How to Read Economic News: A Critical Approach to Economic Journalism 036772426X, 9780367724269

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HOW TO READ ECONOMIC NEWS

Closely examining how the news media reports economic and financial matters, this book equips students with solid methodological skills for reading and interpreting the news alongside a toolkit for best practice as an economic journalist. How to Read Economic News combines theory and practice to explore the discourse surrounding economics in the mass media and how this specialised form of reporting can be improved. Beginning by introducing major concepts such as financialised economic reporting, media amnesia and loss of trust, the book goes on to help students to interpret, understand and analyse existing news discourse and to identify subtle biases in news reports stemming from hegemonic belief systems. The final section puts this analytical knowledge into practice, providing students with methods for the critical production of news and covering such skills as identifying newsworthiness, story sourcing, achieving clarity, and using complex datasets in news stories. This is a key text for students and academics in the fields of financial journalism and critical discourse analysis who wish to approach the subject with a critical eye. Henry Silke is a lecturer in journalism at the University of Limerick. His research interests include ideology and how it manifests in the media. He has previously published work looking at the role of journalism in economic and political crises. Fergal Quinn is a lecturer in journalism at the University of Limerick. He worked for over a decade as a print and multimedia journalist. His research interests include the representation of minorities and societal inequality in

journalism output and journalism training, particularly in developing-world and post-conflict environments. Maria Rieder is a lecturer in applied linguistics at the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics at the University of Limerick. Her research is concerned with the critical role of language in situations of economic and social inequality. She has been involved in research on media and social protest, issues of immigration and asylum, critical intercultural communication and minority languages and economics. Her published work focuses on social and economic inequality, human rights and minority communities.

HOW TO READ ECONOMIC NEWS A Critical Approach to Economic Journalism

Edited by Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

Designed cover image: Keith Lance/E+ via Getty Images First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and the authors of their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Silke, Henry, 1974– editor. | Quinn, Fergal, 1983– editor. | Rieder, Maria, editor. Title: How to read economic news : a critical approach to economic journalism / Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2022056638 (print) | LCCN 2022056639 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367724269 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367722715 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003154747 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Journalism, Commercial. | Media literacy. Classification: LCC PN4784.C7 H695 2023 (print) | LCC PN4784.C7 (ebook) | DDC 070.4/4933–dc23/eng/20230411 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056638 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056639 ISBN: 9780367724269 (hbk) ISBN: 9780367722715 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003154747 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747 Typeset in Galliard by Newgen Publishing UK

CONTENTS

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors 1 Introduction – The Construction of Economic News: Critical Research into Economic, Business and Financial News Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

viii x xi

1

PART I

Connecting Economic Theory, Ideology and Journalism

25

2 Economic Imaginaries, Economics Theories and the Role of Economic Journalism Hendrik Theine

27

3 What Journalists Can Learn from Heterodox Economics Andrea Grisold

52

4 Ideology, Economics and Journalism Henry Silke

69

vi Contents

5 Journalism Studies and “Cascading Crises”: Towards a Political Economic Approach Paschal Preston

95

PART II

Methodological Approaches for the Evaluation of Economy-Related Media Output 6 The Content Is the Thing: Using Content Analysis to Study Economic Journalism Fergal Quinn and Muireann Prendergast 7 Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak? Henry Silke

115 117 145

8 Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan

166

9 Breaking Down the Discourse, Exposing Power in Economic Journalism: Critical Discourse Analysis Maria Rieder and Hendrik Theine

192

10 Deconstructing Economic Discourses on Broadcast News Ciara Graham and Brendan O’Rourke

226

11 Deconstructing Discourse: Applying Interview Research in the Economic Newsroom Sophie Knowles and Nadine Strauß

241

12 Researching Audiences: Understanding How Economic News Is Received Mike Berry

256

PART III

News Production: Best Practices for Investigating Economic and Business Stories 13 Making Sense of Economic Data Donal Palcic and Darragh Flannery

273 275

Contents  vii

14 Economic News Approaches: Journalism Practitioners’ Experience of News Production Audrey Galvin and Brian Hurley

292

15 Where Theory Meets Practice: Practitioner Tips for Better Economic Journalism Fergal Quinn, Maria Rieder and Henry Silke

304

Index

315

FIGURES

4.1 A conceptual model of ideological power structures 5.1 A summary representation of the five categories of influences on news making according to the typology in Preston 5.2 A summary representation of the five categories of influences on journalism according to the typology in Hanitzsch et al.  6.1 “Britain Has Lost the EU. Can It Find a Role?” (Illustration by Matt Murphy) 6.2 Chandler’s Syntagm/Paradigm relationship 6.3 “How Green Bottlenecks Threaten the Green Energy Business” (Illustration by Justin Metz) 7.1 Total sources by type 7.2 Total party political sources for Irish Independent and Irish Times combined 7.3 Party political sources – Anti-guarantee/pro-guarantee for Irish Times and Irish Independent combined 7.4 Frequency of sources per article by percentage 8.1 Top 15 most frequent collocates for economic (1R) 8.2 Top 15 most frequent collocates for financial (1R) 8.3 Credit crunch across section and time in the COCA corpus, with a focus on 2005–2009 8.4 20 randomly generated concordance lines for worker* (unsorted) 8.5 20 randomly generated concordance lines for employer* (sorted 1R)

83 99 99 134 135 137 160 161 161 162 180 181 182 184 186

List of Figures  ix

9.1 9.2 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6

Key quantitative information Coding for topics and arguments Graph with broader range in the y-axis Graph with narrower range in the y-axis Bar chart with baseline starting at 32,000 Bar chart with baseline starting at zero Graph with narrower date range Graph with wider date range

205 207 287 287 288 288 289 289

TABLES

6.1 Stories identifying particular groups benefitting from Bush tax cuts 6.2 Thematic analysis versus framing analysis 7.1 Initial categorisation of articles 7.2 Master source in Excel 7.3 Categorising sources in general categories 8.1 Top 25 most frequent words in the Covid-19 corpus 8.2 Top 25 most frequent words in the Covid-19 corpus compared to the BAWE 8.3 Top 20 keywords in the Covid-19 corpus with enTenTen20 as the reference corpus 8.4 Top 20 keywords in the Covid-19 corpus with Spoken BNC2014 as the reference corpus 9.1 Coding 9.2 Highlighting arguments and textual features 9.3 Patterns of argumentation 10.1 RTÉ Radio interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook

125 126 153 156 160 175 176 178 178 203 208 213 236

CONTRIBUTORS

• Henry Silke, University of Limerick, Ireland • Fergal Quinn, University of Limerick, Ireland • Maria Rieder, University of Limerick, Ireland • Hendrik Theine, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria • Andrea Grisold, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria • Paschal Preston, Dublin City University, Ireland •M  uireann Prendergast, South East Technological University, Waterford, Ireland • Brian Clancy, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland • Elaine Vaughan, University of Limerick, Ireland • Ciara Graham, Technological University Dublin, Ireland • Brendan O’Rourke, Technological University Dublin, Ireland • Sophie Knowles, Middlesex University, London, UK • Nadine Strauß, University of Zurich, Switzerland

newgenprepdf

xii  List of Contributors

• Mike Berry, Cardiff University, UK • Donal Palcic, University of Limerick, Ireland • Darragh Flannery, University of Limerick, Ireland • Audrey Galvin, University of Limerick, Ireland • Brian Hurley, University of Limerick, Ireland

1 INTRODUCTION – THE CONSTRUCTION OF ECONOMIC NEWS Critical Research into Economic, Business and Financial News Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

1. Introduction

Since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 and continuing throughout the turbulent political and economic years that followed, the question of how economic issues are understood by the broader public has become a growing concern. After the GFC, dominant orthodox economic theories, based around the ideology of the self-regulating market and the rational actor, came under limited (if short-lived) scrutiny, while economic and business journalism was critiqued in the academy as the “dog that didn’t bark” (Starkman 2014). However, despite an increased recognition that the means by which economic issues are framed by journalists, editors and the wider news industry has massive political and economic repercussions, there is little evidence of lasting change in how economic policies, issues and outcomes are reported in the media. Therefore, it is essential that the academy continues to take seriously how economic and financial journalism reports economic news and the structures and practices underlying the content. This must include the various issues of ideology and political economy at the base of the industry and the society it rests on. Capitalism, in all its forms, is beset by regular periods of crises, and as we face into the latest one, driven this time by pandemic and war, it is essential for both scholars of journalism and journalists themselves to reflect on how economic reportage is done. In the early stages of the Covid19 crisis, economic policies and state intervention in the economy that would have been unimaginable even months earlier were seen. We should expect to see some debate and discussion around economic issues and policies in the mass media as citizens, political activists and governments attempt to navigate

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-1

2  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

beyond the pandemic and into the next crisis period. This book, we hope, will be a guide for scholars and journalists who wish to contribute in a critically aware fashion to this evolving discourse. When compared to research into other forms of media and journalism, studies of economic and financial journalism, while a rapidly growing genre, is still under-represented. Economic journalism’s impact on ideology, the economy and political policy, as well as its broader societal effect, should not be underestimated. Economic, financial and business journalism has a wide reach when considered in all its forms; for example, elite-to-elite financial press, business pages in the mid-range press and money advice in more popular press and mainstream broadcast media as well as an increased range of specialist broadcast channels, magazines and websites. Baek and Lee (2020, p. 3) argue that economic news is more impactful, as most individuals have a weak knowledge or understanding of economic concepts (see also Knowles and Schifferes 2020); therefore, economic journalism and its sources can play a decisive role in informing the public about real-world events, inform them around their day to day attitudes and possibly affect microeconomic behaviour. Economic news can also set or frame an agenda around government policies on economic issues; it can lay a causation for economic crises, attribute blame and offer solutions (Berry 2019); and, finally, it can be used to justify economic inequalities (Grisold and Preston 2020; Grisold and Silke 2019) and other policies such as preferential tax treatment for elites (Graham and O’Rourke 2019), policies of austerity (Basu et al. 2018), or in some cases expensive state intervention. In approaching the role of economic journalism in the economy, it should be emphasised that economic journalism does not by itself cause economic policies, outcomes or even crises. These are caused by the underlying political economy and capitalist cycles. However, as discussed in later chapters, the role of economic news and wider communications systems may increase the volatility, speed and size to which crises take place and grow. While acknowledging this influence, we are also mindful of drawing conclusions that are overly media-centric. The contours of the information or knowledge society have been influenced more by the “neo-liberal turn” in recent decades than by any of the technological effects of “new” or increasingly ubiquitous digital media (Preston 2009, p. 172). Nonetheless, the media sets at least some of the parameters of how economics are discussed, including discussions around economic crises, causes and effects of such crises and economic policy in general. Following the GFC, there has been a growth of expansive research into the construction of economic news using various methodologies. For example, researchers such as Berry (2019), Basu (2018), Damstra and De Swert (2020) and Basu et al. (2018), amongst others, used content analysis, depth interviews,

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  3

and ethnographic and audience research to uncover ideological and structural constraints in the construction of economic news. Berry (2019) and Knowles and Schifferes (2020) highlight the interrelationship between weak economic literacy among the public and audience interpretations of ideas about economy and economic policy. The likes of Strauß (2018), Basu (2018), and Knowles et al. (2013) combined content analysis and interviews for a better understanding of the production of content, while Almiron (2010), Herman and McChensey (1997) and others examined deep political economic and structural issues such as media concentration and financialisation. Scholars such as Thompson (2003) and Hope (2011) considered the effect of business and economic journalism on the economy itself. The analysis of the content of business and economic news has also continued using various methodologies, such as framing analysis, sourcing analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA) (see, for example, Silke 2015; Grisold and Preston 2020; Knowles et al. 2013; Knowles et al. 2017; Mercille 2014, Rieder and Theine 2019). We also include in this book a description of the corpus linguistics approach to media analysis, which allows for largescale, software-driven analysis. Methodologies such as content, framing and discourse analysis continue to be key to understanding the ideological function of economic news. Moreover, content analysis often acts as the bedrock to interviews and other forms of study into economic journalism, as seen with Berry (2019), Basu (2018) and Marron (2019). Likewise, Davis (2000), Baek and Lee (2020) and others have utilised sourcing analysis as well as interviews to better understand aspects of the epistemology of economic journalists; that is, where journalists access their information. Below, we will discuss the key themes of research into economic and business journalism before going on to discuss the aims and content of the book. 2.  Key Themes of Research into Economic and Business Journalism

Researchers have highlighted several interlinked themes around the development, structure and style of business and economic news reporting over the decades. They can be described broadly as follows: • • • •

Financialised economic reporting including ideological capture; Reflexivity between economic news and the economy; Media amnesia; The role conception of business and economic journalists and the loss of trust; • Working practices, relationships with sources; • Inequality and austerity narratives.

