Mixed Methods – Discourse

Critical discourse analysis has many variants and no individual piece of scholarship incorporates all of them. However, I take inspiration from Dialectical-Relational CDA as a method designed to engage with the “semiotic dimensions” of social practices, and in turn link those dimensions to other areas of scholarship in a “transdisciplinary” way (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999; Fairclough 1989, 2001). Fairclough (1999; 1989, 2010) argues that social actors use language in “orders of discourse” that dialectically constrain and enable particular discourses through the creation of spoken, written, and visual texts. In this dissertation, order of discourse include state economic interests, norms derived from sponsoring state media systems, and financial journalism practice. I argue that these orders of discourse interact in the production of international broadcaster content. Analysis from a CDA perspective encourages the scholar to

“unmask” ideological discourses and how those discourses maintain, justify, or resist relations of power through hegemonic closure of possible discursive choices.

CDA is appropriate for this dissertation for several reasons. First, it theorizes and examines language’s role in naturalizing and contesting power. In addition, CDA can address large amounts of material, but also provide the analytical and theoretical tools needed to understand language use at a micro level. IB news content, should it work to project state narratives, is fundamentally enmeshed in competing power relations between states and is, as such, amenable to CDA. These materials are semiotic and thus contain a discursive dimension shaped by the structures in which they were produced. Second, while there has been scholarly attention to IBs from a variety of perspectives (Hayden 2011; Jowett and O’Donnell 1999; Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle 2013; Price 2003; Thussu 2007a), very few have

systematically and comparatively examined their content (Figenschou 2010; A. Robertson 2014). CDA’s focus on deep textual analysis and the role of power in shaping discourse means that this dissertation provides one of the first empirically grounded analyses of economic news coverage by IBs in comparative perspective with an emphasis on state power.

CDA, in addition to being an appropriate method, has been applied to the materials gathered here, thus illustrating this project’s alignment with previous research. Scholars who applied CDA to international broadcasters generally examined AJE as a new form of

oppositional or alternative journalism (e.g. Barkho 2008, 2011, Kasmani 2013a, 2013b; Wu 2013). Of these scholars, Barkho (2008, 2011) and Kasmani (2013a, 2013b) examined specific events, Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an Iranian election respectively. As such, events

constrained their samples and their analyses. Wu (2013) pulled news stories from the BBC and

measured by number of bulletins. Other scholars have analyzed IBs using different methods than CDA, but provide useful coding schemes to be modified here (Figenschou 2010; A. Robertson 2010, 2014). By combining analysis of routine economic news coverage, official economic discourse, and economic protests with a focus on power, this dissertation unravels IBs potential in disseminating alternative economic discourses as an facet of state power.

Finally, Kaufer and Hariman (2008) suggested that CDA and rhetoric developed from different intellectual traditions and rarely speak to each other, a situation that has changed little since they wrote their article (Tracy et al. 2011). However, the two have much to offer each other. In this dissertation, I combine the rigor content analysis provides in data collection and initial coding with scholarship on the rhetoric of economics. Doing so moves my analysis past Widdowson’s (1995, 1998) now classic criticism that CDA misapplies the knowledge of formal linguistics and thereby engages in a form of literary criticism. Using the analytical rigor of content analysis provides a check on my close textual analysis, while also incorporating the range of findings from rhetorical analyses of economic rhetoric. Combining these two approaches to the study of language, thereby, permits a multi-level of analysis of my texts’ broader patterns and close textual levels.

Procedurally, CDA does not apply any single correct or rote means of gathering data or analysis (Carvalho 2008; Tenorio 2011). Because of its fundamental concern with unmasking power relations in society (van Dijk 2008), CDA begins with a “social wrong” or problem in society. They work from the literature on the problem to determine what object(s) of analysis are most appropriate. Having identified a wrong and topic, the researcher then collects data that reflects or speaks to the topic, organizing and coding it for later, in depth semiotic analysis. I have already examined the relevant literatures and describe the materials below. Nevertheless, it

is important to consider the nature of the “wrong” studied here and why CDA is a useful method to examine it.

International broadcasting efforts signal a greater role for states in the global news system, one increasingly defined by the presence 24 hour private news channels (Rai and Cottle 2010). Private media proliferation resulted, partially, from neoliberalism’s incorporation into global economic governance, and several scholars regard such channels as harbingers of news homogenization, Americanization, or infotainment (O. Boyd-Barrett and Xie 2008; Harvey 2007; McChesney 2004; Thussu 2007b; Wasko 2013). Nevertheless, states reliant on the global economy such as Russia and China have made providing different views on international news their stated goal (Avgerinos 2009; P. M. Seib 2010; Zhu 2012). In turn, this suggests that several states desire an IB in direct contravention of the global media system shaped by neoliberalism. While neoliberalism may be economic orthodoxy, state IBs grounded in counter-hegemonic editorial stances, like RT and AJE, may undermine such orthodoxies. This complex interplay of power relations is an important and under analyzed aspect of the global system grounded in competing discourses, and therefore open to CDA and rhetorical analytical approaches.

