Financial media, globalisation, and China’s economic integration: comparing narrative construction of the Economist and Caijing

In June 2015, legal frameworks of the Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank were signed by its 57 founding members. Proposed and initiated by China, this multilateral development bank is considered to be an Asian counterpart to break the monopoly of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In October 2015, China’s Central Bank announced a benchmark interest rate cut to combat the economic slowdown. The easing policy coincides with the European Central Bank’s announcement of doubts over US Fed’s commitment to raise interest rates. Global stock markets responded positively to China’s move, with the exception of the indexes from Wall Street (Bland, 2015; Elliott, 2015). In the meantime, China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (or New Silk Road Economic Belt) became atopic of discourse in relation to its growing global economy, as China pledged $40 billion to trade and infrastructure projects (Bermingham, 2015). The foreign policy aims to reinforce the economic belt from western China through Central Asia towards Europe, as well as to construct maritime trading routes from coastal China through the South China Sea (Summers, 2015). In 2012, The Economist launched a new China section, to reveal the complexity of the‘meteoric rise’ of China. John Micklethwait, who was then the chief editor of the magazine, said that China’s emergence as a global power justified giving it a section of its own(Roush, 2012). In July 2015, Hu Shuli, the former chief editor of Caijing, announced the launch of a think tank and financial data service division called Caixin Insight Group, which encompasses the new Caixin China Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). Incooperation with with Markit Group, a principal global provider of PMI, the index soon became a widely cited economic indicator. One anecdote from November’s Caixin shows how much has changed: in a high-profile dialogue between Hu Shuli and Kevin Rudd, Hu insisted on asking questions in English; interestingly, the former Prime Minister of Australia insisted on replying in Chinese. These recent developments point to one thing: the economic ascent of China and its increasing influence on the power play between economics and politics in world markets. China has begun to take a more active role in rule making and enforcement under neoliberal frameworks. However, due to the country’s size and the scale of its economy in comparison to other countries, China’s version of globalisation has unique characteristics. The ‘Capitalist-socialist’ paradox is vital to China’s market-oriented transformation. In order to comprehend how such unique features are articulated and understood, there are several questions worth investigating in the realms of media and communication studies,such as how China’s neoliberal restructuring is portrayed and perceived by different types of interested parties, and how these portrayals are de-contextualised and re-contextualised in global or Anglo-American narratives. Therefore, based on a combination of the themes of globalisation, financial media and China’s economic integration, this thesis attempts to explore how financial media construct the narratives of China’s economic globalisation through the deployment of comparative and multi-disciplinary approaches. Two outstanding elite financial magazines, Britain’s The Economist, which has a global readership and influence, and Caijing, China’s leading financial magazine, are chosen as case studies to exemplify differing media discourses, representing, respectively, Anglo-American and Chinese socio-economic and political backgrounds, as well as their own journalistic cultures. This thesis tries to answer the questions of how and why China’s neoliberal restructuring is constructed from a globally-oriented perspective. The construction primarily involves people who are influential in business and policymaking. Hence, the analysis falls into the paradigm of elite-elite communication, which is an important but relatively less developed perspective in studying China and its globalisation. The comparing of characteristics of narrative construction are the result of the textual analysis of articles published over a ten-year period (mid-1998 to mid-2008). The corpus of samples come from the two media outlets’ coverage of three selected events:China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, its outward direct investment, and the listing of stocks of Chinese companies in overseas exchanges, which are mutually exclusive in sample collection and collectively exhaustive in the inclusion of articles regarding China’s economic globalisation. The findings help to understand that, despite language, socio-economic and political differences, elite financial media with globally-oriented readerships share similar methods of and approaches to agenda setting, the evaluation of news prominence, the selection of frame, and the advocacy of deeply rooted neoliberal ideas. The comparison of their distinctive features reflects the different phases of building up the sense of identity in their readers as global elites, as well as the different economic interests that are aligned with the corresponding readerships. However, textual analysis is only relevant in terms of exploring how the narratives are constructed and the elements they include; textual analysis alone prevents us from seeing the obstacles and the constrains of the journalistic practices of construction. Therefore, this thesis provides a brief discussion of interviews with practitioners from the two media, in order to understand how similar or different narratives are manifested and perceived, how the concept of neoliberalism deviates from and is justified in the Chinese context, and how and for what purpose deviations arise from Western to Chinese contexts. The thesis also contributes to defining financial media in the domain of elite communication. The relevant and closely interlocking concepts of globalisation, elitism and neoliberalism are discussed, and are used as a theoretical bedrock in the analysis of texts and contexts. It is important to address the agenda-setting and ideological role of elite financial media, because of its narrative formula of infusing business facts with opinions,which is important in constructing the global elite identity as well as influencing neoliberal policy-making. On the other hand, ‘journalistic professionalism’ has been redefined, in that the elite identity is shared by the content producer, reader and the actors in the news stories emerging from the much-compressed news cycle. The professionalism of elite financial media requires a dual definition, that of being professional in the understanding of business facts and statistics, and that of being professional in the making sense of stories by deploying economic logic.