4  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

A Narrowing Focus: Financialised Economic Reporting

The first key theme in the literature is evidence of the development of a narrow and financialised economic reporting; that is, reporting done from a business or financial perspective that is both sourced from and aimed towards audiences in those sectors. This is as opposed to wider economic reporting aimed at society at large (Lee and Beck 2018). In the last 50 years, economic news reporting has become increasingly narrow, less pluralistic and more ideologically limited (Davis 2018, p. 157). Berry (2019, p. 15) discusses how the process of the privatisation of state-run utilities and the demutualisation of building societies (whereby building societies were transformed into commercial banks) led to an increased emphasis on home buying and mortgages rather than social housing, rent regulation or savings. This contributed to increasing numbers of the public being drawn into the activities of financial markets, thus creating an increased market for financial news. This manifested in the growth in money and finance supplements, which by their very nature were non-critical; for example, the BBC expanded its coverage of the markets while downgrading perspectives from organised labour (Berry 2019). As discussed by Philo (1995a), by the end of the 1980s, financial and city news had become an important genre in media reporting, especially on television, where “experts” from the banking and finance sector were consulted and treated as impartial observers. Basu points out how: Across the globe, wealthy business people, bankers and hedge fund managers have been turned into “experts” not only on the business matters that are their remit but on a whole range of social and economic questions. [Basu 2018, p. 25] This contributed to political trends increasingly being linked to fluctuations in the stock market, for example the British Labour Party going up in the polls was reported as a negative due to falls in the stock market (Philo 1995b, p. 192). Drawing from Marx’s concept of the “commodity fetish”,1 where class relations are disguised in the everyday exchange of commodities, Silke (2015) describes this reification of the stock market as exchange value framing or a “market orientated frame”. In other words, policies that may represent even short-term material gain for elite classes, for example tax cuts, will be reported positively, while the opposite will be reported negatively due to the perceived reaction of the markets. Lee and Beck (2018), looking at the press in South Korea, found that articles addressing broad issues about the economy in general (economic news) that are likely to be of public concern, for example unemployment and government policies, dropped from 53 to 32 per cent of the total number between 1994

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  5

and 2014, while, on the other hand, news about individual businesses rose from 17 to 30 per cent. In the same period, there was a significant increase in the use of representatives from private corporations as news sources. Chakravartty and Schiller’s (2010) exploration of developments in economic journalism traced what they describe as the growth of a “speculation orientated synthesis” (ibid., p. 680); that is, a journalism more interested in fluctuations on the markets than broader economic issues. Early work from the Glasgow media group reflected the beginning of this process, with crises in British manufacturing in the late 1970s blamed on working people, for example linking inflation to wage claims while downplaying inflationary effects caused by activities such as property speculation. The shift by British capital away from investment in industrial production was also ignored. Philo (1995a) describes a similar framing where recession, when not blamed on working people, tended to be treated like a natural disaster. Silke (2015) utilises the Marxist concept of base and superstructure (Marx 1977) to discuss the connection between issues of political economy in the wider economy and the literature on institutional issues in the field of communications and journalism, including economic journalism (discussed in detail in Chapter 3). General trends of capitalist crisis are replicated in the media industry itself (Schiller 1999). This affects journalistic working practices, which ironically may act to impede serious critique of the overall economic system itself. Moreover, media companies too are beset by a combination of a squeeze on advertising revenue due in part to the proliferation of competing media channels (Siapera 2013, p. 21), a tendency towards monopolisation (Corcoran 2007, pp. 17–32; Davis 2007) and increased financialisation (Almiron 2010). This financialisation and the crisis of media companies’ loss of sales and advertising has led to a regime of precarity that impedes investigative journalism and leads to dependence on public relations (Hayes and Silke 2019; Knowles 2018). Davis (2018) discusses earlier forms of economic journalism, where debates around economic ideas and policies – the adoption of monetarism and neoliberal policies in the Reagan-Thatcher era, for ­example – was fought out in the financial press. Davis links this to conflicting opinions among the various primary definers in this period, for example government actors held a more Keynesian emphasis on a state role in economic development, while primary definers from financial backgrounds emphasised the free market perspective. However, by the 1980s large scale debates around industrial and economic policy had ended, 2 leading to the domination of financial rather than broader economic journalism, which unquestioningly accepts the assumptions of what became commonly known as neoliberal ideology. Hope (2010, p. 664) points out that “despite historical evidence of boom-bust financial cycles and the inevitability of credit collapses, financial journalists overlooked the systemwide fragility of the sub-prime housing bubble”. Moreover, as discussed by

6  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

Basu (2018, p. 14), journalism tends to be much more focused on specific events rather than ongoing processes, such as economic processes. This noncritical coverage may well have contributed considerably to the economic crisis of 2008 (Hope 2010; Davis 2018; Silke 2015; Mercille 2014). Thompson explores this aspect in more detail (2013; 2003), theorising that communication, of which economic journalism plays a key part, is an integral and reflexive part of the market system and that there is a complex relationship between the producers and distributors of economic information and those who use that information to make decisions about investment and trade. Likewise, Arrese and Vara-Miguel (2021), in their study of the coverage of the housing and euro crises in Spain, found that ordinary people played a very marginal role in the journalistic coverage of the two economic events Media Amnesia

Basu’s 2018 book, Media Amnesia: Rewriting the Economic Crisis, discussed the short-term memory of the press, where the cause of the crisis (financial capitalism) was forgotten and blame shifted to public spending. Basu cites newspapers’ and media organisations’ directly commercial (and pro-market) interests as well as their closeness to political parties as major factors (alongside others such as news values and media concentration). A similar process developed in Ireland, where the banking and asset bubble crisis was very quickly recast to one of overzealous public spending. Here, party-political affiliation of the press was not an issue, but rather a deeper ideological viewpoint held by the wider media (Preston and Silke 2014). Chakravartty and Schiller writing in 2010 suggested that the media has not made a serious examination of the recent financial and economic crisis nor provided adequate scrutiny of either the social actors or political economic processes that propelled the crisis. They described a continued dominant media hegemony, with a repetition of neoliberal normative assumptions that contrast the negative pole of the state and the public against the positive pole of the free market (Chakravartty and Schiller 2010, p. 677). Even as the major tenets of neoliberalism or free market capitalism have been betrayed by the governmental support of private banks, businesses and shareholders, the legitimacy of free market doctrines has not been challenged nor seriously critiqued (Chakravartty and Schiller 2010, p. 675). Moreover, even after the covid crisis saw major government intervention, there seems to have been little discussion on the renewed role of the state and/or public enterprise across most economic journalism. Davis (2018, p. 158) also laments a lack of serious critique since the crash, which has ensured that very little changed in economic public debate and policymaking. Berry (2019, p. 87), in his analysis of the British press and broadcast media following the 2008 crash and

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  7

beyond, when much of the banking system was taken into public ownership, found that the media “rarely questioned the problematic relationship between financial services and Britain’s broader political economy or advocated major democratic reforms to the banks”. Rather, the media tended to focus on the story of individualised “greedy bankers” and the need to restrict their bonuses. For Berry, the media, therefore, successfully channelled anger into largely symbolic issues while leaving the deep structural faults in the banking system and financialised economy unexamined. For Knowles (2018, p. 183) the “crisis in capitalism” was an “opportunity for critique and overhaul of the system. Instead the critique was short-lived and, rather than instigating reform in the system, the crisis has resulted in the consolidation of the policies and practices associated with neoliberalism.” The Role Conception of Business and Economic Journalists and the Loss of Trust

A third major theme is that of the role conception (see Mellado et al. 2016) of business journalists. For example, some research has found that business journalists do not have the same conception of watchdog journalism as it is broadly constructed in the journalism literature (Usher 2013; Tambini 2010). Knowles et al. (2013) looked at this issue in the British, Australian and American press following the GFC, asking to what extent mainstream financial journalism fulfilled a watchdog role to the general public. They found that the resources allowed to journalists to undertake investigative journalism aren’t available, and they conclude that informing and educating the public and holding power to account were not priorities for mainstream financial journalism. The content was aimed at a specialist audience, the financial community, and did not critique the unregulated market paradigm. Strauß’s (2018) study of financial journalists found that, while most journalists considered themselves to be fulfilling the watchdog role, interviews and assessment of their actual reporting found they had, in fact, performed the role of information disseminators rather than watchdogs and that their audience tended to be privileged groups at Wall Street. Moreover, Strauß contends that the growing number of freelance financial journalists are unable to conduct investigative reporting due to a lack of resources. She concludes, therefore, that the active watchdog role has become no more than an idealistic conception. Conversely, Doyle (2006) has argued that business journalism does, in fact, challenge overly positive press from business and corporations; however, it does so within parameters of the existing system. Likewise, Thomas (2019) found that, unlike the well-established theories that advertisers act to influence and often shape business news, after the financial crisis, the UK’s most important commercial broadcaster adopted a more combative role towards a key contributor to their funding. Moreover, Thomas

8  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

argues that, in comparison, the BBC (the public sector broadcaster) was less probing or critical. Damstra et al. (2018) maintain that, in recent times, two forms of financial journalism have grown significantly: specialist financial journalism aimed at finance professionals and generalist financial journalism aimed at informing the general public. In their research, Knowles and Schifferes (2020) reported two general audiences for economic journalism during the economic crisis. The first is the richer, older male who has traditionally consumed specialist business news. The second is a broader public whose focus is more on economic and political news rather than financial markets and businesses. This audience has a less sophisticated understanding of the language of finance. The issue of the economic literacy of their audience, therefore, is a key issue for journalists, where less audience expertise is expected compared to audiences in specialised business publications (Doyle 2006; Knowles and Schifferes 2020; Damstra and De Swert 2020). In a study of the Economist magazine, Harjuniemi (2019) suggests that contemporary economic journalism sees itself as “postideological”, with the magazine seeing itself as performing a “technocratic rationality in which political issues can be solved through facts, expertise and the market” (ibid., p. 2). Mirroring journalism in general, there has been a loss of trust between audiences and economic and financial journalism. In an audience survey conducted by Knowles and Schifferes (2020) during the euro crisis, the authors found that only one in 20 respondents were very satisfied with the media coverage of the economic situation over the preceding years and slightly over half were satisfied. Only a quarter believed that journalists offered a balanced picture, 40 per cent believed that journalists are not independent from the businesses they cover and the same number maintained that media companies force journalists to act unethically. Working Practices of Economic Journalists and Source Relations

A key area of interest in journalism studies in general, and in economic journalism in particular, is research that focuses on the working practices of journalists themselves and how such practice effects discourse. In an edited book, Schiffrin (2011) examined the failure of the American press to warn of the 2008 financial crisis and highlighted a number of problematic working practices of journalists, including, first, increased time pressures on newsroom staff leading to incomplete and poor-quality reporting. As pointed out by Davis (2018), journalists are now required to fill up to three times more space than they did in 1985. This has led to a greater reliance on public relations handouts (and other information subsidies) produced by financial sources and other partial interests; second, a lack of specialist economic or technical knowledge; and third, a general unwillingness to question those

