Contemporary urban planning emphasizes the need for practice to be collaborative and communicative. It stresses on the importance of public engagement and participation. To ensure informed participation, planners need to provide relevant information to the public. However, the relevance of that information depends on an understanding of the existing discourse about the issue of interest. My research examined Transit City as a case study to demonstrate how that understanding can be gained. The question that framed the research was: What are the characteristics of discourses surrounding urban planning issues? The research focused on examining media coverage to gain that understanding for two reasons. Firstly, the media are considered to be the main purveyors of public discourse. However, there are limitations in the way they represent issues as this research found. Secondly, the media play an informant role, however imperfectly, on topics that matter. In part, this role gives them their importance and influence. The research examined media discourse surrounding Transit City in 94 articles in National Post, the Toronto Star, CUTA Forum, and Ontario Planning Journal to answer the research question. Discourse analysis was used as a method to investigate the topic under the framework of interpretive policy analysis. The research found that four of the media outlets used discursive practices of representation that highlighted certain themes and excluded others. It also found that the discursive communities that were identified in the media discourse interpreted Transit City differently through their discursive frames that were informed by their interest and responsibility in regards to Transit City and their core belief systems. As such their “argumentative logic” highlighted some aspects of Transit City and excluded others in the debate that ensued. The understanding of such characteristics of discourse can help planners in two ways. First, it informs the planning and the tailoring of messages they relay to discursive communities of various relevance. It allows them to have a stronger participation in the shaping of media discourse and generation of informed debate in the public as well as the professional sphere. Second, it can help planners in developing solutions to address points of controversy and bridge differences among stakeholders effectively in their role as mediators and consensus builders. Both benefits have positive implications in creating informed participation and making the planning process a collaborative and communicative effort.

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union and the possibility of it, has been discussed in the news with reference to the term ‘Brexit’ extensively for at least the last two years. The role of the media has been an important issue around the Brexit decision, which had its peak in June 2016 with the EU-referendum, where the population of the United Kingdom voted in favour of leaving the EU. The given master thesis builds up on these preconditions and aims for a better understanding of the media representation of Brexit on transnational news platforms from Europe and beyond. More precisely, the media output on Deutsche Welle, France 24 and Al Jazeera English after the EU-referendum until the end of the year 2016 is examined and compared to each other. The given form of the study has emerged out of the lack of previous research, where only the role of the media before the EU-referendum and the media output within the United Kingdom have been under investigation. First, a Framing Analysis on a big sample is conducted, where the main frames and the scope of the articles are examined to get a broad picture of the way transnational media reports about the issue. Second, a Critical Discourse Analysis is carried out on a small part of the big sample. In this way, the media output can be investigated more in-depth and the results of both methods complement each other. The results show that even though differences occur, the media representation of Brexit on DW, F24 and AJE are remarkably similar. More similar even than it was expected beforehand. It occurs that the topic ‘Brexit’ is particularly presented with emphasis on the conflictual potential of it, although differences can be found in the application of a national (rather UK) or international context. Furthermore, an uncertainty is present in various elements of the articles on DW, F24 and AJE. The significance of this study is empirically, since knowledge can be generated of Brexit in transnational news. However, also methodological indications are included that can be significant for future research.