Power, Arab media Moguldum & gender rights as entertainment in the Middle East

Discourse is a giant field of research and gender related rights are still a disputed area of thinking. Thus, when Arab transnational satellite televisions produce dialogues, images, stories and narratives about the disputed “universal” gender rights in the Middle East, the big questions remain how and why. According to De Beauvoir (1949), one becomes woman and to Butler (1990) one is not born a gender at all but is “done” and “undone” to become one via discourse. Islamic feminism speaks of a cultural/religious specificity in defending women rights and even gender diversity based on new Quranic interpretations. The gender, “Al-Naw’u”, remains synonym to sex “Al Jins” as gender and queer theories never developed in Arabic in tandem with the European institutions or the theories of the19th century– especially those ideas emerging from studies of the mental asylum. This research tries to understand gender related “rights” and “wrongs” as manifest in the discursive institutions owned by media mogul Prince Al Waleed Ben Talal Al Saud. The trouble of such a study is lexical, ideological and institutional at the same time. Since we lack a critique of the discourses and narratives addressed in the pan-Arab satellite channels, in general it is difficult to understand their significance and influence in everyday life practices. What language is used to speak of gender rights or wrongs? Which ideology is favoured in this practice of legitimisation and/or policing? Using case studies, CDA of social and religious talk shows, narrative analysis of Arabic cinemas, this research adapted triangulation to show the complexity of conversing and narrating gender related content at the micro and macro levels within an institution of power. Using semi-structured interviews from fieldwork in Egypt (2009) and Lebanon (2011), archive research and online ethnography, the research exposes the power structure under which gender discourses evolve. It emerges that gender content is abundant on the Pan Arab satellite space, “manufactured” on talk shows and plotted tactfully in the cinematic “creative-act”. The result is a complex discourse of gender content that scratches the surface calling for interpretation. So how and why do gender rights and wrongs find place on Prince Al Waleed’s Media Empire?

