Journalism at the Borders Avh_Johan Östman_290809.indd 1 2009-07-30 10.01 Avh_Johan Östman_290809.indd 2 2009-07-30 10.01 Örebro Studies in Media and Communication 8 Örebro Studies in Conditions of Democracy 3 Johan Östman Journalism at the Borders The Constitution of Nationalist Closure in News Decoding Avh_Johan Östman_290809.indd 3 2009-07-30 10.01 © Johan Östman, 2009 Title: Journalism at the Borders. The Constitution of Nationalist Closure in News Decoding Publisher: Örebro University 2009 www.publications.oru.se Editor: Heinz Merten [email protected] Printer: intellecta infolog, Göteborg 08/2009 issn 1651-4785 isbn 978-91-7668-679-9 Avh_Johan Östman_290809.indd 4 2009-07-30 10.01 Abstract Östman, J. (2009) Journalism at the Borders. The Constitution of Nationalist Closure in News Decoding. Örebro studies in Media and Communication 8, Örebro Studies in Conditions of Democracy 3. This dissertation is a contribution to the social analysis of nationalism. Its disci- plinary context comprises the field of empirical studies that explore how forms of mediated quasi interaction can function in processes of reproduction and trans- formation of nationality. The study poses the question of how news journalism can establish national frames of reference within which social reality is made meaningful by citizens. The research design facilitates a novel contribution to a field of research that is largely dominated by studies of media output. Two distinct but intertwined do- mains are empirically studied: news as a form of discourse and the moment of news decoding as a form of social interaction between readers and texts. The results from the empirical studies show that phenomena deemed undesir- able by the prevailing moral order tend to be symbolically expelled from the na- tional community that news audiences recognize as their own. As a conclusion, two sets of structures and mechanisms are identified as generative of this logic. Their joint articulation in news decoding can establish nationalist closure of meaning by connecting morality to nationality. First, certain established interpretive repertoires can be brought into play in the moment of decoding. These function ideationally to depict other nations and eth- nic minorities pejoratively. Thus they indirectly give meaningful content to the nation and its majority population. The invocation of such frameworks of mean- ing tends to employ discursive resources from the news domain itself. This is a feature that ultimately reveals the subordination of news reception to elite news journalism as a knowledgeable institution. Second, as a textual system, news discourse can function interpersonally to establish a configuration of identities and relations between itself, the news con- sumer and other institutions and actors in society. In accordance with this con- figuration, the audience can incorporate the position of being citizens (in a moral sense) and national members (in a geopolitical or an ethnic sense). The character of these identities and relations is an effect of news journalism being an inherently national institution, and of the normative presuppositions built into the structure of news values itself. Keywords: nationalist closure, nationalism, morality, news journalism, preferred meanings, encoding/decoding, interpretive repertoires, referential, metalinguistic. Johan Östman, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education Örebro University, SE-701 82 ÖREBRO, Sweden, [email protected] CONTENTS List of Figures and Tables ............................................................................. 9 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... 11 1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 13 The Problem ............................................................................................... 14 Aim of the Study ......................................................................................... 17 Scope .......................................................................................................... 19 Structure ..................................................................................................... 20 Previous Research ....................................................................................... 20 Contributions of the Study .......................................................................... 30 2 Theoretical Position ............................................................................... 33 A Theory of Nationality .............................................................................. 33 Nationality and the Media .......................................................................... 38 Encoding/Decoding ..................................................................................... 41 Summary..................................................................................................... 52 3 Methodology .......................................................................................... 53 An Explanatory Approach .......................................................................... 53 The Layered Social Reality of Media Consumption ..................................... 54 Generality and Causality ............................................................................. 57 Principles of Comparison ............................................................................ 58 Research Design and Empirical Material ..................................................... 62 Principles of Analysis .................................................................................. 67 Methodological Quality .............................................................................. 71 4 Preferred Meanings ............................................................................... 77 Extensive Analysis ....................................................................................... 78 The Moral Position ..................................................................................... 85 News as a “Problem-Generating Machine” ................................................. 88 Intensive Analysis ........................................................................................ 90 Conclusion: the Range of Preferred Meanings ........................................... 113 5 The Journalism of Information and the Moral Order ............................. 117 Dimensions of News Decoding .................................................................. 117 Referential Predominance.......................................................................... 122 The Involvement Failure Paradox .............................................................. 125 Other People’s Problem ............................................................................. 133 6 Morality and Nationality ...................................................................... 139 Geopolitical Closure ................................................................................. 140 Ethnic Closure .......................................................................................... 155 Nationality Ditched: Critical Cases ........................................................... 168 7 Conclusions ......................................................................................... 179 The Constitution of Nationalist Closure ................................................... 179 On Preferred Meanings ............................................................................. 188 Suggestions for Further Research .............................................................. 192 References ................................................................................................. 197 Appendix .................................................................................................. 211 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures 2.1 The concepts of nationality ................................................................34 2.2 Principal areas of inquiry into the relation between media and nationality ...........................................................39 3.1 Research map for qualitative media audience research on media consumption .......................................................................55 3.2 Typology of design alternatives for reception studies ..........................60 4.1 Properties of the sub-genres in DN’s reporting on drugs .....................79 4.2 The Eastern Europe texts, item 1, 2 and 3 (facsimile) .........................92 4.3 The Kat texts, item 1 and 2 (facsimile) ...............................................93 4.4 Thematic structure of the Eastern Europe texts ..................................95 4.5 The Kat texts, item 3 and 4 (facsimile) ...............................................96 4.6 Thematic structure of the Kat texts ....................................................98 4.7 Actors and their functions in the Eastern Europe texts .....................101 4.8 Actors and their functions in the Kat texts .......................................101 4.9 The range of preferred meanings as manifested in the Eastern Europe texts and the Kat texts .......................................114 6.1 Substantial rejections of racism as a corollary of ethnicization and criminalization .................................................165 7.1 Constitution of nationalist closure through the conjunction