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  9

with economic power (Preston 2009). Journalists have become increasingly dependent on inside sources for explanations of financial issues (Davis 2018, p. 160; Damstra and De Swert 2020). Likewise, a deficiency in training has meant that journalists have difficulty in investigating complex financial products (Doyle 2006; Knowles et al. 2013). In their study of Dutch economic and business journalists, for example, Damstra and De Swert (2020) found that most of their subjects received training in journalism and did not obtain a degree in economics or another related field. Moreover, as pointed out by Davis (2018) and others, journalists seek out top CEOs, investors, city economists and analysts as their main sources of information, making them primary definers when it comes to discussing wider economic issues. Moreover, as pointed out by Knowles (2018), the period of neoliberalism itself, and its outcomes of worsening working conditions for journalists themselves, has meant that journalists are under far more time and financial pressure (see also Cohen 2016; Hayes and Silke 2019; Silke 2015; Preston 2009). Damstra and De Swert (2020) also report a constant measurement of audience reactions to stories, with the number of clicks on online media being key. As with journalists from other genres, economic journalists are also expected to produce content on various formats such as blogs, video clips and podcasts, with numerous deadlines (ibid.). There is also an ongoing fear of libel action from business or wealthy individuals (Doyle 2006; Knowles 2018). For example, in a study by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (in Gallagher and Booth 2016), Ireland was deemed to be at “high risk” in their assessment of threats to media pluralism. Gallagher and Booth (2016) point out how Ireland’s lax defamation laws in combination with high levels of media concentration has led to a “chilling effect” in the profession and threatens news plurality and the media’s ability to perform its so-called “watchdog function” (Hayes and Silke 2019). As pointed out by Davis (2018, p. 160), businesses do not need public coverage in the same manner as politicians; they tend to communicate with investors and political audiences through other channels and with consumers via advertising. While they may wish to avoid negative stories about their business, they do not need regular coverage in mainstream media, which makes access by journalists more limited. Knowles et al. (2013) note that financial journalists who have prospered in the US tend to be those with the ability to talk themselves into a CEO’s office, rather than having a particularly sage analysis. Davis (2002) has documented how businesses increasingly employ public relations agencies to ensure positive coverage and shape the business agenda, acting to colonise an already weakened (by the financial crisis) press. Knowles et al. (2013) found similar results in their interviews with journalists. In their sourcing analysis of the South Korean press over 20 years (1994– 2014), Baek and Lee (2020) divided sources between what they termed elite

10  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

and public sources. Elite sources included mainstream institutional sources, such as government or corporate organisations and institutional intellectuals. Public sources included ordinary citizens, civic organisations and labour unions. Overall, the authors found that a wide range of sources were not used by Korean newspapers and there was an overreliance on elite sources. Public sources tended to be invisible in financial news, especially in issues around policy. Knowles (2018) reports a consensus that business sources respond more quickly with market relevant information compared to academics and other sources. Academics are also viewed as too abstract in their thinking. Knowles also found that members of the public, NGOs or academics are not part of the news-shaping process but rather provide a context after a story has broken. On the ideological level, according to interviews Knowles (2018) conducted with journalists, the ideological strength of neoliberal policies such as deregulation and privatisation, which were seen as a given, meant that journalists could only find it extremely difficult to go against the prevailing trends and write more critical copy. Timo Harjuniemi (2021), in a paper discussing primary definers and economic pluralism, found through interviews with Finnish journalists that the journalists maintained that the Finnish debate often lacks competing perspectives, and only a small group of expert sources tend to shape the dominant perspective in economic journalism. One journalist stated that if someone offered an alternative to a policy such as austerity, it may affect the credibility of the entire piece. However, Harjuniemi also found that ruptures in economic policy, such as what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, may allow space for more economic pluralism in journalism. Inequality and Austerity Narratives

Two other growing themes of research into economic journalism following the GFC have centred around the areas of inequality and austerity (see, for example, Silke et al. 2019). While there has been much research into issues of various forms of inequalities, Preston points to a need for more investigation into issues of economic inequality, as “issues to do with economic, class or related social inequalities (other than specific conceptualizations of gender, race and sexual orientation) do not feature prominently” (Preston 2016, p. 38). In a literature review on the coverage of economic inequality in the press, Grisold and Theine (2017) found that the issues of equality studied included long term coverage in the German press (Schröder and Vietze 2015; Petring 2016), which found some increase in coverage between 1946 and 2015 in left and liberal publications, while in the American press, Gandy (2007) found that the coverage of economic inequality decreased between 1980 and 2000. Champlin and Knoedler (2008) examined the media coverage of the middle

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  11

class in the United States. Here, newspaper indexes on inequality show that approximately twice as many articles were published on this topic between 2002 and 2007 compared with 1997 to 2002. However, the authors point out that “the emphasis in most cases is limited to a simple reporting of the existence of growing inequality and middle-class decline” (p. 136). Other issues of coverage around economic inequality included issues of policy such as tax reform. Here, studies found a framing that entire populations benefit from tax cuts (Bell and Entman 2011), and those who benefitted from tax reforms, the better off, were constructed as deserving hard workers. On the other hand, wealth taxes were framed as harmful to the overall economy, with implications for the entire population. Recipients of welfare, similarly, were constructed as individually responsible for their dependence on state programs, and little explanation was given around structural issues (see, for example, Harkins and Lugo-Ocando 2016). Grisold and Preston (2020) led a project investigating the press coverage in the UK, Germany, Ireland and Austria of Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which offered evidence of a secular rise in inequality, finding discourses that acted to downplay, deny or conflate Piketty’s findings, including discourses challenging his data and methods, discourses defending inequality as a necessity and discourses opposing regulation (Grisold and Preston 2020; Grisold and Silke 2019; Theine and Rieder 2019; Rieder and Theine 2019). As part of a major study into the discourse of inequality narratives, The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality, edited by Gómez-Jiménez and Toolan (2020), use various methodologies, including corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis (both of which will be discussed in this book), to explore the shifts in inequality discourses in the UK from the end of the Second World War to the present day. The authors argue that this has acted to normalise increased levels of inequality. Following the GFC, many governments followed the crisis with policies of austerity, and in many cases this was supported wholeheartedly by media groups and journalistic copy. A study by Arrese (2018) found some differences in coverage across the European press on the issue of austerity policies, depending on the geographical, political and journalistic differences between press outlets. However, he points out that the discussion about the crisis has been dominated by what he terms the logic of elite-to-elite communication, which has acted to highlight the views of political, business and financial institutions, rather than “man-on-the-street” perspectives. Berry (2019), in his study of the impact of economic news since the crisis, examined the content of both newspaper and television reports and, through audience research, how this has filtered into the public. He found that the framing solutions to the problem of the government deficit in the media acted to restrict the range of policy options that the audience research participants were aware of and led many to see cuts to austerity as unavoidable. Most participants, reflecting media

12  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

coverage, saw the crisis and deficit as a problem of increased public spending rather than the financial crash. Moreover, the participants did not identify the areas of spending that had seen growth, such as education and health budgets. Rather, they pointed to areas that had received much media coverage such as immigration, welfare, public sector pensions, foreign aid and MPs’ expenses. Berry points out that audience perception did not only come from coverage during and after the crisis. Instead, many already believed coming into the GFC that the Labour government had overspent, with the bulk being spent on waste, migrants and welfare. While these perceptions had little basis in reality, they matched the narratives that were prominent in the right-wing press, and this made such groups an easy attack for cuts on spending. Kelsey et al. (2016; 2018) discuss austerity as a “morality tale” that exists partially detached from “pure” economics themselves – which the authors point out are themselves open to discursive contestation. They give examples of discursive attitudes towards the so-called Southern European (and Ireland) PIIGS and the attitude towards stimulus budgets in the UK. They argue that morality discourses are used by both pro- and anti-austerity proponents. In the case of Ireland, there was an ideological onslaught on what was termed “the public sector”. By 2008, it became, at least in media discourse, “common sense” that public workers were overpaid and unproductive and had “gold plated” pensions, and no class differences were offered between highly paid professional government advisors or public sector managers and low paid operative staff (Preston and Silke 2014; Cawley 2012; Marron 2019). Likewise, an attack was made on welfare recipients by a populist political intervention on welfare fraud (Devereux and Power 2019). Mercille (2014) found overwhelming support for austerity policies across the media in Ireland. He explored how sections of the media saw its role as convincing a suspicious public of the necessity of austerity measures. Meanwhile, serious issues of taxation policy – that is, of Ireland acting as a tax haven for multinational corporations – has consistently been played down (see, for example, Graham and O’Rourke 2019). Basu (2018) analyses the framing of austerity by the UK media between 2008 and 2015, finding the establishment of a dominant austerity frame in 2009 and the development of the austerity frame around the 2010 UK elections, with a central message that at least some degree of austerity is necessary and that the general population must pay for the crisis. Likewise, Schifferes and Knowles (2018) found that the majority of UK media commentators supported austerity measures put forward by the UK coalition government in 2010. Conclusion

As discussed, there has been a growth in research into economic and business journalism, especially since the GFC of 2008. Some of the key themes were

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  13

discussed above, including a narrowing of parameters of economic reporting; reflexivity between economic news and the economy; media amnesia; the role conceptions of business and economic journalists and the loss of trust; working practices; relationships with sources; and, finally, inequality and austerity narratives. However, considering the importance of the subject area, we believe there is a rich potential for further research. In the following chapters, we will discuss at length some useful methodologies for continuing this work, as well as, in Part III, some chapters on journalism practice assisting in the training of new generations of economic journalists, who will, we hope, approach their subject with a more critical eye. 3.  Aims of the Book

The 2008 economic crisis and the ensuing period of austerity that was experienced in many countries around the world have not only exacerbated class and regional divisions and inequalities but also, at least at the early stages of the crisis, stimulated a heated debate over economic concepts, theories and the legitimacy of economic decision-making. Print, broadcast and online media are important settings where this battle over legitimacy manifests, and in which “common sense” and the “taken-for-grantedness” of dominant political and economic argumentation are being challenged. Students of journalism and economics are at the centre of this battle, both as future producers and reproducers of news discourse and in their important role as information digesters and synthesisers for the wider public. They are especially caught up in a political economy in which the media are a primary institutional outlet used by various interests in their fight for ideological dominance. Journalism and economics students are sometimes underprepared for working environments in which they are often restricted, both explicitly and implicitly, in expressing opinions or representing perspectives that fall outside mainstream discursive framings. This book seeks to counteract some of the difficulties faced by journalists and economics students while better equipping them to contribute to this discourse. To that aim, as a textbook, it provides a broad and comprehensive overview of methodological approaches as well as individual case studies of applications of specific methodologies. Thus, it offers a how-to guide of the primary approaches to the analysis and production of economic media output for undergraduate and postgraduate students, including short tasks, exercises and further readings. As well as contributing to the above in an academic context and enhancing media literacy around economic discourse in broad terms, we also provide a toolkit aimed at media practitioners, with which they can, in a practical and efficient fashion, consider their own work and adapt where necessary to avoid falling into some of the traps outlined above. Methodologies around economic journalism, and indeed journalism itself,

14  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

are often broken up into three key areas: first, how is economic news made; second, what does economic news say; and third, what effects does economic news have. It is noted that, while we may divide up the various aspects of economic news and methodological approaches focused on these areas, these aspects of economic news are interlinked, and a mixed methodology approach looking at various aspects of the “circuit of communication” (Philo et al. 2015) is recommended where possible. How is economic news made? Political economy Ethnographic Observations, interviews, survey

What does economic news say? Ideology, content analysis, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, semiotics

What effect does economic news have? Audience research Political economy

Methodologies of research into economic journalism based on the circuit of communication [production – content – reception]. [Philo et al. 2015] The book is broken up into three main parts. Part I considers some of the theoretical issues around economic news and reporting, with chapters on economic theory, ideological process and the role of journalism studies. The chapters of Part II offer methodological tools for the study of economic journalism, such as content, discourse and framing analysis, alongside methods such as audience research and interview techniques. Part III is aimed at helping working and student journalists to think about and improve how economic reporting may take place. 4.  Chapter Overview 1. Introduction

Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  15

Part I: Connecting Economic Theory, Ideology and Journalism 2.  Economic Imaginaries, Economics Theories and the Role of Economic Journalism

Hendrik Theine This chapter reviews key economic theories that may be reflected in media reportage as a necessary grounding for scholars of economic journalism and for students of journalism practice who should look at economic theory beyond orthodox liberal economics. We summarise and contextualise several key macro-economic theories, from classical and neoclassical liberal economic theory to Keynesian and regulatory theory, and various theories from the Marxist cannon, including crisis theories followed by theories of economics and media. 3.  What Journalists Can Learn from Heterodox Economics

Andrea Grisold This chapter discusses how journalists can learn from heterodox economics to critically explore issues of economics. It will start by explaining what is meant by heterodox economics, why it is important and how it can be used as a toolbox by journalists when conducting investigations on economic issues and policies. 4.  Ideology, Economics and Journalism

Henry Silke This chapter focuses on the issue of ideology, economic ideologies and ideology in economic journalism. Following on from Chapter 2, an introduction to economic theories, this chapter will think about how these economic theories may be present in our everyday life. How what we may think about as “common sense” may be drawn from contested economic theory and ideology. The media is one of the key places where we learn about economic issues, not simply in the finance pages of print newspapers but also across the entire media system. For the purpose of this book we will concentrate on what is termed business, finance or economic journalism. However, the ideas within can be utilised across the entire media sphere. 5.  Journalism Studies and “Cascading Crises”: Towards a Political Economic Approach

Paschal Preston This chapter explores whether and how the journalism studies field may still neglect or ignore the centrality of patterned inequalities of economic

16  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

processes, cascading ecological crises and new kinds of socio-political power gulfs and grabs as core concerns in the central agenda of journalism studies (deemed to be orientated to public interests). Thus, one key concern of this chapter is to highlight and explicitly address the silences, neglect or blatant shyness of the journalism studies and journalism education/training subfield when it comes to engaging with the material realities and stakes of economic processes, relations, and the stakes involved, especially inequalities and distributional stakes. Part II: Methodological Approaches for the Evaluation of Economy-Related Media Output 6.  The Content Is the Thing: Using Content Analysis to Study Economic Journalism

Fergal Quinn and Muireann Prendergast Examining economic news content is one of the most commonly used approaches to media analysis. This chapter considers the means by which researchers can organise and interpret economic journalism output, utilising qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches such as sourcing, thematic and framing analyses. Aspects of semiotic approaches are also integrated. A case study incorporates commentary on how these approaches might be applied across different types of media, i.e., TV, print and radio. 7.  Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?