The Visual Representation of a Systematic Metaphor in a UK Media Text

Much has been written on the organizational power of metaphor in discourse, eg on metaphor ‘chains’ and ‘clusters’ of linguistic metaphor in discourse (Koller 2003, Cameron & Stelma 2004, Semino 2008) and the role of extended and systematic metaphor in organizing long stretches of language, even whole texts (Cameron et al 2009, Cameron & Maslen 2010, Deignan et al 2013, Semino et al 2013). However, at times, this work belies the intricacies of how a single metaphoric idea can impact on a text. The focus of this paper is a UK media article derived from a HM Treasury press release on alleviating poverty. The language of the article draws heavily on orientational (spatial) metaphors, particularly metaphors of movement around GOOD IS UP. Although GOOD IS UP can be considered a single metaphoric idea, the picture the reader builds up as they move line by line through this text is complex and multifaceted. I take the idea of “building up a picture” literally in order to investigate the schema of motion relating to GOOD IS UP. To do this, fifteen informants (Masters students at a London university), tutored in Cognitive Metaphor Theory, were asked to read the article and underline words and expressions they felt related to GOOD IS UP. The text was then read back to the informant with emphasis given to the words they had underlined, while they drew a pictorial representation of the article based on the meanings of these words, integrating their drawings into a single picture as they went along. I present examples of the drawings the informants produced. I propose that using Metaphor-led Discourse Analysis to produce visual material in this way offers useful insights into how metaphor contributes to meaning making at text level. It shows how a metaphoric idea, such as GOOD IS UP, provides the text producer with a rich and versatile meaning-making resource for constructing text; and gives a ‘mind-map’ of how certain aspects of a media text are decoded by the text receiver. It also offers a partial representation of the elusive, intermediate ‘deverbalized’ stage of translation (Lederer 1987), where the sense of the source text is held in the mind before it is transferred to the target language. References Cameron, L., R. Maslen, Z. Todd, J. Maule, P. Stratton & N. Stanley. 2009. ‘The discourse dynamic approach to metaphor and metaphor-led analysis’. Metaphor and Symbol, 24(2), 63-89. Cameron, L. & R. Maslen (eds). 2010. Metaphor Analysis: Research Practice in Applied Linguistics, Social Sciences and Humanities. London: Equinox. Cameron, L. & J. Stelma. 2004. ‘Metaphor Clusters in Discourse’. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 107-136. Deignan, A., J. Littlemore & E. Semino. 2013. Figurative Language, Genre and Register. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koller, V. 2003. ‘Metaphor Clusters, Metaphor Chains: Analyzing the Multifunctionality of Metaphor in Text’. metaphorik.de, 5, 115-134. Lederer, M. 1987. ‘La théorie interprétative de la traduction’ in Retour à La Traduction. Le Francais dans Le Monde. Semino, E. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semino, E., A. Deignan & J. Littlemore. 2013. ‘Metaphor, Genre, and Recontextualization’. Metaphor and Symbol. 28(1), 41-59.

El Periodismo de Datos en España

El Periodismo de Datos se ha convertido en una de las tendencias que se están implantando en los medios. En pocos años el desarrollo y visibilidad de esta modalidad ha aumentado considerablemente y son numerosos los medios que cuentan con equipos y espacios específicos de Periodismo de Datos en el panorama internacional. Del mismo modo, existen aplicaciones, plataformas, webs, o fundaciones al margen de las empresas periodísticas cuya labor también puede ser enmarcada en este ámbito. El objetivo principal de esta contribución es establecer una radiografía de la implantación del Periodismo de Datos en España; tanto dentro como fuera de los medios. Aunque se trata de una disciplina todavía en fase de desarrollo, parece adecuado realizar un estudio exploratorio que ofrezca una panorámica de su situación actual en España.

The consumer before the infoxication in the press discourse

In the media current context, the user is exposed every day to an informative saturation without precedents. The variety of the media by means of that it receives information, together with the revolution to all the levels that has supposed the Internet integration, it does that the consumer is bombarded literally by multitude of messages. But this bombardment does not imply an informative quality, but it can suppose an imbalance between the number of information and the quality of the same ones, avoiding so the user know the reality with veracity and depth. This article analyzes exhaustively the phenomenon of this overexposure named infoxication, the true dangers that it encloses, the possible solutions and how it affects the user and the Journalism in the production of written and audiovisual products through different mass media.

The impact of political and economic crisis on the polarization of the Spanish media

In this paper the characteristics of the cyclical political polarization of the Spanish media system are defined. From this study, a prospective analysis raises doubts about this scenario remains unchanged because of the political and economic crisis. It seeks to define the role played by political and media actors in polarization focusing on the two legislatures where the tension reached higher levels (1993-1996 and 2004-2008) and compares it with the developments faced by them in the current economical and political context of crisis. To achieve these aims, it has been performed an analysis of media content (since 1993) and looked through primary sociological sources and the scientific literature about polarization. This is an exploratory, critical and descriptive case analysis.

Assessment of the EEE-4 oral test: a discourse analysis based on complex networks.

With the development of information technology, the theory and methodology of complex network has been introduced to the language research, which transforms the system of language in a complex networks composed of nodes and edges for the quantitative analysis about the language structure. The development of dependency grammar provides theoretical support for the construction of a treebank corpus, making possible a statistic analysis of complex networks. This paper introduces the theory and methodology of the complex network and builds dependency syntactic networks based on the treebank of speeches from the EEE-4 oral test. According to the analysis of the overall characteristics of the networks, including the number of edges, the number of the nodes, the average degree, the average path length, the network centrality and the degree distribution, it aims to find in the networks potential difference and similarity between various grades of speaking performance. Through clustering analysis, this research intends to prove the network parameters’ discriminating feature and provide potential reference for scoring speaking performance.