CDA, in addition to its attention to power dynamics, distinguishes itself from agenda- setting or content analysis (Scheufele 1999; Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007) by doing deeper forms of textual analysis. CDA’s attention to power in its semiotic dimension and its insistence on deep textual analysis after initial coding entails that practitioners engage in interdiscursive and semiotic analysis following initial coding. Semiotic/linguistic analysis seeks to detect ideological constructions in a “text” and understands these constructions as both shaped by power and the application of power. The researcher looks for a variety of linguistic features such as: synonymy, antymony, hyponymy, nominalization, metaphor, pronoun use, passive/active

voice, synecdoche, and expressive and relational values (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999; Fairclough 1989, 2001). No single text contains all of these features, but particular language choices enable and limit interpretations of actors, ideas, institutions, and governments that reflect the position of their author. Schumpeter’s (1942) “creative destruction,” for example, assumed the status of a paradigmatic metaphor for neoliberal capitalism. Schumpeter used it to illustrate the processes by which free-market capitalism fosters innovation by replacing old industries with new ones. The juxtaposition of “creative” and “destruction” shades the unemployment, poverty, and social dislocation that accompany many macroeconomic decisions with a positive and progressive valence. Likewise, the linguistic means IBs use to frame state policies, the global economy, and geopolitical rivals carry within them presumptions about their legitimacy or lack thereof.

Interdiscursive analysis connects a given text with the discursive resources the author draws upon in its production and highlights the intertextualities that constitute texts. Given my research questions, the interdiscursive analysis necessitates comparison between IB content and primary and secondary sources on state sponsor economic policies. Concretely, interdiscursive analysis of my selected texts requires determining the extent to which IBs carry or reproduce government economic policy rhetoric. The greater the overlap between these two areas,

government policy papers and IB content, the greater likelihood we can definitively say that state interests influence broadcaster’s content.

Procedurally, the CDA I use here involves the following steps that follow the initial content analysis outlined above. First, I examine the results of the coding, investigating particular patterns seen in the data. CCTV’s consistent reporting on the Two Session, the period when legislative councils debate government policies, serve as an excellent example. Analysis of the

issue variable, which coded for the main topic of story as introduced by the anchor, illustrates that CCTV reported on the Two Sessions in 3% of their total items. While apparently a small number, it is still higher than a variety of other issues. In addition, while the coding does not account for these features, Two Sessions items were always at the beginning of the program, sometimes with multiple individual items on the many parts of the sessions themselves. These features signaled that these news items were ripe for deeper analysis, especially as these items represented a clear opportunity for Chinese leaders to address network audiences directly. Second, I reexamined the episodes with particular attention to repeated words, phrases, and metaphors and several immediately stood out. Among these were China’s new normal,

innovation society, belt and road initiative, and market-oriented reform. As part of this process, I also looked for the verbal context of these phrases, were they presented positively or negatively, who was permitted to speak about them (political figures, economists, experts). In addition, I asked how reporters and speakers discursively connected actors, like the state, to the terms and how have these terms been used in other contexts (notably economic reports, academic studies, and journalistic accounts).

I will use new normal as an example. Anchors and reporters used this term frequently, inside and outside of Two Sessions reporting. The term itself juxtaposes the concept of newness, or change, with normality. It suggests an irrevocable shift from a previous condition to a new one, and, therefore, could cause fear. Anchors connected the term, discursively, to the larger changes in the Chinese economy including: slower growth, weakened housing markets, slower manufacturing growth, and government attempts to increase consumer spending and internet commerce. Analysis of Chinese government communication (ChinaFile 2013; Xinhua 2015), academic analysis (Shambaugh 2013), and news items (BBC 2015a) illustrated that China is, or

is perceived to be, enduring a transformation of its economy from a manufacturing export based system to a consumption and service based economy. In each item that used the term new normal anchors claimed the CPC and Chinese state implemented reforms to addresses the marco-

changes in China’s economy, but were proactive in doing so. In a January 20 episode, for example, Jeremy Stevens of Standard Bank argued that China’s slowdown was the result of structural factors like a weak housing market. The host, then, claimed that the government was planning reforms around the slowdown and used interviews with Bert Hofman of the World Bank, Liu Baocheng of the University of International business and Economics (China), and Jurgen Conrad of the Asian Development Bank to highlight the positive aspect of CPC reforms and the overall strength of the Chinese economy. In this sense, CCTV used the new normal in ways that associated it with the CPC and their reform policies, supported by Chinese and foreign experts, and rendered structural changes in the Chinese economy knowable and less worthy of anxiety. CDA illustrates that the use of language is both a reflection of power in that CCTV journalists use the language of the Chinese government without skepticism, but also an

application of power to the audience in attempting to shape their understanding of the Chinese economy in ways that the CPC may prefer. I apply content analysis and CDA, therefore, as a mixture of rigorously empirical analysis of news item features as well as a flexible discourse analytic tool to unmask the power dynamics at play in IB content.