Henry Silke This chapter will explore the issue of both who economic journalists speak to and which sources may act to frame a story or issue. This is a very simple and effective method of research that offers useful insights into how journalist copy is formed. In economic and business journalism, a consideration of the identity and usage of sources is particularly useful because they often have interests that are omitted in the copy, or they may be presented as “independent” experts when they are not. 8.  Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts

Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan This chapter introduces corpus linguistics as a methodology for analysing the language of economic and financial news journalistic output. It provides an overview of the area and explains what a corpus is and how to design and build DIY corpora. The remainder of the chapter deals with the key underlying concepts of the practical tools used to analyse corpora, as well as illustrating

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  17

the output of these tools and discussing how we might go about interpreting the output. The value of combined journalistic and linguistic perspectives in understanding and interpreting the (de)construction of news discourse is an underlying theme of the chapter, which concludes that more journalists who can think linguistically and critically about language and linguists who understand how journalism works are needed. 9.  Breaking Down the Discourse, Exposing Power in Economic Journalism: Critical Discourse Analysis

Maria Rieder and Hendrik Theine Critical discourse analysis is based on critical theory, which holds that there are no natural truths. Accordingly, concepts on which economic discourses are based are socially constructed rather than naturally given. This chapter provides a framework and tools for investigating the relationship between discursive-rhetorical patterns in economics discourse and global social situations and ideologies, with the aim of exposing how positions are legitimised and imposed on the individual, and, hence, how power, dominance and inequality are constructed. The chapter illustrates the use of some of these tools – such as metaphors, active versus passive voice, abstract versus concrete, agents versus missing agents – via a case study. 10.  Deconstructing Economic Discourses on Broadcast News

Ciara Graham and Brendan O’Rourke Much public discourse is concerned with economic issues, from growth to debt to taxation, and media plays a key part in how audiences think of these issues. Broadcast media are especially influential over these discourses, presiding over the ideas and views that are articulated and perpetuated. In this chapter we will apply critical discourse analysis to deconstruct and decipher radio broadcasts on economic issues. Emphasis is on the audio elements of broadcasting, and we examine the radio genre in particular. 11.  Deconstructing Discourse: Applying Interview Research in the Economic Newsroom

Sophie Knowles and Nadine Strauß This chapter will discuss the methodology of interview research as practised in the investigation of economic news. It begins by discussing some literature using this methodology before going on to illuminate the method by way of two case studies. The chapter benefits from the very real experiences, insights, and tips provided by two researchers who have interviewed economic journalists reporting the global financial crisis of 2008 and sustainable finance

18  Henry Silke, Fergal Quinn and Maria Rieder

respectively. The chapter ends with a guided activity, which puts a lot of the theory into practice. 12.  Researching Audiences: Understanding How Economic News is Received

Mike Berry This chapter will discuss the concepts and practices of audience research. Its purpose is to explore how two widely used methodologies – surveys and focus groups – can be used to unpack how audiences understand the economy. The chapter examines the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches and highlights some of the most important issues involved in conducting survey and focus group research. Case studies from the research literature will be presented to illustrate how scholars have utilised these methods to address key issues, such as public support for austerity policies. The chapter will also discuss how these methods can be combined with content studies in order to explore the controversial question of how news accounts can influence public knowledge and understanding in this area. Part III. News Production: Best Practices for Investigating Economic and Business Stories 13.  Making Sense of Economic Data

Donal Palcic and Darragh Flannery This chapter covers some of the basics of data analysis and interpretation that students will require when commenting on macro-economic data. The chapter will provide an overview of the various types of data (time series, cross-section, panel, etc.), as well as how to deal with index numbers (how to construct and interpret them). The importance of adjusting for price changes (i.e., nominal versus real) when examining time-series macro-economic data is then covered. The chapter discusses the issue of correlation versus causation when examining the relationships between different variables. Finally, the chapter provides some guidelines on the presentation of data (scatter plots, indexing), as well as how to spot common attempts at manipulating data through certain visualisation techniques. 14.  Economic News Approaches: Journalism Practitioners’ Experience of News Production

Audrey Galvin and Brian Hurley This chapter is a collection of first-hand accounts, gathered via interviews with some key practitioners in the field of business and economic journalism. It is presented in sections organised thematically in terms of responses, with each

Introduction – The Construction of Economic News  19

section being preceded by some brief context as per the importance of this topic or line of questioning. This chapter will give students the opportunity to learn from practitioners on how they approach financial journalism and some advice for navigating the field, institutions and sources. 15.  Where Theory Meets Practice: Practitioner Tips for Better Economic Journalism

Fergal Quinn, Maria Rieder and Henry Silke Having provided context for the academic interrogation and analysis of economic journalism output, here we give broad and accessible advice to students and practitioners who want to improve the quality of their work. We highlight common pitfalls of economic journalism output and give a number of simple checklists by which practitioners and students can self-assess and interrogate their own work and make more effective use of their resources. The first part of the chapter outlines what good economics journalism practice should follow in terms of reporting, before going on, in part two, to discuss how issues such as an awareness of pluralism in economic theory and thought and an awareness of ideological issues and the broader political economy should underline journalism in the economic field. Notes 1 For Marx (Marx 1977), the commodity fetish disguises the real social nature of society in the market or commodity. Class relations between groups of people are disguised within individual rents, wage rates, currency rates, and mortgage interest rates, while macro-political decisions are framed around international “competitiveness” between states and their workforces and, in the recent crisis, international bond markets. This can also be described as the reification of class relations into the “demands” of the markets. 2 See Chapter 2 for more discussion on the key economic concepts such as monetarism and Keynesian discussed here, and see Chapter 7 on sourcing analysis for more on primary definers.

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Grisold, A. and Preston, P. (2020). Economic Inequality and News Media: Discourse, Power, and Redistribution. Oxford University Press. Grisold, A. and Silke, H. (2019). “Denying, Downplaying, Debating: Defensive Discourses of Inequality in the Debate on Piketty”. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(3), pp. 264–281. Grisold, A. and Theine, H. (2017). “How Come We Know? The Media Coverage of Economic Inequality”. International Journal of Communication, 11, pp. 4265–4284. Harjuniemi, T. (2019). “Reason over Politics: The Economist’s Historical Framing of Austerity”. Journalism Studies, 20(6), pp. 804–822. Harjuniemi, T. (2021). “The Power of Primary Definers: How Journalists Assess the Pluralism of Economic Journalism”. Journalism, 0(0). Available from: https://doi. org/10.1177/146488​4921​1035​299. Harkins, S. and Lugo-Ocando, J. (2016). “How Malthusian Ideology Crept into the Newsroom: British Tabloids and the Coverage of the ‘Underclass’ ”. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(1), pp. 78–93. Hayes, K. and Silke, H. (2019). “Narrowing the Discourse? Growing Precarity in Freelance Journalism and Its Effect on the Construction of News Discourse”. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(3), pp. 363–379. Herman, E.S. and McChesney, R.W. (1997). The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism. Bloomsbury Academic Press. Hope, W. (2010). “Global Financial Crisis: Time, Communication and Financial Collapse”. International Journal of Communication, 4, pp. 649–669. Hope, W. (2011). “Global Financial Crisis: Time, Communication and Financial Collapse”. International Journal of Communication, 4, p. 21. Kelsey, D., Mueller, F., Whittle, A. and KhosraviNik, M. (2016). “Financial Crisis and Austerity: Interdisciplinary Concerns in Critical Discourse Studies”. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(1), pp. 1–19. Kelsey, D., Mueller, F., Whittle, A. and KhosraviNik, M., eds. (2018). The Discourse of Financial Crisis and Austerity: Critical Analyses of Business and Economics across Disciplines. Routledge Knowles, S. (2018). “Financial Journalists, the Financial Crisis and the ‘Crisis’ in Journalism”. In Basu, L., Schifferes, S. and Knowles, S., eds., The Media and Austerity: Comparative Perspectives, pp. 183–195. Routledge. Knowles, S. and Schifferes, S. (2020). “Financial Capability, the Financial Crisis and Trust in News Media”. Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies, 9(1), pp. 61–83. Knowles, S., Phillips, G. and Lidberg, J. (2013). “The Framing of the Global Financial Crisis 2005–2008: A Cross-Country Comparison of the US, UK and Australia”. Australian Journalism Review, 35(2), p. 59. Knowles, S., Phillips, G. and Lidberg, J. (2017). “Reporting the Global Financial Crisis: A Longitudinal Tri-Nation study of Mainstream Financial Journalism”. Journalism Studies, 18(3), pp. 322–340. Lee, N.Y. and Baek, K. (2018). “Squeezing Out Economic News for Business News? Changes in Economic Journalism over the Past 20 Years in South Korea”. Journalism, 19(9–10), pp. 1220–1238. Marron, A. (2019). “‘Overpaid’ and ‘inefficient’: Print Media Framings of the Public Sector in The Irish Times and The Irish Independent during the Financial Crisis”. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(3), pp. 282–297.

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PART I

Connecting Economic Theory, Ideology and Journalism Chapter 2: Economic Imaginaries, Economics Theories and the Role of Economic Journalism Chapter 3: What Journalists Can Learn from Heterodox Economics Chapter 4: Ideology, Economics and Journalism Chapter 5: Journalism Studies and “Cascading Crises”: Towards a Political Economic Approach

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-2

2 ECONOMIC IMAGINARIES, ECONOMICS THEORIES AND THE ROLE OF ECONOMIC JOURNALISM Hendrik Theine

Advance Organiser

This chapter will introduce you to key concepts that explain how academic economics – by way of supporting certain simplified understandings – structures and influences real-world economic relations. Key concepts are introduced and illustrated by way of examples and activities, such as: • ‘Economic imaginaries’; • Various theoretical streams in academic economics; • The dominance of market-liberal thinking in economics; • Neoliberalism as a powerful economic imaginary. 1.  Economic Imaginaries as Simplified Understandings of Economic Reality

The world is ungraspable in all its complexity, which implies that individual and collective actors are dependent on more simplified understandings in order to be able to “go on” in that complex world. Building up from this fundamental understanding, cultural political economy (Sum and Jessop 2013) argues that “economic imaginaries” function as those key simplified understandings that help to make sense of the lived, day-to-day economic reality. Economic imaginaries exist on different levels and can be understood as master narratives that selectively frame individuals’ and collective actors’ actions and experiences as well as the wider economic dynamics.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-3

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Hence, economic imaginaries help to make sense of and evaluate economic events, processes, practices, outcomes and policies. Economic imaginaries are selective in providing a specific narrative by highlighting certain elements and side-lining and masking others. They privilege and normalise some economic activities from the broad set of possible activities and, at the same time, reduce other (alternative) activities in rank. These imaginaries must have some significant, albeit necessarily partial, correspondence to real material interdependencies in the actually existing economy and/or in the relations between economic and extra-economic activities (Sum and Jessop 2013).

