From Cause to Concern: Critical Discourse Analysis and Extra-discursive Interests

By drawing on Norman Fairclough's seminal study New Labour, new language?, this article sets out to address and overcome a problematic issue in a ‘Faircloughean' CDA: the premise that discourse's rhetorical orientation is geared towards the concealment of problematic ‘extra-discursive' interests. This article proposes that ideological agents' discourse can also be explored without a priori assigning dubious or concealed commitments and investments to these producers. Problematic interests, in this view, are not only something that discourse producers have and conceal, but also what they might anticipate being accused of having. Considering ‘stake' and interest as a discursive concern rather than a cause for discourse initially grounds this proposition in a kind of ‘emic' discourse-analytical endeavour. Yet, this article does not set out to argue against an ‘etic' CDA, but seeks to provide an alternative to approaching projects for social change as discursive operations and sites of hegemonic struggle

Straitjackets and flak jackets: the BBC, 'boundary work' and the failed 2009 DEC Appeal for Gaza

This article, which is part of larger research project, considers the justification discourse of BBC Executives following the public outrage over the BBC’s decision not to air the 2009 DEC Appeal for Gaza. The BBC’s justification is characterised by a recurrent conceptualisation of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as embedded in an ‘ongoing news story’. The article analyses media interviews with BBC Executives together with relevant BBC documentation is applied to consider three affordances used to justify the controversial decision. We argue that the discourse of ‘ongoing news story’ allows the BBC to situate itself as a key agent in the Middle East conflict which necessitates invoking journalistic impartiality to all BBC output; facilitates boundary work between journalism and humanitarianism and thus allowing discourses of impartiality to unfold strictly in journalistic terms. This leads, we argue to the construction of ‘journalistic inviolability’ whereby the pursuit of principled journalism is presented as a greater humanitarian achievement than airing the DEC appeal

Western solidarity with Pussy Riot and the Twittering of cosmopolitan selves

This article aims to explain the widespread attention to contemporary protesting artists among Western audiences by focusing on the case of Pussy Riot. Social movement scholarship provides a first step into understanding how Pussy Riot legitimately protests Russian politics through its punk performances. It then turns to the concept of cosmopolitanism as a performance in everyday life to explain Pussy Riot's appeal among Western audiences. By collecting and analyzing 9001 tweets through a thematic hashtag analysis and topic modeling, this article analyzes how audiences talk about Pussy Riot and shows how Twitter affords users to perform cosmopolitan selves by sharing their ideas and experiences on Pussy Riot with others. Although we distinguish between four types of cosmopolitan selves, the results clearly show Pussy Riot is mainly reflected upon in a media context: Twitter users predominantly talk about Pussy Riot's media appearances rather than readily engage with its explicit political advocacy

Everyday practices and the (un)making of ‘Fortress Europe’.

The borders of Europe are erected and guarded through cultural practices as much as through border control and security technologies. Cultural Studies have been crucial in revealing how everyday, particularly media-oriented practices, make and unmake this ‘Fortress’. Yet, until now, the focus has been mostly on how migrants use or are represented through media discourses and technologies. This introduction essay argues that the signifier ‘Fortress Europe’—and its central premise of restraining mobility for some in order to enable freedom for others—also gains meaning in and through socio-cultural practices that we may not (as) immediately associate with the physical crossing of European borders. Particular practices that are discussed in this introduction and examined in the seven original articles of the special issue are: public opinion research, the public mobilization of emotions, negotiating identity in an ‘ancestral homeland’, the consumption of (sports) media, the production of a radio talk show and film archives, as well as the activist use of social media. Broadening scholarly attention to these kinds of sociocultural practices provides an important addition to understanding how power operates across social spheres and discursive orders. In addition, their identification also offers valuable opportunities to understand how and why some practices are particularly pertinent or effective in cementing or destabilizing Fortress Europe. This line of inquiry is visible throughout this special issue, despite the diversity of theoretical frameworks and empirical sites used in the contributing articles