“Who Is Really in Power Here?”
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“Who is really in power here?” A critical discourse analysis on the Facebook discussion concerning the media representation of Greekazo in Malou Efter Tio En kritisk diskursanalys av Facebook-diskussionen gällande mediarepresentationen av Greekazo i Malou Efter Tio Axel Bjerkland Thomas Forssell The faculty for humanities and social sciences Media and communication Bachelor thesis 15hp Elizabeth Van Couvering VT 2020 Abstract The purpose of this essay is to investigate the confrontation of the Facebook group that was developed in response to the interview with the rap artist Greekazo in Malou Efter Tio. The study investigates the research questions: How is the discursive practice of Facebook utilized to challenge a mainstream television production? How are the stereotypes of contemporary marginalized rap artists reproduced in the Swedish news media? Our key interest lies in the moment of conflict between a section of the public and a mainstream media organization where we discuss how the media representation of a Swedish contemporary rap subculture is confronted by a minority of people online. To support the research questions, the study relies on two additional working questions: How do resistance and group formations develop in terms of dynamics within the Facebook comment section of Malou Efter Tio? Why are the stereotypes of contemporary marginalized rap artists reproduced this way in the Swedish news media? The focus is to analyze how the discursive formation of Facebook presents alternative viewpoints to challenge the mainstream media. The theoretical framework of the essay is constituted by the theory of social discourse in which we have embarked on the critical discourse theory (CDA) by Norman Fairclough (1993). This approach uses theories and methods to theoretically problematize and investigate the relationship between the text, the discursive practice, and the sociocultural dimension (Fairclough, 1993; Winther Jørgensen & Phillips, 2000). The notion of media representation has been approached from two perspectives: The Agenda Setting theory and the Framing Theory, here we have particularly emphasized the idea of moral panic in which we have investigated how Malou Efter Tio was speaking about moral panic fears concerning the contemporary rap subculture in Sweden. Previous research includes Djerf-Pierre and Shehata (2017) in which they applied the Agenda Setting theory in a Swedish news media environment, Nilsson (2009) who investigated the media representation in Swedish television, Lindholm (2014) who researched the notion of self-presentation in Swedish rap music, and Johnen, M., Jungblut, M. & Ziegele, M. (2018) who investigated what incites participation in online discussions. In the analysis, we distinguished three prominent themes: social injustice, responsibility, and solidarity. These themes were established from the selection process in which 19 Facebook comments were collected and analyzed through the critical discourse analysis. The study showed how the Facebook discourse was utilized as a space for resistance of which the dispute 1 betokened an abruption in ideology. This abruption was consequently challenged by the Facebook users in which they collectively built authority throughout the affordances of the Facebook discourse. The study will end with a discussion concerning the role of Facebook in a wider context in which the democratic space of the platform is contextualized from a societal and political point of view. Sammanfattning Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka konfrontationen i Facebook-gruppen som utvecklades som svar på Greekazo-intervjun i Malou Efter Tio. Studien undersöker frågeställningarna: Hur utnyttjas den diskursiva praktiken av Facebook som ett sätt att utmana en tv-produktion i mainstream media? Hur reproduceras stereotyperna av samtida förortsrappare inom svensk nyhetsmedia? Vårt huvudintresse ligger i konflikten mellan allmänheten och en mainstream mediaorganisation där vi diskuterar hur medierepresentationen av en svensk samtida rap-subkultur konfronteras av en minoritet människor online. För att svara på syftet i studien använder vi oss av två arbetsfrågor: Hur utvecklas motstånd i form av gruppdynamik i kommentarsfältet hos Malou Efter Tio? Varför reproduceras stereotyperna av samtida förortsrappare på detta sättet inom svensk nyhetsmedia? Vårt fokus är att analysera hur den diskursiva praktiken av Facebook presenterar alternativa sätt att utmana mainstream media. Det teoretiska ramverket för uppsatsen består av teorin om social diskurs där vi i synnerhet har fokuserat på den kritiska diskursteorin (CDA) av Norman Fairclough (1993). Detta tillvägagångssätt använder teorier och metoder för att teoretiskt problematisera och undersöka förhållandet mellan texten, diskursiv praktik och den sociokulturella dimensionen (Fairclough, 1993; Winther Jørgensen & Phillips, 2000). Vi har studerat medierepresentationen utifrån två perspektiv: Dagordningsteorin och gestaltningsteorin, här har vi särskilt betonat konceptet om moralisk panik där vi har undersökt hur Malou Efter Tio talade om en typ av moralisk panik kring den samtida rapkulturen i Sverige. Tidigare forskning inkluderar Djerf-Pierre och Shehata (2017) som forskade kring svensk nyhetsmedia genom att applicera dagordningsteorin, Nilsson (2009) som undersökte medierepresentationen i svensk television, Lindholm (2014) som undersökte identitetsprocesser inom svensk rapmusik och Johnen, M., Jungblut, M. & Ziegele, M. (2018) som undersökte vad som motiverar användare att delta i online-debatter i sociala forum. 