Let’s illustrate this rather abstract argument by way of an example: people often tend to think of successful business owners as “self-made” entrepreneurs whose economic achievements are a result of their own hard work and clever, at times risky, business decisions. From the perspective of cultural political economy, this is an example of an economic imaginary, as it makes sense of a complex economic process (the successful running of a business with all its micro- and macro-economic implications) by resorting to a simplified, yet powerful, imaginary: the idea that the success solely depends on one person’s effort and work. This economic imaginary is “selective” in the sense that it refers only to one explanation from the vast set of possible explanations for business success. Other explanations for business success are thus side-lined. The business owner could have actually inherited the business (or other economic means that are of advantage for business ownership). Relatedly, the social capital of the business owner could have been a prime reason for the success. Luck could have played an important and decisive role. The state possibly contributed a fair share providing the necessary infrastructure. And not to forget: any successful business owner is always highly dependent on co-workers and other business partners’ activities and work.

Economic imaginaries do not just “exist” in the world, but they are advanced, legitimised and supported by individuals’ and collective actors’ actions and projects. Various actors in the civil society such as think tanks, intellectuals, international bodies, organised interests and social movements are articulating their preferred economic imaginaries. Furthermore, the mass media are also crucial intermediaries in normalising certain imaginaries and mobilising elite and/or popular support behind competing imaginaries (Sum and Jessop 2013).

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To take up the previous example again: the explanation of the “self-made” business owner is not a “natural” or “logical” explanation. In our society, much emphasis is given to individuals’ actions rather than to the importance of collective actions. However, the explanation that one individual is the key reason for the success of an entire organisation with hundreds, or even thousands, of people involved is totally meaningless and should be laughed off as a bad joke. Business success is, in fact, made up of countless activities and actions by individual and collective actors. Prime suspects for the establishment and advancement of the “self-made” business owner explanation are, for instance, business associations and pro-business lobby groups. Business owners might also be inclined to portray themselves as the key reason for success. In contrast, labour movements typically stress the importance of workers’ collective actions as being indispensable for business success.

As the example already suggests, economic imaginaries are legitimised and supported by powerful ideas and theories about the economy and economic relations originating in the scientific field of economics. It is important to distinguish between economic theory and economic imaginary: • Theories are types of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, typically in the possession of a relatively few people at universities and other research institutions; • Imaginaries, on the other hand, are a broadly accepted, popular, complex and contingent mix of ideas, practices and events, which carries within it deeper normative notions of how economies and societies should be organised. It is through their shared imaginary that relations and sociability among strangers within and across societies become possible. It is through imaginaries that ordinary people are able to construct a sense of the future and what is needed to realise it (Taylor 2004). In this way, economic imaginaries are closely related to ideology (see Chapter 4). To be sure: economic imaginaries are more than simple reproductions of certain economics theories. The relationship between economic imaginaries and economic ideas is a complex and multi-folded one. Still, economic ideas and schools of thought play a key role for economic imaginaries, as they provide the scientific foundation and legitimation for existing and competing economic imaginaries. They support the basic foundational understanding of how economic events, processes and outcomes can be conceptualised. In the following, we will explore different economic theories and the role of economics to inform economic imaginaries.

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2.  Economics as a Scientific Field

But what is economics as a scientific discipline and what kind of theories about the economy are advanced? We will answer that question by first discussing some of the historical roots of economics, turning to the rise of rise of marketliberal perspectives in economics and finishing with a perspective on current trends in economics. A Short History of Economics

A closer look into the history and development of economics as a scientific discipline highlights that the discipline has been subject to a series of fundamental shifts in self-perception as well as the kinds of economics arguments and perspectives that dominate the discipline. When economics became professionalised around the end of the nineteenth century, a wide variety of theories and approaches encompassed the economic discipline. This variety was characterised by pluralism on many levels, with institutionalism and neoclassical economics as two major schools of thought in the Englishspeaking world but also other, Marxist and radical economists contributing to the debate. Pluralism meant variety on the level of beliefs, ideology and methods, as well as policy advice (Lee 2009; Morgan and Rutherford 1998). Various schools of thought existed (and still exist), some of them more heterodox (see Chapter 3 by Grisold), and others tending towards marketliberal perspectives. The various schools of economics approached their object of research – economic processes and outcomes broadly defined – quite differently. Some of the major schools of thought included the following: • Institutionalism is a broad movement with a “commitment to serious scientific investigation, detailed empirical work (using various methods), serious theory building (which eschewed simple assumptions), and a commitment to understand the importance of economic institutions in determining economic outcomes” (Morgan and Rutherford 1998, p. 3). Economic institutions are “settled habits of thought common to the generality of men” (Veblen 1919, p. 239, as cited in Waller 1982) that explicitly or implicitly structure and regulate human interaction by way of rules, norms and conventions. Institutions provide stability and finality to human decision-making. Hence, individuals’ decisions, tastes, habits, preferences and the like are not a given but can be affected fundamentally by institutions and/or culture (Hodgson 2017). Although institutionalism lost its policy influence over the last decades (see below), it is still a relevant and fruitful school of thought providing original analyses that advance the understanding of economic processes.

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For more information on institutional economics, see: www.explor​ingeconom​ics.org/en/orie​ntat​ion/insti​tuti​onal​ist-econom​ics/.

For an example of institutions, let’s think of the business owner again. Across countries, there are varying institutional settings in place that structure the possibilities and limits of economic business making. These institutional settings are typically a combination of formal rules (e.g., what kind of regulations have to be met in order to run a business) and more subtle but equally powerful social conventions and norms (e.g., what type of business practices are perceived as legitimate in society).

• Marxian economics aims to continue Karl Marx’s unfinished work emphasising the analysis and critique of capitalist relations as a distinct system of production based on constantly expanding market forces. Capitalist relations are based on a class society where one small part of society, the capitalists, owns the means of production and employs the larger part of society, wage workers, in their factories and production facilities. This capitalist mode of production is not free from contradictions, but instead leads frequently to different types of crises that play a prominent role as recurrent patterns in capitalist development (Howard and King 1989). Marxian economics is rather at the margins of today’s economic discipline, which is problematic, as it side-lines important insights into crises phenomena or trajectories of capitalism. For more information on Marxian economics, see Chapter 4 and www. explor​ing-econom​ics.org/en/orie​ntat​ion/marx​ist-politi​cal-econ​omy/. • Neoclassical economics stresses the importance of rational human decisionmaking in the economic process. Partly borrowing language of the physics of energy and using it to create new economic theory, neoclassical economists viewed the individual level as the key starting point to understand economic processes and outcomes. In this perspective, individuals only consider their subjective interests and tastes in order to decide what they want to consume and produce. Based on market interactions, the combined consumption and production decisions then lead to an equilibrium situation that determines the key important variables in society such as prices. In particular, the early neoclassical economists recognised each other as mathematical theorists first and foremost (Arnsperger and Varoufakis 2006; Mirowski 1988). Neoclassical economics is still quite influential today, as it is at the core of today’s economics (see below).

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For more information on neoclassical economics, see: www.explor​ingeconom​ics.org/en/orie​ntat​ion/neocl​assi​cal-econom​ics/. • This plurality of approaches in economics further increased with the publication of John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Money and Interest in 1936 and the subsequent emergence of Keynesian economics as an influential school of thought. Written in response to the Great Depression and the mass unemployment of that time, Keynes provided the basis for a macro-economic theory that conceptualises capitalist market economies as inherently instable and prone to frequent crises. Counteracting such crisis tendencies requires macro-economic stabilisation and government-led policies in various areas (e.g., fiscal and monetary policies). Similar to institutional economics, Keynes stresses the role of institutions and social convention to regulate and influence human behaviour and decision-making (Stockhammer 2017). Keynesian economics is typically considered to be the most influential heterodox school of thought (see also Chapter 3 by Grisold). For more information on (Post-)Keynesian economics, see: www.explor​ ing-econom​ics.org/en/orie​ntat​ion/post-keynes​ian-econom​ics/. The Rise of Market-Liberal Perspectives in Economics

The period following the Second World War set in motion a development that led to a domination of economics by market-liberal perspectives. Studying the history of economic thought in the US and Great Britain, Lee (2009) outlines a detailed description of the various factors contributing to this development. In particular, he stresses the “anti-Communist hysteria” as a key societal force that contributed to the deep transformation of the landscape of post-war economics. It resulted in many radical and progressive economists losing their jobs, being denied permanent positions and/or taking academic positions outside the United States. Those who remained in academic economics often self-censored their work and teaching with the effect that this “antiCommunist hysteria silenced an entire generation of radical and progressive academics, snuffing out nearly all radical and even mildly critical evaluation of the American way of life” (Lee 2009, p. 37). A second, interrelated societal force was the slowly but continuously emerging conservative pro-business, anti-government political and social climate. This resulted in open letters and campaigns against academic economists researching and teaching outside of neoclassical economics, such as Keynesian views of the macro economy and Keynesian pro-government interventionist policies. But the business community and the network of pro-business foundations have also actively supported and collaborated with neoclassical economics (Lee 2004).

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One example, which captures the changing climate after the Second World War, is the increasingly hostile reaction to institutionalist and Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith has written extensively on issues of economic power and was highly critical of powerful corporations and the post-war American capitalism (Dunn and Pressman 2005; Galbraith 1983). Besides, he regularly reached out of academic economics as an influential policy advisor, writer of bestselling books and co-producer of the television series The Age of Uncertainty broadcast by the BBC in 1977, which covers the history of economic thought and the social context thereof. Throughout his career and particularly before the television series was aired, Galbraith was subjected to hostilities from conservative think tanks, fellow economists in disagreement with his perspectives, media and politicians. In particular, his credibility as an economist was frequently called into question by others, who referenced his activities beyond academic economics as proof of his political normative stance. Milton Friedman, for instance, referred to Galbraith as a “missionary seeking converts” (as cited in Burgin 2013, p. 206). As a result of the attacks on The Age of Uncertainty, it was aired in the US together with a brief critique of Galbraith’s analysis from a conservative perspective coordinated by the Hoover Institution. Moreover, Milton Friedman, long-term adversary of Galbraith’s thought, gave his own response to Galbraith in his series Free to Choose, which was partly made possible by a rapidly developing network of corporation and foundation support (Burgin 2013).