Although an element of our quotidian existence the manner in which national identity is produced is one of the most contested problems in the contemporary social sciences. One method of examining the production of national identity is to study the mechanism through which such identities are constructed in discourse. This study considers the use of historical narratives in the construction of differing formulations of national identity in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Using the tools of critical discourse analysis this study surveys the production of varying historical narratives in the Republic of Karelia and the fashion in which such narratives contribute to producing or deconstructing competing conceptions of national identity. This thesis uses an analysis of both mass media discourse and interview data to provide a thorough illustration of the production of narratives of Karelian history on public and private levels and their use in engendering or refuting opposing notions of Karelian identity. It shall examine how various historical events and tendencies are incorporated into contrasting narratives of the historical development of the Karelian people and their Russian, Finnish and Vepsian counterparts and how such narratives are used to justify or invalidate current political and social realities. The relationship between such narratives of history and other aspects of identity production is investigated alongside the difficulties of ethnic Karelians in producing and promoting such narratives to sustain an image of Karelian national identity. It shall also demonstrate the manner in which Karelian identity can be positioned through the use of such historical narratives as closer to or more distant from Russian or Finnish national identity. The narration of a history of Karelia as an area and the manner in which this can be deployed to incorporate or distance the region from conceptions of Russian or Finno-Ugric identity is also made evident.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-11-22T13:08:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Alvaro Magalhães Pereira da Silva.pdf: 14466639 bytes, checksum: 8430641df1a5b5d00d16def05610ceb2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-22T13:08:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alvaro Magalhães Pereira da Silva.pdf: 14466639 bytes, checksum: 8430641df1a5b5d00d16def05610ceb2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo / What is the enunciative position that the press assumes in regard to the veracity of occurrences of resistance of individuals killed in police operations in cases that the Judiciary Police registers as “Resisting Arrests”? This is the main topic that this research deals with. It has two main objectives: (a) to identify the position the press takes up, in its discourse, when facing the veracity of occurrences of resistance in the mentioned cases; (b) to describe the linguistics strategies the press employs to make its stand. Evidences chosen for analysis were collected from the newspaper Agora São Paulo. The analysis, based upon the Scandinavian Theory of Linguistic Polyphony (ScaPoLine), indicates that the most frequent press enunciative position consists in deeming the veracity of resistance possible, but not certain. For every three occurrences of such position there are two in which resistance is accepted. Cases rejecting the veracity of resistance have not been found. As the State certifies the veracity of the resistance in cases registered as “Resisting Arrests”, it has been possible to conclude that the press tries to state, with partial success, a skeptical outlook towards the State, but does not challenge it. As for the linguistics strategies, this research has detected, in the most predominant position of the press discourse, the presence of a discursive being that is not identified with the press and that saturates the source of the point of view which assumes the resisting arrests as true. Thanks to a such discursive being the press sets up a non-responsibility link between the press itself and the mentioned point of view. To enact such a discursive being the press employs two linguistic marks: the adjective “suposto” as enunciation modalizer and the verbum dicendi “dizer” as inquit of indirect discourse. The description of such linguistics strategies substantiated the conclusions of this research regarding the identified enunciatives positions, enriching discussions about the role of the text in discourse / Como a imprensa, em seu discurso, se posiciona em relação à veracidade de ocorrência de resistência por parte de pessoas mortas durante ações policiais em casos registrados pela Polícia Judiciária como Autos de Resistência? Este é o problema sobre o qual a presente dissertação se debruça. A pesquisa possui dois objetivos: (a) identificar o posicionamento assumido pela imprensa, em seu discurso, em relação à veracidade de ocorrência de resistência nos casos citados; (b) descrever as estratégias linguísticas utilizadas pela imprensa para marcar esse posicionamento. Para a análise, foi selecionado um corpus recolhido do jornal Agora São Paulo ao longo do ano de 2012. A partir das proposições da Teoria Escandinava de Polifonia Linguística (ScaPoLine), concluiu-se que o posicionamento mais frequente é o de se considerar possível, mas não certa, a veracidade da resistência. Para cada três posicionamentos do tipo, foram encontrados dois casos em que a resistência é tida como certa. Não foram identificados casos de refutação da veracidade da resistência. Tendo em vista que, em ocorrências registradas como Autos de Resistência, é o Estado que primeiramente atesta a veracidade da resistência, depreende-se dos resultados que, no caso estudado, a imprensa procura manifestar, com parcial sucesso, uma postura cética em relação ao Estado, sem, no entanto, mostrar-se contestadora. Quanto às estratégias linguísticas, concluiu-se que, nos casos do posicionamento predominante, há sempre, no discurso da imprensa, a presença de um ser discursivo não identificado com ela saturando a fonte do ponto de vista que julga verdadeira a ocorrência de resistência. É a presença de tal ser discursivo que permite à imprensa estabelecer, entre ela e o ponto de vista mencionado, um elo de não-responsabilidade. Para colocar em cena o citado ser discursivo, a imprensa lança mão, no corpus analisado, de duas marcas linguísticas: o adjetivo “suposto” como modalizador de enunciado e o verbum dicendi “dizer” como inquit de discurso indireto. A partir da descrição dessas estratégias, esperou-se justificar as conclusões a respeito dos posicionamentos identificados, contribuindo para as discussões a respeito do papel do texto no discurso

O presente trabalho busca analisar, através de um percurso histórico-discursivo, o conceito de massificação dentro das Ciências da Comunicação. Através desse arcabouço construído, o objetivo é analisar as prováveis facetas atuais desse conceito: o jornalismo popularesco através da análise do Agora São Paulo e do Jornal da Tarde e das mídias colaborativas digitais. Usando o instrumental dos Estudos da Retórica, da Nova Retórica, da Pragmática do Texto (de Umberto Eco), da Análise do Discurso e da Argumentação Comunicacional, a dissertação busca demonstrar um novo âmbito da questão da massificação: a massa argumentativa, onde a condição massiva não é ontológica a esses membros da massa, o contraponto da elite. / This study aims to examine, through historical and discursive routes, the concept of mass within the Communication Studies. Built through this framework, the goal is to analyze the probable current facets of this concept: popular journalism through analysis of Agora São Paulo and Jornal da Tarde and collaborative digital media. Using the methodological tools of the Study of Rhetoric, New Rhetoric, Pragmatics of Text (by Umberto Eco), Discourse Analysis and Communicational Argumentation, the dissertation aims to demonstrate a new connection with the question of mass: the mass based on argument, where the condition to be massive is not ontological to those members of the mass, the counterpoint of the elite.

