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2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Genre and Cultural Style in TV News Coverage of the European Elections 2014

Authors : Joanna Thornborrow, Louann Haarman

Published in: The Mediated Politics of Europe

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Thornborrow and Haarman examine the main generic and structural differences and similarities of television news reporting on the 2014 European elections, with special attention to France, Italy and the UK. Adopting a qualitative discourse analytic approach and focusing principally on how news items are framed, the authors describe and compare the reports in terms of the formats, semiotic features, and discursive practices characteristic of the television news styles of the national broadcasters. Analysis of both verbal and visual levels offers key perspectives on explicit and implicit ‘messages’ underlying the news and highlights recurring national patterns. Thornborrow and Haarman argue that such consistent stylistic and technological choices reflect cultural presuppositions which are drawn upon in the national construction of perspectives and attitudes on Europe—a construct which is then represented in television news in a peculiarly national style.

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Footnotes
1
For example, previous comparative research on RAI and BBC television news (Haarman 2008), has noted two distinct modes of intersubjective positioning of the audience. RAI viewers appear to be cast in the role of silent ‘interlocutors’ as the (single) news presenter and journalists, through ample use of direct address, guide them metalinguistically in the reception of the news (‘as you can see’, ‘as you know’, ‘look at these images’, ‘listen to this report’, ‘let’s go now to…’). The result is a rather authoritarian (vertical) presentation of the news, further supported by statements of politicians and experts. The BBC, instead, through frequent exchanges between news presenters (occasionally two of them) and between news presenters and correspondents on the scene, reporters in the studio and statements from both experts and ordinary people, seem to be positioning the audience as ‘ratified on-lookers’ (Goffman 1979). The result is a more dialogic (horizontal) presentation of the news, the viewers observing the newsworkers and newsmakers, themselves the interlocutors. Different cultural presuppositions seem to be in play here which make the particular mode of presentation acceptable and comprehensible to national viewers. We suggest that the same sort of mechanism is at work with regard to the ‘news’.
 
2
Italy: TG1 and TG5; France TF1 and F2; UK: BBC and ITV.
 
3
Formats are regularly subject to variation and change, including the number of presenters used.
 
4
See Heritage (1985) who defines an interview as minimally containing more than just a question/answer pair.
 
5
Conducted by the Osservatorio di Pavia and published in Comunicazione Política, 2/2014. In this regard Ilvo Diamanti, a well-known Italian journalist, wrote ‘Luckily there are anti-Europeans. Who demonstrate in town squares against the EU and the euro. Lucky for Europe. […] Because it’s thanks to them that somebody talks about Europe.’ (http://​www.​repubblica.​it/​politica/​2014/​05/​19/​news/​leuropa_​ringrazi_​gli_​antieuropei-86536328/​ accessed 03/06/2015).
 
6
Entman’s seminal work is cited by nearly all scholars dealing with frames.
 
7
Hartley termed this function ‘framing’.
 
8
Fratelli d’Italia, Lega Nord, Scelta Civica, Partito Socialista Italiano, Verdi Europei, Italia dei Valori, L’Altra Europa con Tsipras.
 
9
At the time of writing Juppé was mayor of Bordeaux and a potential presidential candidate for 2017.
 
10
Grillo campaigned for his political movement 5 Stelle solely in public squares, shouting and gesticulating on the stage in anger and indignation, the only exception being a televised interview a few days before the election. A comedian known for his straightforward, no-holds-barred approach to political discourse, Grillo shocked or amused many with his rude and often vulgar language, personal insults and general rabble rousing. On Renzi, for example, he said ‘The Prime Minister is sick. He should be swept away like rotten food’ (Il Premier è malato. Va spazzato via come cibo deteriorato). His comments reverberated in TV news and the media generally, causing equally vicious responses on the part of Berlusconi and an attempt on the part of Renzi to remain above the fray.
 
11
In a comparative study of the closing segments (codas) of news items recorded during the first month of the Iraq War, it was found that BBC codas repeatedly foregrounded negativity and ‘adversity’ by suggesting probable or potential negative outcomes. These codas often combined two key features of the final segments: a projection forward, and the contrastive or denial of expectation linker ‘but’, a convergence which lends weight to the evaluative force of the coda (Haarman 2009). Nick Robinson’s wrap-up of the item tweaks the pattern somewhat but the negativity remains.
 
12
See also Chap. 6, this volume.
 
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Metadata
Title
Genre and Cultural Style in TV News Coverage of the European Elections 2014
Authors
Joanna Thornborrow
Louann Haarman
Copyright Year
2017
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56629-0_4