Although in a much different institutional and historical context, a similar development took place in Germany with the slow eradication of alternative, Keynesian and more radical economic thought in the post-war period. Before the Second World War, there was a strong tradition of German economics close to Keynesian macro-economics. In addition, the German historical school had been highly influential, whereas mathematical analysis had played only a minor role (Hesse 2012; Michaelides and Milios 2009). This orientation changed rapidly after the war. Discussing a number of factors related to this reorientation, Hesse (2012) in particular stresses the long-term effects of the forced migration of many Jewish and politically inopportune economists who fled Nazi Germany as well as the profound Americanisation of German economics. Although there was a short rise of heterodox economics in Germany after the 1970s due to the establishment of new types of universities in Germany, such alternative perspectives were eradicated over time (Heise and Thieme 2016). An interrelated development of German academic economics is the rising influence of “ordoliberalism”, which is a theory developed by economists

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such as Walter Eucken in reaction both to the consequences of unregulated liberalism in the late nineteenth and early years of the twentieth century as well as subsequent Nazi fiscal and monetary interventionism (Dullien and Guérot 2012). The central theoretical tenet of ordoliberalism is that governments are needed to ensure a competitive market economy based on a strong legal framework and the prevention of cartels and monopolies. Beyond the necessary institutions to ensure a “policy of order” (Ordnungspolitik) to the market economy, ordoliberal economists are highly critical of government policies such as expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to stabilise the business cycle in a recession, which in that sense is highly anti-Keynesian (Dullien and Guérot 2012). Politically, ordoliberalism was foundational in the formation of the post-war German economic policy order and the establishment of the “social market economy”. Although it lost its status as an academic current in Germany, its “long shadow” is still deeply enshrined in Germany’s economic policy institutions as well as its economic policy discourses (see below) (Dullien and Guérot 2012; Pühringer 2017). In essence, in the period following the Second World War, economics was reduced to a narrow set of assumptions dominated largely by marketliberal perspectives. But what exactly does “economics” mean in the narrowed, market-liberal understanding? The definitions often differ slightly but are never far removed from G. S. Becker’s (1976) famous “economic approach”. The “economic approach” paints a picture of human behaviour as rational, forward-looking and consistent over time. Human decision-making is reduced to the evaluation of situations based on their own preferences, abstracting from any outside influence. Decisions such as which job to pursue, how much time to dedicate towards work and leisure time or which car to buy is ultimately based on the individual’s taste and preferences. This does not mean that human decision-making is free from mistakes. People are not perfectly rational all the time but act as if they are rational. This means that people attempt to maximise their own gains and that they respond to incentives (Teixeira 2010). Although this understanding of human decision-making is often claimed to be a mere description of how humans act, it is in fact highly ideological and value-laden (see Chapter 3 by Grisold). Notably, this “economic approach” has been used to analyse any type of human interaction. This understanding makes it possible not only to study economic relations but also to study marriages and divorce, the use of drugs, the tradition of Christmas gifts, parenting strategies, the Ku Klux Klan or wars in just the same fashion (Fine and Milonakis 2009). Or in Becker’s own words: The economic approach does not draw conceptual distinctions between major and minor decisions, such as those involving life and death in contrast

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to the choice of a brand of coffee; or between decisions said to involve strong emotions and those with little emotional involvement such as in choosing a mate or the number of children in contrast to buying paint; or between decisions by persons with different incomes, education, or family backgrounds. [Becker 1976, pp. 7–8] Although the above quote may seem somewhat extreme, it actually developed stark significance within economics. This is probably best traced in the prestigious Chicago-published Journal of Political Economy, which carries articles explaining, for example, that people commit suicide when the net present value of their future utility is negative. At the heart of the “economic approach” is a firmly market-based thinking, which G. S. Becker and many of his successors strongly advocate. In this view, markets should face only minimal regulation and should be extended to as many economic and social realms as possible, since such mechanisms are seen as a superior mechanism for coordinating economic life and beyond (Rothschild 2008). Or in G. S. Becker’s own words: “When you put the collection of individuals together in markets, the markets perform better than any alternative that has ever been devised” (Sorman 2014). This perspective downplays the fundamental role of the state to structure and enable economic activity and typically characterises it as inefficient interventionism. The “economic approach” conceptualises people as entrepreneurs and business people in all walks of life, from market activities to interactions with family and friends. In Becker’s view, market-based solutions help to solve many other seemingly intractable public problems, such as the immigration system, drug trafficking, traffic congestion and many others. The common denominator is always the same: market-based solutions are the most effective solution to public policy problems. Conversely, Becker was very eager to denounce governments’ regulatory and spending activities as ineffective, causing multiple unintended negative consequences on the fiscal, behavioural and moral level (Sorman 2014). Activity Now that you have read some elements of the “economic approach”, let’s think about the advantages and disadvantages of such a perspective again. Read the following excerpt from “Cash for Kidneys: The Case for a Market for Organs” by Gary S. Becker and Julio J. Elias in the Wall Street Journal (18 January 2014), which argues for market-based solutions to the public policy problem of organ donor shortage. In the op-ed, both

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authors argue that a market for organ donors would be an effective solution to eliminate the existing supply-demand gap and would reduce the waiting time to get a kidney transplant. In this newly established market, a substantial number of kidneys would be sold for about $15,000 each, according to their estimations. Let’s see how they reason their approach: The system that we’re proposing would include payment to individuals who agree that their organs can be used after they die. This is important because transplants for heart and lungs and most liver transplants only use organs from the deceased. Under a new system, individuals would sell their organs “forward” (that is, for future use), with payment going to their heirs after their organs are harvested. Relatives sometimes refuse to have organs used even when a deceased family member has explicitly requested it, and they would be more inclined to honor such wishes if they received substantial compensation for their assent. … Paying for organs would lead to more transplants – and thereby, perhaps, to a large increase in the overall medical costs of transplantation. But it would save the cost of dialysis for people waiting for kidney transplants and other costs to individuals waiting for other organs. More important, it would prevent thousands of deaths and improve the quality of life among those who now must wait years before getting the organs they need. Initially, a market in the purchase and sale of organs would seem strange, and many might continue to consider that market “repugnant.” Over time, however, the sale of organs would grow to be accepted, just as the voluntary military now has widespread support.

Now think about the following questions: •

• •

Which assumptions about human behaviour and the design and functioning of markets are underlying the “economic approach” to a donor market? What are the advantages of arguing from a market-based perspective? What are the disadvantages of such a market-based perspective?

Economics Today

Although economics has been and still is firmly based around the “economic approach”, the discipline has also changed and evolved since the 1980s, with new theories extending the original canon to include new concepts such as

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imperfect information and transaction costs. According to an influential assessment by Colander et al. (2004, p. 492), “Modern mainstream economics is open to new approaches, as long as they are done with a careful understanding of the strengths of the recent orthodox approach and with a modelling methodology acceptable to the mainstream”. This implies that research on economic issues should be firmly in line with the model of human decision-making underlying the “economic approach” but based on a much more empirical, quantitative analysis. This development is “a significant departure from the now disparaged over-theoretical orientations of the 1970s and 1980s” (Fourcade et al. 2015, p. 92). In the past, economic analysis was much more based on purely theoretical considerations. In contrast, economics in its recent version is centred on real-world problems making use of all kinds of data and methods. Hence, economics became more focused on applied, empirical problems (see also Cedrini and Fontana 2015).

Let’s use another example to understand the recent shifts in economics. Consider the organ donor example again, where we have seen that the “economic approach” strictly favours market-based solutions to the public policy problem of organ donor shortage. In the past, such an analysis was typically based on a few abstract and simple assumptions about human behaviour and decision-making and the functioning of markets. In today’s economics, much more emphasis is placed on the empirical analysis and quantitative methods. For instance, a recent analysis by Elias et al. (2015) takes up the organ donor problem and investigates the attitudes towards payments for human organs based on surveys and an analysis of public opinion in the US.

Yet the development and change of modern mainstream economics also has its limits. As already cited above, Colander et al. (2004) argue that much is possible if the modelling methodology acceptable to the mainstream is applied. In fact, this means remaining in the quantitative empirical methodology with a largely individualist perspective on many economic processes and problems (Angrist et al. 2017; Starr 2014). For instance, the American Economic Association (2022), the most important association for academic economists in the US, defines the field of economics as a “study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives, or the study of decisionmaking”. This dominance of a narrow set of assumptions to study economic questions creates blind spots and one-sidedness as to how and why to approach certain economic problems and questions. In addition to the narrowness of fundamental assumptions, critical observers of the current mainstream in economics highlight various additional limitations. First, several observers stress that the underlying idea of a market

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as a solution to public policy problems is, implicitly or explicitly, seen as a morally desirable construct within many mainstream economics perspectives – still echoing the “economics approach” (Kvangraven and Alves 2019; Stilwell 2019). Market mechanisms are often preferred economic policies to coordinate economic relations (Fourcade et al., 2015). Other perspectives on public policy problems such as the role of the state to provide services (see Chapter 3) are then typically side-lined or perceived as ineffective.

Let’s revisit the organ donor example again. The above cited analysis by Elias et al. (2015) uses modern economic methods to study the organ donor problem. Through the self-imposed focus on attitudes towards payments for human organs, their analysis implicitly carries the normative assumption that marketand payment-based systems are superior to other forms of social organisation. This normative stance comes out quite clearly in the following statement from their discussion: “This study finds that support for a market-based solution to the organ shortage did increase in response to documented and verifiable information about its potential benefits” (Elias et al. 2015, p. 364)

A second, related critique argues that – among other topics – mainstream economics (still) struggles to address the climate crisis appropriately. Coscieme et al. (2019) criticise that many mainstream economic approaches studying the climate crisis fail to conceptualise the physical limits and planetary boundaries adequately, which leads to a naïve and dangerous perspective on economic growth as the only desirable goal (see also Keen 2020). For instance, the influential “environmental Kuznets curve” states that environmental degradation first rises and then falls as per capita income grows, following an inverted U-shaped pattern. Although empirically dubious and often disproven, such concepts add to the deep-rooted belief in unlimited economic growth (Coscieme et al. 2019). Until recently, standard introductory mainstream economics textbooks have often entirely missed including environmental or ecological issues. Those that have incorporated them tended to treat the environment as merely a specialist issue in addition to standard concerns, and based on solutions that conform to those standard concerns (Gills and Morgan 2020). IN A NUTSHELL Section 1 argued that economic imaginaries are powerful narratives that structure people’s fundamental understanding of economic relations. Those economic

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imaginaries are legitimised and supported by powerful economic theories. It is important to note again that economic imaginaries and scientific economic theories are not the same, but they have important interrelations (as we will see below). Section 2 established that economics comprises a variety of perspectives about the economy, namely neoclassical, (Post-)Keynesian, institutional and Marxian economics (and even more (re-)combinations of the former). The section also established that those perspectives are not equally present in today’s economics, as some are more dominant than others. The “economics approach” was and still is a dominant and powerful perspective within academic economics.

3.  The Role of Economics to Inform Economic Imaginaries

This section brings together and extends the two previous sections. Any economic idea needs channels of communication in order to become an established economic imaginary. In the following, three key channels for economic theories to inform existing economic imaginaries will be explained and discussed. These channels are not mutually exclusive, and there are also obvious overlaps between them. The key idea is that the economy is produced in relation to existing economic knowledge by way of economic imaginaries. • The first key channel – how economic theories inform economic imaginaries is through academic economists’ active engagement as commentators and interpreters of economic relations. The argument that economists are key to the structuring of political and societal processes has already been put forward by the famous macro-economist John Maynard Keynes (1936, p. 383): “The ideas of economists and political philosophers … are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” More recently, this profound influence of economists on the economy and society is described with the concept of “performativity”, which argues that “economics does not describe an existing external ‘economy’, but brings that economy into being: economics performs the economy, creating the phenomena it describes” (MacKenzie and Millo 2003, p. 103). Through mass and social media, economists offer interpretations of economic events and processes as well as policy advice on how economic relations should be structured and reformed. Academic economists frequently

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occupy leading positions on the advisory boards of public and private entities; many countries have established a special council of economic experts such as the Council of Economic Advisors in the US and the German Sachverständigenrat (German Council of Economic Experts) (Beyer and Puehringer 2019; Kapeller et al. 2021). Historically, economists have been close to political and economic elites and able to offer their expertise directly to decision-makers in various areas (Fourcade et al. 2015). Likewise, economists are frequent references and actively engage in media debates on economic and social issues. They take part in public discourses, trying to convince the public that certain economic ideas are preferable to others. Thereby, they indirectly influence decision-makers through the pressure of public opinion (Theine 2021; Wehrheim 2021). The key argument here is that economists are social actors with a powerful, elite position in society that allows them the ability to influence economic imaginaries to structure economic and social life (Maesse 2015; Rossier and Benz 2021). • The second key channel – how economic theories inform economic imaginaries is through diverse economic actors (e.g., politicians, public officials, corporations, employee and employer representatives of NGOs, lobby groups, or think tanks) drawing on selected economic theory to advance their preferred understanding of economic relations. Economic actors use economic theories when interacting with the world, thereby shaping it according to their preferences. In this way, they perform the economy, making the real economy more like the theories of it (Aspers 2007). Although such actors are highly diverse, they all have in common that they are trying to shape the economy to their preference. They cherry-pick selected economic ideas to advance their own interpretation of economic relations. The basic idea here is that economic theories are “passive” in the sense that they are used by economic actors, but still they play a key role, as they are used to legitimise certain interpretations of the economy. • The third key channel – how economic theories inform economic imaginaries is through economics textbooks that form young students’ minds (Zuidhof 2014). Each year in the US alone, it is estimated that around 1.5 million undergraduate students take an introductory course in economics and about 750,000 new textbooks are sold (Zuidhof 2014). These introductory courses are mandatory not only for economic students but also for many non-economics students. According to Frank (2014), about 40 per cent of American undergraduate students take at least one introductory economics course. Economics textbooks are highly standardised, introducing students to a fixed and narrow corpus of theoretical and methodological considerations

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(Bowles and Carlin 2020). Within (current) economics textbooks, the focus lies especially on micro-economic topics of demand and supply, competition and market structure. Notably different from older textbook versions, at least the two very influential textbooks by Mankiw, first published in 1997, and Krugman-Wells, first published in 2005, they begin with a brief lesson on “thinking like an economist”, which “take[s]‌ the student away from their own world to an abstract one where they are asked to learn a set of truths known to the economist” (Bowles and Carlin 2020, pp. 190–191). “Thinking like an economist” conveys in a very condensed form that economics is about rational-thinking individuals interacting on competitive markets, with intervention only necessary when markets (atypically) fail. In this way, economics textbooks – often right from the beginning – abstract from or only marginally engage with real-world economic problems such as power relations, wealth creation, environmental sustainability, inequality, financial instability or the role of cooperatives and other entities in the production and distribution of goods and services (Bowles and Carlin 2020; Kalmi 2006; see Chapter 5 for a detailed review of economics textbooks). IN A NUTSHELL Media plays a role in all three channels. As mentioned, economists are important actors in the interpretation of economic reality (channel one); within the realm of the media, they are used as sources to define economic problems, public policies and solutions. Economic actors use economic theories to advance and legitimate their interests (channel two). When they advance their interests through the media, they frequently draw on economic theories to do so. A very narrow, marketliberal form of economic theory is at the core of standardised economics textbooks around the world, thereby shaping the perspective of many young students globally (channel three). Here, the link to the media is that many future journalists learn about economics from such narrow-minded textbooks, which shapes their future perspective when reporting on economic and social matters later on.