The media plays an important role in forming public opinion, in broad terms media reporting can be described a way of constructing meanings to social events and actions, both fixed and dynamic ones. An in-depth study of the media discourse will therefore allow us, not only to understand the conditions of modern media, but also complex social practises of meaning making. Given the growing importance of fair media representation in times of an ever-increasing globalisation this thesis aims at a better understanding of the Swedish media portrayal of the Egyptian Muslim-Christian relations. The research question is: How is the Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt discursively presented in contemporary printed Swedish news media? A question implying several secondary research questions concerning the way in which media messages are produced, shared and perceived. This thesis is divided in two parts: Primarily, a content analysis of all articles containing words “copts” and “Egypt” from Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter published in print during the last nine years. In this analysis, the source, length, type, topic and presence of women/men were quantified using manual coding and CATA. Based on the results from the content analysis, three article-categories were identified and four articles from these categories chosen for the second analysis, a Critical Discourse Analysis. This analysis builds on the methodological framework by Norman Fairclough as well as the theoretical framework about media representation developed by Stuart Hall and the orientalism discourse critique introduced by Edward Said. The combination of Content analysis and CDA was chosen due to the character of my research question and empirical material. Furthermore, this method triangulation contributed to a higher validity. The findings in this thesis showed us that orientalist discourses were present in a large part of the material, although not undisputed, something that was showed through a identification of three different discursive concepts that were used when portraying the Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt – the coexistence discourse, the complexity discourse and the clashing discourse. In accordance with the hypothesis, the formation of these discourses was proven to depend on a number of factors such as source, author, genre and length. However, the generalizability of this result was lowered by limited empirics and limits in methodology. Further research, building on larger material, on the discursive formation of similar types of media portrayal is therefore recommended.

<p>The study analyzes Russian foreign policy discourse on NATO during and after the Georgian war as constructed in on-line news articles from the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. The thesis adopts constructivist and discourse analytical approach. Namely, it is based on the interplay between the three main theoretical pillars: language as constitutive part of social reality; media as a type of discourse; and the constructivist understanding of the foreign policy discourse as being embedded in the domestic social and cultural dimensions.  <em></em></p><p>The research has shown that the discourse on NATO constructed in the news articles of Ria Novosti to a great extent reflected the official Russian government’s discourse.  The overall unfavorable representation of the organization was evident throughout the analyzed material. This ‘negative-other representation’ served to establish political frontiers between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ of the discourse. In the context of the Georgian war, the questions of the future power balance as well as effective transatlantic security mechanism gained particular prominence. The geopolitics of the regional security was represented as bipolar, comprising NATO (or ‘the West’ in its broad sense) on the one hand and Russia as the legitimate leader in most of the post-Soviet space, on the other. Such representation tended to possess distinctive features of the Cold War discourse.</p><p> </p>

This thesis is the product of a discourse analytic investigation of the first decade of the British lesbian magazine, DIVA, which launched in 1994. Work on mainstream women's and men's magazines has established them as sites at which (largely heterosexual) femininities and masculinities are constructed and construed, but relatively little scholarship has addressed lesbian magazines in this fashion. DIVA is Britain's only nationally sold, mainstream lesbian magazine; with this in mind, the thesis provides an analytic account of the magazine's launch, production and brand, and considers the discursive construction of lesbian community and the boundary work that that entails. The initial analytic chapters detail editorial philosophies, routines, and financial circumstances; design, front covers, and editorial content. Though the magazine has only limited resources available, those restrictions are simultaneously liberating, allowing DIVA's editors to pursue their political commitments at the same time as operating in the commercial marketplace. In considering the discursive construction of 'us', the thesis highlights a focus on community, support, and heritage. It further considers the discursive management of the boundaries of that imagined community, focusing on the 'threat' posed by bisexual women and the arguments this causes among readers. Finally, DIVA's handling of (heterosexual) others is considered, concluding that they are constructed as irrational, yet powerful, aggressors. Overall, DIVA's was a brand invested in the notion of community and in its role not only in imagining that community but also bringing members together. Though readers were at times divided over who belonged, or should belong, they were united in their belief that there was something to belong to. In the face of a hostile greater 'other', which was constructed as a constant source of threat, this belonging was incredibly important.

In this study, my intention has been to examine how the ambiguous concept of corruption is constructed by the press. Emphasizing the media’s representations of the socially constructed and context-specific concept, this work adopts a critical perspective on discourse, together with an approach of conceptual history. Finland has for many years been appointed as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, signing several international conventions against corruption since the 1990s, which in turn has led to an increase in discussion regarding the phenomenon. By conducting a multi-method study, my aim has been to analyse the possible changes in the definition of ”corruption” in the Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet during the period 2000-2013. Using the theoretical framework of Fairclough’s media discourse and Koselleck’s conceptual history, the concept has been analysed in light of Finnish legislation regarding corruption during this period. The analysis yielded several results. The concept of corruption is defined as a both moral and legal problem, resulting in shifting meanings. A change in the representation of levels of corruption in Finland, from optimistic to pessimistic is illustrated, which is upheld in the press by results from international corruption surveys and statements made by those in power. Overall, while discourse on corruption is both constructed and transformed by journalists, it has ideological effects when what is presented as facts are in reality based on statements made by experts and political actors.  Finally the analysis shows that “corruption” and “trust”, being asymmetrical concepts, constitute an inseparable pair of concepts. In a democratic country these concepts depend on each other, making corruption a matter of the entire society. I propose that further research examine the possible changes in the concept of corruption over a longer period of time.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2008 Nov 28