Of Marx and Makers: an Historical Perspective on Generative Justice

In Marxist frameworks “distributive justice” depends on extracting value through a centralized state. Many new social movements—peer to peer economy, maker activism, community agriculture, queer ecology, etc.—take the opposite approach, keeping value in its unalienated form and allowing it to freely circulate from the bottom up. Unlike Marxism, there is no general theory for bottom-up, unalienated value circulation. This paper examines the concept of “generative justice” through an historical contrast between Marx’s writings and the indigenous cultures that he drew upon. Marx erroneously concluded that while indigenous cultures had unalienated forms of production, only centralized value extraction could allow the productivity needed for a high quality of life. To the contrary, indigenous cultures now provide a robust model for the “gift economy” that underpins open source technological production, agroecology, and restorative approaches to civil rights. Expanding Marx’s concept of unalienated labor value to include unalienated ecological (nonhuman) value, as well as the domain of freedom in speech, sexual orientation, spirituality and other forms of “expressive” value, we arrive at an historically informed perspective for generative justice. 

Predicting Academic Performance Based on Students' Blog and Microblog Posts

This study investigates the degree to which textual complexity indices applied on students’ online contributions, corroborated with a longitudinal analysis performed on their weekly posts, predict academic performance. The source of student writing consists of blog and microblog posts, created in the context of a project-based learning scenario run on our eMUSE platform. Data is collected from six student cohorts, from six consecutive installments of the Web Applications Design course, comprising of 343 students. A significant model was obtained by relying on the textual complexity and longitudinal analysis indices, applied on the English contributions of 148 students that were actively involved in the undertaken projects.

Predicting Student Performance and Differences in Learning Styles based on Textual Complexity Indices applied on Blog and Microblog Posts

Social media tools are increasingly popular in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and the analysis of students' contributions on these tools is an emerging research direction. Previous studies have mainly focused on examining quantitative behavior indicators on social media tools. In contrast, the approach proposed in this paper relies on the actual content analysis of each student's contributions in a learning environment. More specifically, in this study, textual complexity analysis is applied to investigate how student's writing style on social media tools can be used to predict their academic performance and their learning style. Multiple textual complexity indices are used for analyzing the blog and microblog posts of 27 students engaged in a project-based learning activity. The preliminary results of this pilot study are encouraging, with several indexes predictive of student grades and/or learning styles.

