Media Discourse
Media discourse refers to interactions through a broadcast platform, whether spoken or written, in which the discourse is oriented to a non-present reader, listener, or viewer. Though the discourse is oriented toward these recipients, they very often cannot make instantaneous responses to the producer(s) of the discourse, though increasingly, this is changing with the advent of new media technology. Crucially, the written or spoken discourse is oriented to the readership or listening/viewing audience. That is to say, media discourse is a public, manufactured, the on-record form of interaction. It is not ad hoc or spontaneous (in the same way as casual speaking or writing is); it is neither private nor off the record [O’Keeffe, p. 441].
Media discourse is a set of processes and products of language activities in the mass communication sphere in all diversity and complexity of their interactions. As a particular type of mass communication, media discourse is a social phenomenon whose primary function is to influence the mass audience through content-based information and evaluative data transmitted by media channels. Consequently, media discourse is an instrument of updating information through
different communication tools of the Media Institute [Chernysh, p. 61].
Media discourse can be broadly understood as any way in which the media — including news outlets, publishers, and others — frames specific issues and generates discussions among the public. In understanding media discourse as various means of communication, it’s common to break the category into two broad areas: written (newspapers and magazines) and spoken (radio and television) [Carrier T.].
⠀ Carrier T. (2022). What are the Different Types of Media Discourse? Retrieved from: https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-are-the-different-types-of-media-discourse.htm.
⠀ Chernysh O. (2013). Media Discourse as a Basic Notion of Medialinguistics. Book of papers. Sevastopol: Ribest.
⠀ O’Keeffe A. (2011). Media and Discourse Analysis. The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge.