Statelessness and the semiotics of benign visibility in Malaysian news media

Bibliographic Data

ID12346596
AuthorsXinlan Pan (0009-0002-4886-5022, University of Malaya), Sahar Rasoulikolamaki (0000-0003-2893-1838, University of Malaya, corresponding author), Charity Lee (0000-0002-0988-8101, University of Malaya)
Year2026
Pages1-21
Publication date2026-03-28
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Semiotics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-0330 • E-ISSN: 1470-1219
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10350330.2026.2650358
OpenAlexW7141925851
LanguageEN
References cited44

This study examines how stateless children are visually represented in Malaysian mainstream news media and what these images communicate about belonging, (in)visibility and exclusion. Drawing on Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) and informed by theories of myth, visuality, and spectatorship, it analyses 69 news images published between June 2023 and June 2025 across five major Malaysian outlets. The study identifies two dominant visual patterns. The first relies on imagined belonging through generic patriotic imagery, while statelessness remains visually absent and confined to paratext. The second presents children in institutional or everyday settings that suggest social participation but remain shaped by bureaucratic hierarchies and normative civility. These patterns create what we describe as benign visibility: a mode of representation that appears inclusive yet sustains marginal status. The study extends MCDA to questions of national identity and humanitarian spectatorship and contributes empirical insight into statelessness in Southeast Asian media, moving beyond established crisis-oriented tropes to expose a more implicit mode of exclusion.

Mass media · News media · Print media · Public discourse · Semiotics · Statelessness · Cultural Identity and Representation · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics

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