Anna Roosvall

Framing climate change and indigenous peoples Intermediaries of urgency, spirituality and de-nationalization

This article examines representations of indigenous peoples in Swedish and Canadian press coverage of the Copenhagen climate summit (COP15). It discusses tensions between the international character of UN summits and the often transnational character of indigenous peoples as well as the issue of climate change. It considers how conceptions of nature, culture and politics intersect in the coverage, and in what roles indigenous peoples appear. Building on theories concerning the representation of indigenous peoples, traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) and identity politics, the study combines content and framing analysis with discourse analysis of a small sample of articles about indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples are underrepresented in the coverage. When indigenous voices emerge they appear as victim-heroes and important intermediaries of urgency and spirituality. They also appear as intermediaries of de-nationalization, but they are misframed politically, recognized in terms of their culture rather than represented in terms of their status.

The identity politics of world news: oneness, particularity, identity and status in online slideshows

This article aims to fill the media representation gap in identity politics research by exploring connections to different identity politics models in representations of people in world news and relating them to discourses on humanity and notions of globalization respectively. News picture slideshows from Swedish, UK and US web newspapers are studied with an analytics-of-mediation approach. Slideshows of May Day are the focus alongside everyday slideshows. Intersections of identity politics models and discourses on humanity/notions of globalization are in the end sketched in a schematic model. The analysis shows that the reifying identity model dominates, and appears as a shortcut to media attention. It also discloses various possibilities of employing universalism and a focus on people’s status. The key role of images in mediated identity politics is highlighted and it is argued that media studies is imperative for identity politics research, and vice versa.

Religion, globalization and commodification in online world news slideshows: the dis/connection of images and texts

Lately, possibilities of producing and spreading news pictures have increased explosively through online media. Concurrently, religion has become increasingly salient in politics and news. Both processes are connected to globalization. This study encompasses globalization, religion and online images and aims to convey how online world news slideshows represent religion, and more particularly how linguistic and visual parts of picture paragraphs are interrelated, as well as related to representations of different religions. Methodologically multimodal analysis and discourse analysis are combined, focusing on composition of images and (dis-)connection of images and texts. Theories on globalization and possibilities and particularities of online news (pictures) and slideshows, frame the analysis. Tendencies to templates for different religions are found. Many religions appear as aesthetic commodities in images, whereas Islam in texts “sells” images of violence/destruction. Image–text relations are thus crucial both in the creation of meaning and of commodities in online news image culture. Two main image–text types are identified: “Religion in text, (potential) violence/destruction/despair in picture” (Islam) and “Spirituality/worshipping/aestheticism” (other religions). The world news slideshows have crucial roles as containers for these polarized image–text types, where they are related to and defined by each other in the genres (cl)aim to cover the whole world.

The Political in Cultural Journalism : Fragmented interpretative communities in the digital age

This article explores how nine Swedish cultural editors and managers in mainstream media institutions define cultural journalism and its political dimensions during times of increased digitization and media convergence. Swedish cultural journalism is aesthetic and political critique applied to subject areas (music, literature, etc.) and contemporary societal and ethical issues. Drawing on Zelizer we ask whether there is a common interpretive community of cultural journalists in different media regarding: (1) how they define their scope, (2) how they understand “the political” in cultural journalism and its implications for democracy, and (3) how they view media convergence and digitalization. We find that although editors/managers from different media share a basic understanding of cultural journalism as an alternative perspective to news, “the political” in cultural journalism is approached differently in the press and the public service broadcast media. Furthermore, due in part to structural conditions, they also see the effects of digitization differently, forming sub-communities on two counts. This study thus contributes new knowledge to a field previously focused almost exclusively on newspapers.

The mediated politics of place and people: picturing the ‘contested place-making’ of Irish Travellers at Dale Farm

ABSTRACT This article discusses meanings of people–place relationships, relating to ethnicity–class–gender intersections. The case examined concerns the ‘contested place-making’ of Irish Travellers at Dale Farm (UK), where the Travellers were eventually evicted from a place they owned. The material consists mainly of online slideshows in the Guardian. Visuals and place share the role of concretizing news, situating them and underlining their truth claims. Hence, news visuals are well suited for discussions of relationships between places and peoples. The study comprises theories of media, place and identity, relating to mobility, minorities and globalization. Methodologically, compositional analysis, discourse-theoretical method and an intersectional approach are combined. The place conflict is rarely understood in terms of justice. Instead, ethnicity–class–gender intersections appear as significant in the imagery, countering certain old stereotypes, but also connecting to discourses of ‘threatening minorities’, and ‘bad mobility’. Manifested through excessive imagery of barricades/fences/walls/gates, ‘identity management’ meets ‘place management’, detaching some identities from some places. The Travellers thus appear as anomalies, separated from others. This is partly connected to the slideshow format, where linguistic elaboration on motifs is very limited, partly to the selection of certain themes and motifs in the slideshows, and partly to the societal politics surrounding the issue.

Journalism, Climate Change, Justice and Solidarity: Editorializing the IPCC AR5

Justice is a significant undercurrent in journalism and in international politics on climate change. Yet it is too seldom explicitly discussed or problematized in these contexts. This largely theoretical and explorative chapter heeds the re-thinking of justice, responsibility and solidarity in a globalizing world, as expressed in political philosophy as well as in media studies. The international politics of climate change are most pertinently discussed and evaluated in editorials, which provide the research material for this chapter. In qualitatively examined example editorials from high-income countries, the discourse calls for global action while concurrently applying diverse versions of domestication. The editorials use strong obligation modality language (something “must” be done), refer to responsibility and justice, but do not specify the injustice or what should be done to amend it. The discourse does not (yet) reassess economic privilege or the dynamics of political representation. It is a solidaritarian discourse, but only vaguely so due to lack of specifications.

Book review: Sabina Mihelj, Media nations: Communicating belonging and exclusion in the modern worldMiheljSabina, Media nations: Communicating belonging and exclusion in the modern world. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011, ISBN: 9780230231863

Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchy of influences model, which could have been used to illustrate the different and intertwining individual, organizational, institutional and cultural factors that have an impact on how foreign news is produced. In sum, Williams has written a highly accessible yet multifaceted account of the history and current state of international journalism. At the same time, the relative absence of more critical discussions with the academic literature and the lack of a theoretical framework to provide a more encompassing interpretation of the described changes in the field may make the book a somewhat less satisfying read for more advanced students of journalism.

Book review: Sabina Mihelj, Media nations: Communicating belonging and exclusion in the modern world

Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchy of influences model, which could have been used to illustrate the different and intertwining individual, organizational, institutional and cultural factors that have an impact on how foreign news is produced. In sum, Williams has written a highly accessible yet multifaceted account of the history and current state of international journalism. At the same time, the relative absence of more critical discussions with the academic literature and the lack of a theoretical framework to provide a more encompassing interpretation of the described changes in the field may make the book a somewhat less satisfying read for more advanced students of journalism.