Functional Punishment
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Functional Punishment A discursive study of functional punishment-representations in MetroXpress’ news articles, 2018. Anja Skov Ljungberg Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media, and Creative Industries, Master's programme One-year master thesis 15 ECTS points Spring semester, 2018 Supervisor: Michael Krona 1 Abstract In this thesis project, the phenomenon of news media representation of punitivism has been researched through a methodology of a socio-semiotic discourse analysis framed within a theoretical structure of Durkheimianism and news value components. Articles concerning MetroXpress’ representation of criminal deviance and punishment were located through a buzzwords search within the newspaper’s online data archives. The search granted a total of 702 word-occurrences appearing in 216 separate news articles. The discourse analysis seperated these articles into the five sub-discourses of “Blurbs”, “Verdicts”, “Spectacle”, “Single Agent Focus” and “Cultural Context”. The distribution of articles pertaining to specific sub-discourses were distributed such that the highest concentration of articles was present in the “Blurbs” discourse, closely followed by “Verdicts”, placing “Single Agent Focus” and “Spectacle” in the middle, while the “Cultural Context” discourse was made up of the fewest articles. The methodology granted insight into functional punishment and MetroXpress’ representation of criminal deviance, revealing the newspaper’s discourse to be one of situated timeliness which positively promoted judicial-systemic activity. Presenting an anti-Durkheimian conception of deviance in relation to its supposed manifestation in any society, the newspaper presents the phenomenon as defeatable by the judicial system. In this regard, MetroXpress has positioned itself as the mouthpiece of the justice system, in such a manner that they function as a legitimizing force for the punitive system. Beyond the hierarchy of eliteness which permeates the discourse, a normalization of the conception of criminal deviants as dysfunctional obstacles who prohibit organic social cohesiveness is another facet of the discourse. Consequently, a primary focal point within the narratives center on the functional relationship between the deviant individual, systemic representatives and their relation to social cohesiveness. Keywords: Punishment, Deviance, News values, News discourse, Social Cohesion, Agency, Functionalism, Durkheimianism. 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..p.5. 2. Literature review…………………………………...…………………………………...………p.6. 3. Theoretical framework…………………………………………………………………….…..p.11. 4. Methodology………………………………………………………………………..…...….…p.17. 5. Ethics………………………………………………………………………………..………....p.23. 6. Five sub-discourses…………..………………………………………………………..………p.24. 6.1. Blurbs..…………………………………….……………………………………..………….p.26. 6.1.1. Timeliness and Proximity………………………………………………...…………p.27. 6.1.2. Punitive legitimacy…………………………………………………………….……p.27. 6.1.3. Superlativeness, Impact and performative punitivism…………………………..…..p.29. 6.1.4. Eliteness and narrative actors………………………………………………………..p.31. 6.2. Verdicts………………………………………………..…………………………….....…….p.34. 6.2.1. Consonance and the Prevalence Hypothesis………………………………………...p.34. 6.2.2. The contradicting rhetoric of deviance normalization………………………………p.37. 6.3. Deviance and Punishment, blurbs and verdicts………………………...…….....….…….…p.38. 6.3.1. Deviancy as societal dysfunctionality…………………………………………….…p.38. 6.3.2. The three functions of punishment……………………………………………….…p.40. 6.4. Spectacle……………………………………………………………………………....…..…p.43. 6.4.1. The aesthetics of spectacle…………………………………………………………..p.43. 6.4.2. Cultural Proximity……………………………………………………………...……p.44. 6.5. Single agent focus……………………………………………………………………..…..…p.45. 6.5.1. Narratives of emotion………………………………………………………………..p.45. 6.5.2. Implicit systemic criticism…………………………………………………………..p.46. 6.5.3. Sacralization and inclusive agency structures……………………………………….p.47. 6.6. Deviance and Punishment, Spectacle and single agent focus…………..…………....…...…p.48. 6.6.1. Punishment as retribution or restitution?....................................................................p.48. 6.6.2. Punishment as social identity………………………………………………………..p.49. 6.6.3. The individuality of deviance……………………………………………………….p.50. 6.7. Cultural context..…..………………………….…………………………………….....…….p.51. 7. Concluding discussion…………………………………………………………………………p.53. 8. Literature…………..……………………………………………………….…………..……...p.56. 9. Appendix………………………………………..………..…………………………….….…..p.64. 9.1. Buzzword occurrence……………………………..……….…..………….…..p.64. 3 List of figures and tables Table 1.1. News value components……..……………………………..……………..