values
2. Why study news values?
3. Key terms
4. Corpus assisted multimodal discourse analysis (CAMDA)
5. Summary and overview of chapters

PART I Theory
Chapter 2: News values
1. Journalism/Communications Studies
2. Linguistics
3. A new approach to news values

Chapter 3: Discursive news values analysis (DNVA)
1. The discursive construction of news values
2. Our list and labels
3. Conceptualising news values
4. Context-dependency, preferred meaning and the target audience
5. Example analysis and concluding remarks

PART II Analytical Frameworks
Chapter 4: Language and news values
1. Introduction
2. Towards an inventory of linguistic resources
3. Combining news values and example analysis
4. Summary

Chapter 5: Visuals and news values
1. Introduction
2. The relationship between images and news values
3. Visual resources in images
4. Other semiotic resources constructing news value
5. Front page news: An example analysis
6. Concluding remarks

PART III Empirical Analysis
Chapter 6: What is newsworthy about cyclists?
1. Introduction
2. The corpus
3. Analysis of 'typical' news values
4. Analysis of news values around cyclists
5. Summary and conclusion

Chapter 7: Image, news values and Facebook
1. Introduction
2. Social media and news feeds
3. Data and methodology
4. Results
5. Conclusion

Chapter 8: 'All the news that's fit to share': News values in 'most shared' news
1. Introduction
2. Data and methodology
3. Verbal patterns
4. Visual patterns
5. Visual-verbal patterns
6. Conclusion

PART IV Extensions
Chapter 9: DNVA as an opportunity for diachronic and cross-cultural research
1. Salacious Fiends and News from the Dead: Diachronic research
2. El terror yihadista, Terroralarm, terrordramat: Cross-cultural research
3. Concluding remarks

Chapter 10: Reflections
1. From little things, big things grow (Chapter 1)
2. Surveying the field: It's a jungle out there (Chapter 2)
3. Situating our own approach to news values: Which corner of the jungle do we inhabit? (Chapter 3)
4. The discourse of news values (Chapters 4 and 5)
5. Case Study 1: 'Pedaling' a critical, topic-based approach to DNVA (Chapter 6)
6. Case Study 2: DNVA and the digital disrupters of social media (Chapter 7)
7. Case Study 3: Combining DNVA and CAMDA (Chapter 8)
8. Xinwén jiàzhí, arzeshe khabari, Khabari Iqdaar (Chapter 9)
9. Concluding remarks

Appendices
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Clearly written, rich in examples, and meticulous in its scholarship, this book introduces state of the art methods of news research and extends the linguistic analysis of news and news values to visual and digital news. It will be essential reading for students and researchers in media studies and discourse analysis alike."—Theo van Leeuwen, Emeritus Professor, University of Technology Sydney

"Continuing a large multidisciplinary research project on news discourse, Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple's present study applies a unique combination of discourse analysis, semiotics, multimodal analysis and corpus linguistics in the study of news values. Both in theoretical and in practical analytical terms, and with concrete case studies, also of social media, they thus offer explicit and systematic insight into the criteria that define what is news. Their book also offers an excellent methodological introduction, for students of language, discourse and communication, into advanced methods of corpus-assisted multimodal analysis of the discourse and images of the news."—Teun A. van Dijk, Professor of Discourse Studies, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona

"This is a timely, well-referenced and well-written book which fills a gap in the literature. The approach taken is up to date in terms of methods used, and covers a wide range of news media types from around the globe. The authors have picked interesting case studies and have an engaging writing style. It offers a significant original contribution."—Paul Baker, Professor of Linguistics, Lancaster University

"In their timely, groundbreaking paperback, Bednarek (University of Sydney) and Caple (Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow) provide in-depth research into the ways the news media industry creates newsworthiness and value through text and imagery. Through excellent interdisciplinary empirical research and their unique analytical model DNVA (discursive news value analysis), the authors challenge traditional assumptions about news value and the ways media organizations and their representatives market contemporary events by giving them newsworthiness and economic value through the creative interplay of language and imagery...Oriented to researchers and professional readers with expertise or specialty in areas such as linguistics, critical discourse, semiotics, communications, and journalism and media studies, the book is both thought provoking and a significant contribution to various fields of study." —.R. Kahn, University of Cincinnati, Choice

"Overall, this book breaks new ground and makes an original contribution to the field by offering (a) a new theoretical approach to the study of discursive construction of news values, (b) a comprehensive analytical framework for linguistic and visual analysis of news values, and (c) a range of corpus techniques and tools that can generate well-grounded findings. The approach and findings also bear pedagogical implications by informing the teaching and learning of journalistic semiotic practices. Hence,
this well-organized and clearly written monograph is recommended for both emerging and established researchers who are engaged in discourse analysis, multimodal analysis,
and corpus linguistics, as well as for journalism educators." —Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

From the Publisher