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4.  Neoliberalism as a Powerful Economic Imaginary

Let’s consider a specific example of a specific economic imaginary that structures economic and social processes: the case of neoliberalism. First, let’s define neoliberalism. Although there is some difficulty in defining neoliberalism due to its various streams, changes over time and different interpretations (Jessop 2019), most scholars agree that neoliberalism is centred on the idea that market-based relations are an efficient and superior way of organising the economy. Therefore, neoliberalism is based on marketliberal economic theories. The fundamental idea goes back to Hayek, who argues that markets know more than any individual and therefore cannot be surpassed as a mechanism of coordination. In neoliberalism, a marketbased economy is closely connected to freedom as autonomous self-governed individuals, all naturally equipped with a neoclassical version of “rationality” and motives of self-interest, and who can interact without any restrictions or limitations on markets (Van Horn and Mirowski 2010). The superiority of markets implies a limited capacity of the state and governments to structure economic relations efficiently. The deeply rooted suspicion of neoliberalism is that “the state and its agents are wasteful, selfserving, irrational, blind to the merits of competition, excessively ‘intellectual’ and resistant to change” (Davies 2018, p. 274). Accordingly, government involvement in the economy must be regulated and minimised, for instance by deregulating state enterprises, reducing the public sector and transforming it around principles extracted from the market and private sector enterprises. At the same time, the state is fundamental to neoliberal thought, as it works to enshrine markets and market-like behaviours and culture across the economy and society. It is, in fact, not only about safeguarding existing markets but also about extending market-based solutions to novel policy areas ranging from health care and the environment to housing and unemployment. Governments are supposed to set the market conditions for competition and market-based interaction in as many spheres of the economy and society as possible. Advocates of neoliberalism tend to argue that their accounts of the economy and society are self-evident, neutral descriptions of contemporary realities. Yet this is far from the case, as such accounts describe the economy and society in very selected terms. The neoliberal account summarised above is not a natural or normal way for economies to be organised or people to interact but a constructed and selected account. In other words, neoliberalism is an economic imaginary selecting and highlighting certain realities of the world while masking and ignoring others. With its strict focus on individual market rationality, neoliberalism masks motives that might not be economic. With the dissemination of market rationality, individuals are configured as rational market actors and

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entrepreneurs of the self in every sphere of life, which masks other motives such as solidarity, family belongings and friendship. Concerns of justice and equality become subordinated to incentives and market-based thinking. Rooted in the superiority of markets ideology, neoliberalism distrusts democracy and, thus, aims to entrench the market economy in a quasi-constitutional fashion. Therefore, neoliberalism carries a deeply rooted state-phobic, democracysceptic, pro-business orientation and remains an agenda for the transformation of society as a whole (Davies 2018; Zuidhof 2014). Neoliberalism downplays and delegitimises the importance and values of democratic decision-making and its role for economy and society (Brown 2015). In contrast to the deep-rooted suspicion of the state’s role, corporations are usually met with much less scepticism and are conceptualised as engines of progress and innovation. In fact, neoliberal policies have used state power to benefit corporations and their executives in various ways. For instance, the neoliberalist model of globalisation has promoted the interests of corporations as part of economic deregulation and liberalisation. Massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, vast deregulation, the privatisation and outsourcing of public services (in particular of telecommunication, transportation and energy industries) and the cutback of welfare states first started by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s and subsequently “exported” to many other countries benefitted the corporations, and the capitalist class more broadly, and led to a massive redistribution of wealth and power from the lower classes to the economic elites (Barkan 2018; Harvey 2005). As described above, economic theories inform existing economic imaginaries. Let’s briefly explore how neoclassical and market-liberal economics contribute to the establishment and dominance of neoliberalism by considering the three channels described in Section 3. In the first key channel, the actions and activities of economists contributed to the rise and dominance of neoliberalism. In particular, the Chicago School of Economics helped supply the rationale for neoliberalism’s rise by laying conceptual groundworks in many key areas, such as economic freedom, extensive market-based orders, and a redefinition of the economic and political influence of democracy. With the establishment of the Mont Pelerin Society, a highly influential think tank that promoted neoliberal ideas worldwide, the Chicago School of Economics actively contributed to the rise of neoliberalism as a powerful economic imaginary (Van Horn and Mirowski 2010; Van Horn and Nik-Khah 2018). Also very explicitly, market-liberal academic economists acted as commentators and interpreters of economic relations in public debates. G. S. Becker, for instance, was a long-standing columnist at Business Week, member of the Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Defence and fellow at the influential Hoover Institution. We can only speculate about the motivations to engage in such activities beyond his regular university employment. But for

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sure they helped to popularise market-based thinking and thus contributed to the rise of neoliberalism as a powerful economic imaginary (Carbone 2018; Teixeira 2010). In the second key channel, various economic actors draw on market-based economic theory to advance neoliberalism as their preferred understanding of economic relations. Supporters of neoliberal thinking frequently draw on (selected) neoclassical economics to advance the idea that market processes are highly efficient, whereas governments’ “command-and-control” mechanisms are inefficient and resource-wasting. The primacy of market-based and anti-state policies is frequently advanced with reference to market-liberal and neoclassical economists (Engartner 2012). In the German context, for instance, various influential think tanks and institutions reference marketliberal economic ideas to advance their neo- and ordoliberal ideas (Kapeller et al. 2021). In the third key channel, economics textbooks play their part in advancing neoliberalism as a powerful economic imaginary. Highly influential and widely published textbooks such as Samuelson’s Economics, first published in 1948, and Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, published in various editions since 1997, advance theoretical concepts highly compatible with neoliberal thought. For instance, such textbooks reiterate that laissez-faire, marketbased economic policy is the ideal method for taking care of the needs of individuals in society. The ten principles “to think like an economist’ are highly compatible with neoliberal thought. Part of these principles are catch phrases such as “markets are usually a good way to organize economic activities” or “governments can sometimes improve market outcomes” (as cited in Zuidhof 2014, p. 175). The purpose of these principles is not only to give students an easy introduction to economics but also to naturalise market-based thinking as an all-encompassing approach to understanding the economy (Zuidhof 2014). Importantly, students introduced to market-based thinking will graduate from university and draw on these textbook accounts in their roles as journalists, commentators, policy advisors, economists and non-economists when explaining and discussing economics in public (Zuidhof 2014). This way, economics textbooks are an important device for making market-liberal thinking public and thus play their part in advancing neoliberalism as a powerful economic imaginary. Again, the media plays a key role in all of these channels as well, thereby advancing and legitimising neoliberalism as a powerful economic imaginary (see also the introduction for related arguments). It draws on market-liberal economists (channel one) as frequent sources to interpret and explain economic and social policy matters (e.g., Harjuniemi 2021). The media often prioritises elite and institutionalised perspectives such as corporate organisations, which

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often carry market-liberal interpretations of economic and social matters (channel two). Finally, the education of journalists (channel three) working in media companies is often implicitly or explicitly based on market-liberal perspectives (Sagvosdkin 2021). 5.  Conclusion: Why is That Important for Economic Journalism?

This chapter argued that economic and social reality is complex, multifaceted and ambiguous. In order to make sense of this reality and act within it, people are dependent on simplified understandings – “economic imaginaries” – of the day-to-day economic reality. “Economic imaginaries” are legitimised and supported by powerful ideas and theories about the economy and economic relations originating in the scientific field of economics. Taking a closer look at academic economics, we can see that, while various schools of thought exist, neoclassical and market-liberal thinking is the dominant stream. Neoclassical and market-liberal thinking relates to economic imaginaries by being compatible with one specific imaginary – neoliberalism. Three channels are explored through which neoclassical and market-liberal thinking informs neoliberalism: (1) academic economists’ active engagement as commentators and interpreters of economic relations, (2) various economic actors drawing on selected economic theory to advance their preferred understanding of economic relations, and (3) economics textbooks that shape young students’ minds much beyond narrow economics. Let’s close by reflecting briefly on why the arguments and perspectives advanced in this chapter are important for economic journalism. The key argument is that media and journalism take an active part in the rise, legitimation and dominance of specific economic imaginaries. By selecting and preferring certain actors as sources of news stories, media and journalism take part in the selection of economic imaginaries. For instance, various media outlets have consistently used neoliberal interpretations to explain economic reality. Making use of the concepts and arguments of this chapter, students of journalism and media as well as journalists themselves are ideally well equipped to consciously draw on different economic imaginaries when engaging with economics news. That is, they can draw on different economic imaginaries when making news themselves. At the same time, they are ideally aware of the economic imaginary underlying certain interpretations of economic processes advanced by economic actors and economists or within educational material. Therefore, this chapter lays important groundwork for Part III, as it provides students and journalists with the fundamental means to critically evaluate economic facts, sources and stories.

