The issue of socio-economic inequality has after many decades of benign neglect, in both the academy and journalism, become an increasingly important question. The economic crisis, beginning in 2007/2008 and followed by years of austerity has exasperated class and regional division. There have been numerous socio-economic and political outcomes from this; not least the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump, both unimaginable a decade ago. The role of journalism and the wider media in the production (...) and reproduction of inequality is an increasingly important issue. Has journalism treated the issue of inequality in a satisfactory fashion? Has journalism challenged powerful interests, or has journalism itself played an ideological role in the reproduction of structures of inequality? This special edition includes eight papers concerned around the area of socio economic inequality and media treatment; including investigations of discourses defending growing economic inequality and discourses... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe evolution and adaptation of journalistic practice in response to discourses taking place in networked and shared media environments and the implications of same have been the focus of much academic attention in recent years. This paper examines the agenda-setting potential of Twitter and considers how this feeds into and affects journalistic output. It does so by applying a Critical Discourse Analysis framework in considering whether reportage on particular news events are re-framed in the aftermath of Twitter campaigns. In August (...) 2016, the Irish media’s framing of the Hawe murder suicide via sourcing, emphasis and agency drew widespread criticism on social media for its perceived ‘omission’ or ‘significant silence’ about one of the victims, Clodagh Hawe, from the narrative in favour of a greater focus on the perpetrator, Alan Hawe. Criticism of the initial coverage of the incident was in large part driven by the #hernamewasclodagh social media campaign. This paper takes an intertextual... (shrink)

ABSTRACTHierarchies of information –inclusion, omission and presentation of society and its citizenry – is a critical aspect of news presentation. This paper looks at newspaper reportage of two tragic events in 2015: a balcony collapse in Berkeley, USA, in which six Irish students died; and a fire at a halting site in Carrickmines, Ireland, which claimed the lives of four adults and six children who were members of the Irish Traveller community. This latter group are an officially recognised indigenous ethnic (...) minority within Irish society, and the community experiences the type of structural inequalities and stigmatisation associated with membership of less powerful groups within a broader society. A bottom-up corpus linguistic methodology is used to generate and interpret perspectives on the newspaper coverage to probe and to assess similarities and, critically, differences, in the nature of the discourses surrounding the communities affected by the tragedies. In doing so, it finds the language used... (shrink)