Sexting na adolescência: análise da rede de enunciações produzida pela mídia

Esta tese foi produzida no Programa de Pós -Graduação em Educação em Ciências : Química da Vida e Saúde , na linha de pesquisa "Educação científica : implicações das práticas científicas na constituição dos sujeitos ". O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar a rede de enunciações sobre o sexting em alguns materiais (reportagens, programas televisivos, postagens em blogs e comentários realizados por leitores dos sites) presentes na internet e investigar as condições de emergência da prática do sexting. O sexting é um termo criado nos Estados Unidos da América, que deriva das expressões sex (sexo) e texting (envio de mensagens). Esse conceito descreve uma prática social e cultural que está sendo difundida mundialmente: esta consiste em produzir e enviar fotos e vídeos sexuais, sensuais e eróticos entre conhecidos/as, amigos/as, namorados/as, “ficantes” etc.. Nesta pesquisa, utilizamos como aporte teórico os estudos de Pierre Lévy, André Lemos, Paula Sibilia, Guy Debord, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault e Zygmunt Bauman. Tais autores ajudam-nos a pensar que o sexting emerge devido a alguns acontecimentos sociais, culturais, históricos etc., que vêm provocando alguns deslocamentos em nossa sociedade. Para proceder com tal pesquisa, utilizamos a internet como campo empírico. Em nossa busca, encontramos 48 artefatos culturais que discutem, de alguma forma, sobre sexting. Dentre estes, 37 comentam sobre vídeos caseiros que mostram relações sexuais, 8 discutem sobre o fenômeno sexting e 3 debatem sobre a produção de fotos sensuais. Para análise dos dados, utilizamos algumas ferramentas foucaultianas, especialmente os conceitos de discurso, dispositivo e enunciado. Ao olharmos os materiais, percebemos que os/os adolescentes vêm se utilizando das tecnologias digitais para visibilizarem a sua sexualidade, o que nos dá indícios de que estas vêm possibilitando a constituição de jornalistas cidadãos/ãs. Além disso, evidenciamos que as fotos e vídeos dos/as adolescentes foram produzidos em comum acordo entre eles/as. Muitos dessas fotos e vídeos, foram disseminados pelos próprios sujeitos que aderiram a essa prática. Assim, a exposição da sexualidade, por meio do sexting, tem sido realizada com o propósito de adquirir visibilidade e de tornar-se a personalidade do momento. Entendemos que essa vontade de escancarar a sexualidade, por meio das tecnologias digitais, está vinculada à sociedade do espetáculo, que manifesta a necessidade de tornar-se visível. Além disso, notamos que essa prática está relacionada à escola, pois muitos dos casos relatados ocorreram no interior dessa instituição ou tiveram uma repercussão nesse ambiente. Em muitos casos, a escola era culpabilizada pelos casos de sexting que envolviam seus/sua alunos/as. No entanto, são os pais o foco de maiores críticas pela mídia massiva, pois, para essa instância, são estes os maiores responsáveis pela disciplinarização desses corpos. Evidenciou-se também que os/as praticantes do sexting sofreram micropenalidades, as quais tinham como objetivo corrigir suas condutas. Nesse sentido, entendemos o sexting como uma atualização do dispositivo da sexualidade, pois este coloca a sexualidade – a qual, durante a modernidade sólida, constituía-se como algo exclusivamente do âmbito privado – em evidência nos espaços públicos. Ao mesmo tempo, verificamos que algumas práticas disciplinares ainda buscam governar e normalizar a sexualidade dos sujeitos. A análise do material empírico possibilitou-nos verificar dois enunciados que fazem parte do discurso do sexting. O primeiro destes é que, na contemporaneidade, aparecer é uma condição de existência; o outro é que a sexualidade é entendida como algo que deve ser regulado, governado e normalizado. Consideramos importante centrarmos os estudos no sexting, pois entendemos que essa prática vem contribuindo para o surgimento de outros modos de viver e entender a sexualidade, pois o sexting enquadra a sexualidade como algo a ser exibido e mostrado para todos/as.

Tourism Media Dynamics: Narratives of the Nation-State

With the premise that the tourism promotional video “China, Forever” provides a crucial access to understanding how tourism engages in a wider circle of socio-culture formation, this dissertation research approaches tourism by examining communicative practices initiated by “China, Forever”. In doing so, it seeks to reveal two dialogues – firstly, between the discursive construction of tourism representational language and China’s nation-state ideology; secondly, between interpretations from overseas Chinese audiences and nation-state narratives delivered via the tourism media. In analyzing the first dialogue, this dissertation reveals that the pursuit of collective and monolithic national imagery has caused a representational violence – one that is committed by the nation-state ideology operated through the organization of tourism language. The very representational coercion itself, however, signifies the nature of tourism media as a vehicle mediating the global gaze and China’s self-representation; illuminating the fact that China’s nation-state building is only to be understood as deeply-grounded in the complexity of postcolonial politics. Furthermore, in a dialectic view, such finding consolidates the nature of “China, Forever” as a cultural product that actively exists as a component in the overall social fabric, co-creating a wider circle of culture politics together with other genres of media products; thus, calling for a more comprehensive understanding of tourism media at large. In the second approach, this dissertation seeks to understand how the tourism video “China, Forever” mediates the relationship between tourism narratives of the nation-state and overseas Chinese individuals; thus bridging together tourism media and ongoing life experiences of the audiences chosen. The analysis reveals that audiences’ interpretations heavily concentrate on resisting and fragmenting the hegemonic nation-state language in “China, Forever”. While some interviewees seek to decentralize the nation-state perspective from aspects of aesthetics, representational style, and representational subjects in “China, Forever” by incorporating their individual memories and past experiences, to some others, the over-polished glorification of China in the mediated tourism discourse is only coercive to China’s social realities experienced by the individual interviewees - the disheartening contrasts of poverty and affluence as well as other social inequalities. From the perspective of the audience group, the Chinese scholars and students at the University of Illinois interviewed for this dissertation research constitute a cohort of exiled audiences for the tourism video “China, Forever”. The audiences subject themselves to voluntary interpellation, a process in which they find themselves defending, negotiating, and resisting the nation-state representation of China – even though they are not its intended audience and have had no input into its production. Nevertheless, such process is one of identification, in which viewers articulate a subject position from which to speak of their own experiences, dilemmas and desires. The usefulness of tourism media discourse in mediating the nation-state narratives and the individual experience is amplified.

