Glossary

A narrative technique is a particular way of telling a story. For instance, sociolinguist William Labov (1972) uses the word coda to refer to the final section of an oral narrative, in which the narrative’s “point” and relevance to the speaker and interlocutors are made explicit. Including such a coda is an example of narrative technique. Flashbacks and flashforwards, a relatively common device in literary and film narratives, are also narrative techniques. Importantly, a technique is not merely a device for conveying a pre-existing narrative meaning, but a form that actively influences meaning construction on the part of both the storytellers and their audience. In other words, narrative techniques are never ‘neutral’ but always echo a certain ideological or evaluative position expressed by the story, even if this position is never made explicit.

⇢ see also Narrative, Narrative analysis, Metaphor, Multiperspectivity, Perspective (first, second, third), Polyphony

References and further reading:

Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Category: A

Work Package: 2, 5

[MC]

Narratives on migration emerge through the strategic framing of migration, usually in terms of humanitarian principles, moral obligations, crises, security threats or, from a right-wing perspective, assaults on national sovereignty and cultural identity. Such top-down narratives adopt an outside (“etic”) perspective on migration, focusing on political, economic, legal, social and cultural issues rather than lived experience. They compete to win broad support, influence public opinion or to gain votes in elections. Digital media facilitate the emergence of new forms of hate speech, the rise of conspiracy theories and the circulation of fake news. They challenge the hegemony of established practices and procedures by providing users with new channels to frame and disseminate information. The concepts of narrative dynamics and the narrative market acknowledge the complex relationships and interdependencies between bottom-up and top-down narratives in the public sphere, while the metaphor of narrative ecologies focuses on how recipients process and negotiate competing narratives.

⇢ see also Crisis, Frames of migration, Narrative dynamics, Narrative ecology, Narrative market, Politics of mobility, Positioning, Solidarity (with migrants), Vicarious storytelling

References and further reading:

Gebauer, Carolin, and Roy Sommer. 2023. “Beyond Vicarious Storytelling: How Level Telling Fields Help Create a Fair Narrative on Migration.” Open Research Europe 3.10: 3–14. URL: https://open-research-europe.​ec.europa.eu/articles/3-10#FN3. Date of access: July 30, 2023.

Category: C

Work Package: 2, 5, 8

[RS]

In the context of his wider analysis of the phenomenon of news framing and the news frames that are the product of these framing processes, David Tewksbury (2015, n. p.) writes: “At their core, most definitions state that a news frame is the verbal and visual information in an article that directly or implicitly suggests what the problem is about, how it can be addressed, and who is responsible for creating and solving it.” News frames are mostly attributed as tools used by journalists, but in fact these news frames resonate among other key actors in the process of political communication as well, such as experts and politicians. In the OPPORTUNITIES project, especially the use of frames by politicians in tweets will be studied. We will study tweets from politicians in four countries: Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Italy.

⇢ see also Content analysis and corpus linguistics, Quantitative media studies, Survey analysis

References and further reading:

Tewksbury, David. 2015. “News Framing.” Oxford Bibliographies. URL: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo9780199756841-0010.xml. Date of access: August 24, 2021.

Category: A

Work Package: 2, 4, 5

[DC / LH / SM]

News media bias occurs when journalists or news organizations allow their own opinions to affect the news that they report and the way that they report it (Metropolitan Community College 2023). Different sources of bias can occur. Bias might be a consequence of a political belief by a journalist (Soontjens et al. 2023), but it can also be the consequence of stereotyping of certain social and cultural groups (Fiske 1998). The media are alleged to increasingly subvert to news bias, as public opinion becomes increasingly polarized on important social issues such as immigration.

⇢ see also Frame analysis (aka framing analysis), Frames of migration, Intermedia agenda setting

References and further reading:

Fiske, Susan. 1998. “Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination.” In The Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by Daniel Gilbert, Susan Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey, 357–411. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Interactive Media Bias Chart. 2018. http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/. Date of access: September 8, 2023.

Metropolitan Community College. 2023. “Media Bias.” Metropolitan Community College. URL: https://www.mccneb.edu/Community-Business/Library/Web-Sites/Media-Bias. Date of access: September 8, 2023.

Soontjens, Karolin, Kathleen Beckers, Stefaan Walgrave, Emma van der Goot, and Toni G. L. A. van der Meer. 2023. “Not All Parties are Treated Equally: Journalist Perceptions of Partisan News Bias.” Journalism Studies 24.9: 1194–1213. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2203780.

Category: A

Work Package: 2, 4, 5

[DC / LH / SM]

News values are all about what gets selected as being “news” and which other parts of reality are not deemed newsworthy. Reza Kheirabadi and Ferdows Aghaglozadeh aptly summarize this research theme as follows: “The criteria on which journalists and news editors judge about newsworthiness of an event or news story are called ‘news values’. The most prominent and widely studied list of news values (also called news criteria or news factors) was proposed by Galtung and Ruge in 1965 in which twelve selection criteria such as frequency, threshold, unambiguity and meaningfulness were pinned down as the factors by which gatekeepers make decisions about newsworthiness of a news item.” (Kheirabadi and Aghagolzadeh 2012, 989).

⇢ see also Filter bubble

References and further reading:

Galtung, Johan, and Marie Holmboe Ruge. 1965. “The Structure of Foreign News.” Journal of Peace Research 2.1: 64–91.

Kheirabadi, Reza and Ferdows Aghagolzadeh. 2012. “A Discursive Review of Galtung, and Ruge’s News Factors in Iranian Newspapers.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 2.5: 989–994.

Category: A

Work Package: 2, 4, 5

[DC / LH / SM]