Paper 030: The Discursive News Values of the 2017 Marawi City Crisis: A Corpus-Assisted Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Selected Newspaper Reports
GAPAS, Wilfred Gabriel (University of Santo Tomas, Manila, the Philippines)
Keywords: Marawi City, terrorism, news values, corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis (CAMDA), press photography
Abstract
The reporting of both terrorism and conflicts is extensively investigated in past media discourse studies across contexts. However, a dearth in the literature exists regarding newsworthiness and its establishment in various forms of news discourse. Based on this niche, this thesis sought to closely examine how the 2017 Marawi City siege is constructed in print news reports as newsworthy. Specifically, it was aimed at determining (a) the linguistic and visual resources used to construe newsworthiness, (b) the news values used to construe the event’s newsworthiness, and (c) the existing multimodal relationship between language and images. Sixty news reports from three Philippine broadsheets were analyzed using Bednarek and Caple’s (2017) discursive news values framework. This multimodal corpus was examined with multiple methods, namely: (a) collocation analysis of MARAWI and its top three first order collocates, (b) manual analysis of verbal and visual devices utilized for each news value, and (c) the verbal and visual relationship in terms of each discursive news value. A scrutiny of the corpus reveals how local broadsheet journalists constructed the crisis as newsworthy. Firstly, MARAWI is associated closely with collocates that establish Proximity, Negativity, Eliteness, Personalization, Timeliness, Positivity, and Consonance; through collocates city, said, and Maute, recurring second order collocates of Negativity and Eliteness were largely identified. Regarding the manual analysis of texts and images, a range of verbal and visual devices were identified to construct news values except for Aesthetic Appeal. Secondly, an intrasemiotic assessment of news value trends in both verbal and visual data reveal that while the former constructs a concrete set of news values (i.e., Proximity, Timeliness, Superlativeness, and Eliteness), images appear to lack this feature. Lastly, when assessed for their multimodal relationship, texts and images appear to exhibit harmony, where texts and images complement news values with each other. How the crisis’ newsworthiness is constructed in the corpus is believed to have implications on news reporting principles and the role of the media in shaping public awareness of events.
Reference
Bednarek, M., & Caple, H. (2017). The discourse of news values: How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford University Press.
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This looks to be a very interesting paper. I hope you enjoy the conference! – Organizing committee
Hello, this paper looks interesting, especially the part where you had to use different methods to address the question.
Just some questions: Aside from “Marawi”, what other Proximity resources did you find? Second, you said there was a degree of subjectivity involved. Could you explain more how you dealt with that? Lastly, can you give more visual examples?
Ah, thanks for your questions! Yes, as far as my readings go, CAMDA is rarely employed in the literature precisely because of the sheer difficulty it entails. However, since we did recognize the news as a multimodal product, I found it necessary to apply it.
Here are my answers to your questions:
1. Although Proximity is present by default because of that, there are a lot of other Proximity devices in the verbal corpus. There were references to places such as the Ateneo de Manila University, Manila, Supreme Court; words such as “here/there” when they refer to places in the Philippines. There were also cultural references such as Islam, Eid’l Fitr (because the war happened around that holiday), and local languages and dialects. In fact, you can observe that some statements by news participants employed Tagalog/English codeswitching and on one occasion, a Tagalog song extract.
2. I had a coding manual for dealing with subjectivity, which was aimed to list clearly what verbal/visual resources were sought and the decisions for every corpus item. This allowed me to demonstrate that I was consistent in my analysis. I also tried using Gwet’s AC1 to measure intercoder agreement but this was believed to address the usefulness of the coding manual.
The coding manual was adapted from the original manuals by Bednarek and Caple. During the analysis, that manual was revised numerous times because I had identified new resources. However, for consistency and organization, I had to repeat from the start my analysis of the news value I was looking at. This is particularly true for Consonance, because stereotypes were quite difficult to determine. (I annotated my corpus for Consonance about 24 times, if I’m not mistaken. And yes, the study took me some time to complete because of this.)
3. For purposes of audience-friendliness, I left out visual spectacles of death. But there were three images that contained references to death (i.e., through a casket, a cadaver bag, and actual bloody corpses left on the ground). These references were deemed to have constructed Negativity, because for Filipino audiences, these people were victims and that these illustrated the failure of the state to protect their constituents. However, it’s a different story when terrorists were portrayed, where Positivity is enacted instead despite the presence of fatal injuries that were vividly captured by the camera.
I hope this answers your queries! 🙂