From social action to business action - A qualitative research on the professionalization process of a blogger: Case P.s. I Love Fashion -blog

Blogging is one of the most common forms of social media today. Blogs have become a powerful media and bloggers are settled stakeholders to marketers. Commercialization of the blogosphere has enabled an increasing number of bloggers professionalize and blog as a full-time occupation. The purpose of this study is to understand the professionalization process of a blogger from an amateur blogger to a professional actor. The following sub-questions were used to further elaborate the topic: What have been the meaningful events and developments fostering professionalization? What are the prerequisites for popularity in blogging? Are there any key success factors to acknowledge in order being able to make business out of your blog? The theoretical framework of this study was formed based on the two chosen focus areas for professionalization; social drivers and business drivers. The theoretical framework is based on literature from fields of marketing and social sciences, as well as previous research on social media, blogging and professionalization. The study is a qualitative case-study and the research data was collected in a semi-structured interview. The case chosen to this study is a lifestyle-blog. The writer of the case blog has been able to develop her blog to become a full-time professional blogger. Based on the results, the professionalization process of a blogger is not a defined process, but instead comprised of coincidental events as well as considered advancements. Success in blogging is based on the bloggers own motivation and passion for writing and expressing oneself in the form of a blog, instead of a systematic construction of a successful career in blogging. Networking with other bloggers as well as affiliates was seen as an important success factor. Popularity in the blogosphere and a high number of followers enable professionalization, as marketers actively seek to collaborate with popular bloggers with strong personal brands. Bloggers with strong personal brands are especially attractive due to their opinion leadership in their reference group. A blogger can act professionally either as entrepreneur or blogging for a commercial webpage. According to the results of this study, it is beneficial for the blogger’s professional development as well as career progress, to act on different operating models

Political ideologies and attitudes towards income inequality in the US: a critical discourse analysis of CNN and Fox News opinion articles

The topic of the thesis is media discourse about current state if income inequality in the US, and political ideologies as influences behind the discourse. The data consists of four opinion articles, two from CNN and two from Fox News. The purpose of the study was to examine how media represents income inequality as an issue, and if the attitudes conveyed are concerned or indifferent. Previous studies have indicated that the level of income is often seen as a personal responsibility, and such perspective can be linked with Republican ideology. In contrast, the Democrats typically express more concern about the consequences of inequality. CNN has been previously considered to have a Democratic bias, and Fox News has been considered to have Republican bias, which is one reason why these two news channels were chosen as the sources of the data. The study is a critical discourse analysis, and the methods applied were sociocognitive approach, which analyzes the social and cognitive factors affecting the discourse, and appraisal framework, which was applied to scrutinize the expressed attitudes more closely by identifyind specific linguistic features. The appraisal framework includes studying such features as affect, judgment and appreciation, which offer a more detailed analysis on the attitudes present in the articles. The sociocognitive approach, additionally, offers a way of analyzing a more broad context affecting the articles. The findings were then compared, to see if there are differences between the articles, or between the news sites with alleged bias. The findings showed that CNN, with alleged Democratic bias, had a more symphatetic attitude towards income inequality, whereas Fox News, with more Republican views, showed clearly less concern towards the issue. Moreover, the Fox News articles had such dubious claims that the underlying ideology behind the articles could be even supporting of income inequality, as it allows the rich to pursue all the wealth they can without having to give anything away. The results, thus, suggest that the political ideologies may a significant effect on media discourse, which, in turn, may have a significant effect on the attitudes of the public towards great issues that could require prompt measures.