2 I analysen urskiljde vi tre framstående teman: social orättvisa, ansvar och solidaritet. Dessa teman fastställdes genom urvalsprocessen där 19 Facebook-kommentarer samlades in och analyserades genom den kritiska diskursanalysen. Studien visade hur Facebook-diskursen utnyttjades som ett utrymme för motstånd, varvid konflikten på Facebook visade på en ideologisk diskrepans där Facebook-användare följaktligen kollektivt byggde auktoritet genom den diskursiva praktiken av Facebook. Studien avslutas genom en diskussion gällande Facebooks roll i ett bredare sammanhang där plattformens demokratiska utrymme kontextualiseras ur ett samhälleligt och politiskt perspektiv. Keywords: Malou Efter Tio, TV4, Greekazo, media representation, Facebook discourse, moral panic, Agenda-Setting 3 Table of content 1. Introduction 7 1.1 Background 8 1.2 Purpose 9 1.3 Research questions 10 1.4 Definitions 10 1.4.1 Text 10 1.4.2 Media Ecology 11 1.4.3 Swedish marginalized rap 11 1.4.4 Ideology 12 1.4.5 Discourse 13 1.5 Limitations 14 1.6 Outline 14 2. Theory and previous research 16 2.1 Discourse Theory 16 2.2 Culture 17 2.2.1 Culture as a concept 17 2.2.2 Cultural Hegemony 18 2.3 The media 19 2.3.1 Media representation 19 2.3.2 Agenda-setting theory 20 2.3.3 Framing theory 21 2.4 The online audience 22 2.4.1 The process of group formation 22 2.4.2 Moral panic 22 2.4.3 Online firestorm as a moral panic 23 2.5 Previous research 24 2.5.1 Agenda setting and public perception 24 2.5.2 News television and its influence 25 2.5.3 Self-presentation and marginalized rap subculture 26 2.5.4 Participation in an ‘online firestorm’ 27 3. Method 28 3.1 Selection process and data limitation 28 3.1.1 Search query 29 3.1.2 First selection 29 3.1.3 Second selection 29 3.2 Research approach 29 3.3 Thematic model 30 4 3.4 Critical discourse analysis (CDA) 30 3.5 Critical discourse analysis in social media 33 3.6 Analysis of the text level 34 3.7 Validity, Reliability and Generalizability 35 3.7.1 Qualitative validity 35 3.7.2 Qualitative reliability 35 3.7.3 Generalization in qualitative studies 36 3.8 Ethical considerations 36 4. Results and analysis 37 4.1 Text analysis of the production 37 4.1.1 The title of the weblink 38 4.1.2 The Facebook post 38 4.1.3 Multimodality 40 4.2 Text analysis of the thematization 41 4.2.1 Presentation of subjects 41 4.2.2 Theme 1: Social injustice 42 4.2.3 Theme 2: Responsibility 45 4.2.4 Theme 3: Solidarity 47 4.3 Analysis of the discursive practice 49 4.3.1 The discursive formation of Facebook 50 4.3.2 Challenging the discourse 54 4.4. Results 55 4.4.1 Production 55 4.4.2 Thematization 56 5. Discussion and conclusion 58 5.1 Discussion 58 5.2 Conclusion 59 6. Future research 63 7. Implications for society 64 Bibliography 67 Appendix 76 5 Acknowledgments This essay is co-authored between Axel Bjerkland and Thomas Forssell. Both authors have been equally valuable to the research process but with different areas of responsibility. The exact contributions will be presented in the appendix. We want to thank our supervisor John Lynch for valuable discussions and feedback throughout the work process. 6 1. Introduction The televised media representation of contemporary youth subcultures has been an established issue within media studies since the 1970s. It has revolved around how youth subgroups have been presented and framed by the news media to the public (Cohen, 1980; Gibson & Pagan, 2006; Hall et al. 1978). In the 1960s it was the “mods” and “rockers”, and in the 1980s and 1990s, it was the “rave culture”. While the notion of media representation 50 years ago, undoubtedly, shares many similarities with media representation today, there is, however, an essential difference that sets the media ecology apart, and that is social media. Due to social media, the audience in today’s media ecology now has the possibility to respond, address, and openly criticize issues online. In turn, this takes away part of the influence and power of the media as they have to avoid “online firestorms” that could potentially damage their reputation. News organizations, therefore, walk a fine line as they, on the one hand, need to assure that they capture the attention of the audience in competitive media ecology. But, on the other, they have to avoid misrepresentations that may result in confrontations amongst the audience. A recent example of this was seen in the Facebook discussion concerning the media representation of the Swedish marginalized rap culture (Clason, 2019; Elmervik, 2019; Mohammadi, 2019).