Exploring Media Discourse

The concept of discourse is immensely useful in analysing media texts. Yet it is often seen as primarily a linguistic tool. This book explores the ways in which it can be used for media studies, expecially for understanding the interplay between verbal and visual signification in toay's media. The opening chapters are detailed case studies to explore Foucault's thinking about discourse and how this can be applied to the analysis of media texts. While his ideas are seen as helpful in challenging conventional thinking about power, representation and reality, his antipathy to the concept of ideology and his evasiveness regarding questions of agency are given critical assessment. The second part of the book examines recent changes in media discourses, arguing that trends are often viewed simplistically. In particular the tendency to polarise the issues, using terms such as 'information' and 'entertainment', 'fact' and 'fiction', 'public sphere' and 'private sphere' are questioned and explored in detail. The book ends with a discussion of current concepts of 'risk', exploring ways in which media discourses concerning such topics as food or the welfare of children interact with discourse constructions beyond the media, linking very different phenomena in problematic ways.