How U.S.-based children’s news show CNN 10 reproduces neoliberal hegemony: A critical discourse analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study critically explores discourses of hegemonic neoliberalism on the digital news show CNN 10, which is explicitly produced for student audiences and shown in classrooms to millions of young people. Drawing on theories of hegemony, neoliberalism, and positioning, analysis of 102 episode transcripts shows that CNN 10’s young audience is interpellated occasionally as students, rarely as citizens, and almost always as nascent workers, consumers, and investors, whose overriding concern about world events should orient toward efficient capitalist production and frictionless global commerce. The study’s main contribution is to foreground these proffered subject-positions, calling attention to the subtle hegemonic work produced through pedagogical news discourse and legitimated in classrooms.