…………..p.16. Table 1.2. Article categorization chart…………………………………………………...………p.22. Table 1.3. News value component categorization……………………………………..…………p.23. Figure 1.4. Buzzword occurrence……………..………...…………………………..…………....p.24. Figure 1.5. The five strands of discourse…….……………………..…………..………………..p.25. Figure 1.6. Division of articles……..……………………...…………………………….……….p.26. 4 1. Introduction In an ever-changing cultural environment, societal views of punishment, deviance and the representation of these social phenomena exist in flux. The very nature of deviance and its definition is a relative phenomenon amongst cultures and so is the conception of a proper punitive response (Ben-Yehuda, 2006, p. 561-562). In this regard, news media language, or semiotic news discourses, functions as a representation of the world in a textually coded language, a language which reflects a discursive structure of social values and ideals (Mason, 2006, 253-254). The thesis project operates from a conceptual standpoint established by Émile Durkheim. The Durkheimian perspective states that society constructs deviance through measures of symbolic processes with which much simpler phenomena such as “flags” or “football” are similarly constructed. That is to say, punishment and deviance conceptually exist without intrinsic attributes until the process of social labeling has occurred (Simmons, 1965, p. 223). Therefore, an analysis of MetroXpress’ punishment-representations within their news media discourse in a functional context has the capacity to clarify the result of said socio-cultural process of assigning meaning to specific cultural phenomena. The Danish newspaper MetroXpress has been chosen as the object of study for its popularity and reach. In 2001 the newspaper was established as the very first free newspaper in Denmark to be published on a daily basis (Søllinge, 2017). In its first year of publication MetroXpress was exclusively published in the capital of Copenhagen, but the city of Aarhus soon followed in 2002, and in 2004 the newspaper achieved nation-wide publication (ibid). With a daily stock of approximately 330.000 prints, and close to 500.000 daily readers, the newspaper has established itself as the largest free newspaper publication in Denmark (Jasper, 2016). With such an extensive readership, an analysis thereof offers insight into the specific mode of representations of punishment and deviance that the Danish public frequently faces from their news media outlets. That being said, in June of 2018 MetroXpress was officially closed down as an independent newspaper by its parent company Berlingske Media in order to facilitate a merger with the newspaper Berlingske Tidende (Ibid). The study aims to uncover and decode semiotic representations of the functionality of punishment as a response to criminal deviance through a socio-semiotic discursive news value analysis. Discursive news value analyses have the capacity to contextualize the newsworthy aspects of news happenings- and actors in a framework of textually constructed semiotic systems of 5 representation (Badnarek, 2016, p. 435-436). Consequently, the analysis seeks to provide answers to the following research questions; RQ1: How does MetroXpress represent the functionality of punishment? RQ2: How does MetroXpress characterize the phenomenological nature of criminal deviance? RQ3: Based on the discursive socio-semiotic news value analysis of the five sub-discourses, what are the primary characteristics of MetroXpress’ news discourse regarding punishment and criminal deviance? As a result, the study contributes to a methodological tradition of a linguistically explored socio-cultural news media discourse, since the research will capture and explore a specific moment in time in regards to the mode of punishment-representation in a specific Danish news media outlet. 2. Literature review In the following section, three essential academic explorations of crime representation within the media will be presented. Each individual article functions as an exemplified representational source for the three primary tendencies of theoretical inquiry and mode of methodology utilized within the field of study. The primary discourses fall into three distinct categories of; problem- solving, criminology and demographic representation. The criminological tradition finds its focus within the exploration of systems of power in relation to the representation of stakeholders within the restorative justice systems. The tradition is characterized by a contextualizing angle which concentrates around evolutionary longitudinal policy-studies. The interplay of exercised power between invested agents represented within the legal texts forms the foundation for insight into normative processes of policymaking. The criminological approach classifies criminal