Orawee Bunnag, Krisda Chaemsaithong, Kyung-Eun Park
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study explores the incorporation of experts’ and authorities’ voices in COVID-19 news articles with respect to their distribution and discursive functions. Based on a corpus 90 articles from 2020 to 2022 in The Korea Herald, the analysis reveals that reporters rely heavily and, at times, uncritically, on biomedical voices, representing them as a homogeneous group that provides a superior form of knowledge. The discursive functions range from providing substance to the coverage, to adding negative emotional coloring, to disowning, and to deauthorizing, which appear to vary according to the dynamics of the pandemic. These intertextual practices do not simply transmit biomedical knowledge to the reader but also mediate public perceptions of the virus by defining what counts as (il)legitimate knowledge and framing it as an alarming threat and an (in)security issue. In effect, multidimensional perspectives are precluded that may also be helpful for a complex issue like the pandemic.
期刊介绍:
Discourse & Communication is an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles that pay specific attention to the qualitative, discourse analytical approach to issues in communication research. Besides the classical social scientific methods in communication research, such as content analysis and frame analysis, a more explicit study of the structures of discourse (text, talk, images or multimedia messages) allows unprecedented empirical insights into the many phenomena of communication. Since contemporary discourse study is not limited to the account of "texts" or "conversation" alone, but has extended its field to the study of the cognitive, interactional, social, cultural.