Analyzing Discursive Constructions of Community in Newspaper Articles

Bibliographic Data

ID11054892
AuthorsN Malherbe (0000-0002-4968-4058, Institute for Social and Health Sciences University of South Africa & South African Medical Research Council – University of South Africa Masculinity and Health Research Unit Cape Town South Africa, corresponding author), Mohamed Seedat (0000-0001-9018-3370, Institute for Social and Health Sciences University of South Africa & South African Medical Research Council – University of South Africa Masculinity and Health Research Unit Cape Town South Africa), Shahnaaz Suffla (0000-0002-4597-5472, Institute for Social and Health Sciences University of South Africa & South African Medical Research Council – University of South Africa Masculinity and Health Research Unit Cape Town South Africa)
Year2021
Volume67
Issue3-4
Pages433-446
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Community Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0091-0562 • E-ISSN: 1573-2770
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ajcp.12477
PMID33141947
OpenAlexW3096128978
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited38

The manner by which power is reified through newspaper reporting can assist community psychologists in getting a handle on the complex, often contradictory, ways by which ideology and power are constituted in relation to particular communities. Accordingly, the present study draws on discursive psychology to analyse how 377 newspaper articles construct the community of Thembelihle (a low‐income community in South Africa) and how these constructions can inform counter‐hegemonic strategy. Two discourses were identified in the analysis, Signifying Legitimacy and Containing the Protest Community. Where the Signifying Legitimacy discourse established a Statist legitimacy‐illegitimacy binary against which Thembelihle was to be assessed, the Containing the Protest Community discourse constructed Thembelihle as a monolithic entity that enacted a wholly violent, and often directionless, mode of protest violence which was concerned with little more than ‘service delivery’. Together, these discourses suggest to us the manner by which low‐income communities are engaged by the State as well as how Statist representations function materially. Certainly, most newspaper articles relied on an interpretive frame whose hermeneutics were characterised primarily by violence and homogenously experienced suffering. Such representation, we argue, signifies the dominant discursive field and ideology against which counter‐hegemonic strategy and (re)presentation must act

Critical discourse analysis · Discourse analysis · Discursive psychology · Hegemony · Ideology · Legitimacy · Linguistics · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Community Health and Development · Gender Studies · Law · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Representations and Identity

Tools

Open DOI