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Answers to the Activity

Which assumptions about human behaviour and the design and functioning of markets are underlying the “economic approach” to a donor market? • Human behaviour is centred on economic thinking and monetary incentives. In the case of organ donations, humans will “donate” their kidneys if the price is high enough to meet their monetary requirement. • Monetary considerations trump moral desires. In the case of organ donations, the introduction of such a market might cause initial moral outrage, but this will eventually be side-lined in favour of monetary considerations. • Markets typically function efficiently and are – if well designed – free of misuse and fraud. In the case of organ donations, this is a critical assumption for the argument to introduce such a market. Otherwise, one would need to be much more sceptical about the usefulness of markets for organ donations. What are the advantages of arguing from a market-based perspective? • One of the main assumptions of market-based thinking – that markets, if well designed, are superior to other types of social coordination – provides a clear cut and unambiguous answer to public policy problems: markets should be introduced to solve such problems. • Market-based thinking often provides a common-sense rhetoric, in this case that human behaviour is based on monetary considerations. This line of argumentation often overlaps with the day-to-day experiences of people. What are the disadvantages of such a market-based perspective? • The almost exclusive focus on market-based thinking side-lines other important ways to tackle public policy issues. In the case of donor markets, this perspective side-lines the possibility to draw on moral considerations to tackle this problem. Instead of establishing markets (which in reality has many possible side-effects), public policy could also try to nudge people towards contributing to organ donations by drawing on moral and ethical considerations. • The complexity of human decision-making is typically reduced to a narrow and simple perspective – namely, that human behaviour is centred on economic thinking and monetary incentives. This side-lines moral and ethical considerations in human decision-making. The important point is that humans are typically not either/or but that the institutional setting

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can play an important role in whether humans tend towards economistic or value-based decision-making. List of Concepts Introduced

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3 WHAT JOURNALISTS CAN LEARN FROM HETERODOX ECONOMICS Andrea Grisold

Advance Organiser

This chapter discusses how journalists can learn from heterodox economics to critically explore issues of economics. It will start by explaining what is meant by heterodox economics, why it is important and how journalists can use it as a toolbox when conducting investigations on economic issues and policies. The chapter then gives evidence of the merits of heterodox economic thinking and research along three major topics for which heterodox economics has proven useful, yet necessary, to understand economic phenomena: 1. Crises; 2. The merits of the market; 3. The role of the state. This chapter makes it clear that (1) there is more than one economic theory, (2) the dominant ones do not always fit, especially ones that ignore crises, in a period of crisis, and (3) journalists should be critical of economic theories that just happen to suit those in power. 1. Introduction

The principal enemy is orthodoxy: to use the same recipe, administer the same therapy, to resolve the most various types of problems; never to admit complexity and try to reduce it as much as possible, while ignoring that things are always more complicated in reality. [Hirschman 2001, p. 110] DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-4

What Journalists Can Learn from Heterodox Economics  53

This chapter discusses how journalists can learn from heterodox economics to critically explore issues of economics. The opening quote by Albert Hirschman gives the first answer as to why heterodox economics offers a viable, maybe even indispensable diversification for critical journalists to not only understand economics but also to judge feasible policy alternatives and thus ways to alter the beaten paths in economic relations and thinking: because orthodox mainstream economics displays the many characteristics Hirschman points to as shortcomings of orthodoxy. In the following, I will start explaining what is meant by heterodox economics, why it is important and how journalists can use it as a toolbox when conducting investigations on economic issues and policies. Economics as a science and teaching field is, in most parts of the world, “dominated by a monoculture of thought that structurally prevents different approaches …, proposes one-sided policies, and limits the thinking of the next generation of decision makers”. This is how the network “Rethinking Economics” starts its explanation for why promoting pluralism in economic theories and methods is highly important, why the highlighting of solutions to real-world problems is at stake and why it thinks it is necessary to enhance self-criticism and openness among economists (www.rethi​nkec​onom​ics.org/about/). It is unsurprising that the voices opposing such a one-sided economics got louder, especially after the GFC in 2008. Many have argued that the economics profession needs to take a long, hard look at itself in the light of that global crisis. Yet the lack of historical and critical perspectives in the teaching of economics in most curricula is still to be countered. Reflexive learning that provides a contextualisation and evaluation of economic theory and policies has been almost absent from economics’ courses until now (featuring in only 2.5 per cent of modules, according to a report by the Post-Crash Economics Society at Manchester University [Reisz 2016]). From the point of view of journalism, it is extremely helpful to have a good understanding of different economic theories as we enter crisis after crisis, all with different angles, reasons and challenges. So this chapter intends to make clear the following: 1. There is more than one economic theory; 2. The dominant theories don’t always fit, especially theories that ignore crises, in a period of crisis; 3. Journalists should be critical of economic theories that just happen to suit those in power. 2.  What is Heterodox Economics?

Heterodox economics is an umbrella term covering various strands of economic thought as well as a series of interdisciplinary research fields. Doing

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economics is to study the process of social provisioning in a broad sense, with theoretical foundations such as the role of uncertainty in economic action or the importance of the principles of effective demand and endogenous money. Heterodox economists critically examine the dominant strands of the discipline of economics (see Chapter 2 for an overview) and develop alternatives on a conceptual and practical level (Morgan and Embery 2018). The work of heterodox economists develops diverse explanations for economic processes and outcomes, with the starting point that processes are not assumed to be based exclusively on individual rational behaviour. Instead, the determinants of economic behaviour are studied, along with how concrete actions within that context can be explained by institutional settings and cultural norms. Dealing with these neglected aspects of economic life from the perspective of political economy, seen in terms of the inseparable interaction of political, social, historical, cultural and economic components, enables a more holistic view of economics as social provisioning and practice. Thus, heterodox economics can be defined as: ⇨ “The study of production and distribution of economic surplus, including the role of power relations in determining economic relationships, a study of economic systems, … and the employment of theories that have these issues at their core” (Kvangraven and Alves 2019, p. 14). A constituting aspect of heterodox economics is the acceptance of the role of power in economics. For heterodox economists, power is an all-encompassing feature of economic relations and a key force that, in various configurations, structures and underlies economic processes. For example, the factors and causes of rising economic inequality are deeply connected to issues of power. From an institutionalist perspective, John K. Galbraith can be cited as the economist directing a strong focus on power in economics. His most famous concepts are corporate power and countervailing power (1964). The former translates into the ability to influence or even control prices and wages, as well as creating consumer demand through advertising and persuasion (Galbraith 1964; 1970). The latter can keep it at bay, for instance through trade unions, labour movements or consumers’ cooperatives. In his later work, Galbraith (1983) presented a further typology to exercise power. For example, in his discussion of “condign and compensatory power” he refers to an actor doing something because of the threat of (physical) punishment or because of a prospective reward. Both are overt forms of power in the sense that both the one asserting the power and the one subordinating are aware of the process. In contrast, “conditioning power” is exercised by changing beliefs and attitudes: “Persuasion, education, or the social commitment to what seems natural, proper, or right causes the individual to submit to the will

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of another or of others” (Galbraith 1983, pp. 5–6). Compliance with social or cultural conditions is then taken for granted and seems to be inherently correct; it reflects the accepted view of what individuals should do and believe. As opposed to the two other forms, conditioning power is often implicit, “the fact of submission is not recognised” (Galbraith 1983, p. 6). While there are different, sometimes conflicting theories in every science field, usually in critical confrontation and communication, economics is different because one of the theories, the mainstream neoclassical (see Chapter 2), is both imperialistic and dominant, even hegemonic, thus claiming the only truth in economic thinking (Rothschild 2007). While heterodox economics is mostly rejected or neglected in the academic world of economics, it is gaining traction outside of economics. Heterodox economists publish in the top journals of other fields (be it politics, geography, sociology, philosophy, etc.), they get media coverage in leading news media (e.g. the Financial Times; this especially holds true for prominent scholars), and they do get jobs at top universities (such as University of Cambridge, LSE or Columbia University) but outside of economics departments. Outside the US and Europe, heterodox economists are not as marginalised, a prominent example being Brazil (see Dequech 2018). Heterodox economics is popular among students, the public and non-economists (e.g., Society for Pluralist Economics; Rethinking Economics). But, as Kvangraven and Alves (2019, p. 6) point out correctly, “claiming that it is ‘hip’ to be heterodox is inaccurate, as heterodox economists are still largely excluded from their own field” in academia. 3.  Why Heterodox Economics?

Economics limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans. [Robinson 1962, p. 28] A lack of diversity of thought in economics curricula is paired with a lack of diversity amongst prominent thinkers and practitioners. Women, people of colour, Global South populations, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are excluded from reading lists, ignored by research and invisible in the dominant neoclassical models. As a result, our economics education fails to address the critical issues of our time. Climate change, racial discrimination, inequality and global health crises are absent from textbooks and seminars (see also Chapter 2). Openness to alternative methods can overcome the shortcomings of the mainstream mentioned above and give larger space for classes, gender, institutions, instability, uncertainty, exploitation, power asymmetries, distributional conflicts and ecological issues. Heterodox economics

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comprises a pluralist community with a diversity of origins, purposes and standards for economic reasoning, ranging, amongst others, from the history and philosophy of economics to modelling, community organising and policymaking (Kvangraven and Alves 2019; Mearman et al. 2020). Heterodox economists do not necessarily reject any analysis based on the “holy trinity” of conventional economics, i.e., scarcity, rationality and equilibrium, but contest the current state of the economic discipline, which posits that economic research should always assume this holy trinity as the only relevant starting point for economic thought. Hence, while heterodox economics is an open-minded, interested and critical starting point for analysing economic issues, it also serves as a common denominator for those economic views that are increasingly marginalised within the economics’ profession. Why is it important, inspiring and necessary – for a proper understanding of economic contexts, behaviour and policies – to pay attention to heterodox economics? I will try to give a short answer along four areas: change, dominance, uncertainty and institutions: • Change: Economic actors (firms, consumers, etc.) and institutions (technology, regulations, etc.) are constantly evolving; the dynamics of this process are the distinctive aspect of heterodox economics. • Dominance and social conflict: The power and domination of one group over another in material as well as social terms are the driving forces of economic phenomena. The economy is not a harmonious entity but conflict ridden, with different interest groups struggling for hegemony and dominance. • Uncertainty: Mankind’s future fate is uncertain, and our knowledge about this is fallible. Therefore, the beliefs we hold about the future in order to deal with uncertainty and changes in these beliefs are the central determinant of the economy.1 • Institutions: The institutional framework is crucial for the study of economics. As systems of embedded social rules, institutions and cultural affiliations are tied up with the economy and decisively influence its outcome.

TO SUM UP In contrast to modern mainstream economics, which is based on methodological individualism (the individual is the basic unit of analysis; any social and economic topic has to be explained by individual behaviour, even macroeconomic phenomena), heterodox economics takes a holistic

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and historical approach. For journalistic practice, this means not only to tell stories of individual lives, but – additionally, not alternatively – to consider the meta connections of underlying structures and economic patterns. In short: the macro level.

In the following, I will give evidence of the merits and advantages of heterodox economic thinking and research. I will do so along three major topics for which heterodox economics have proven useful, and indeed necessary, to understand economic phenomena: 1. Analysing and combatting crises; 2. Valuing, but not overvaluing, the market as an important economic institution; 3. The role of the state for the well-being of a society. 4. Crises

One of the central benefits of heterodox economics is its ability and willingness to deal with crises phenomena. As neoclassical/neoliberal strands of economics conceive of economic crises as based on false/wrong state intervention only (the economy, left undisturbed, would consequently be in a permanent equilibrium), their standard measure to tackle a crisis from a mainstream economics standpoint is to cut state activities, which are viewed almost exclusively as THE reason for all market distortions. Quite to the contrary, heterodox approaches view crises phenomena as an integral part of our current economic system and deal with them in a complex and realistic way that is not determined by a specific ideology. Let’s refer to some of the world’s best-known economists, many of them Nobel Price laureates (Joseph E. Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and Robert Shiller, to name just a few), who have criticised economics research in recent years. For example, Paul Krugman (2012) viewed austerity measures as counterproductive to fight crises, Joseph Stiglitz (2012) warned that increased inequality was too high a price to pay, and Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson (2010) were able to show that a higher degree of equality benefits the economic development and economic growth in capitalist societies. Even before the GFC, Robert Shiller (2000) warned of the variability of asset prices and the underlying irrationality of financial markets, according to irrational expectations. On a theoretical stance, Robert Solow (2010) argued that standard macroeconomic models meet the internal logic of the profession but not any serious reality requirement. In the same vein, the former chairman of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, detects a failure of

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economics in respect to the financial crisis, as he notes: “You cannot see a crisis coming if you have theories and models that assume that the crisis is impossible” (Turner 2016, p. 246). Given this fact, he proposes a “major change … in ideas and in the approach to the social science of economics” (Turner 2016, p. 15). Not least due to the GFC of 2007/2008, the justification and orientation of economics as a scientific field is in debate. But still, there has not been substantial change in the economics’ field since the global financial crisis (Skidelsky 2018; Steinbaum 2019), let alone more inclusivity or openness (e.g., in top journals, hiring practices, prizes and teaching). While there has been some ongoing self-critique within the mainstream (e.g., critique of dynamic-stochastic equilibrium models by Romer 2016 and Blanchard 2018), this does not mean that alternative heterodox theories, such as PostKeynesian theory or Marxian theory, are now considered to be valid economic theories by top economics institutions. The financial crisis had little impact on how the academic orthodoxy in economics is constructed and reproduced (Coyle 2013). Time for a Visible Hand showed the imperfections of financial markets immediately after the outbreak of the crisis (Griffith-Jones et al. 2010). Many more books offering a comprehensive analysis of the GFC were to follow. But even now, more than a decade after the outbreak of the GFC, some topics crucial to the systemic failure of the financial system have still not been properly addressed – for example, endogenous money and shadow banking, which seem to have played an important role. With the first, mainstream economics is still considering the money supply as exogenous (and set by the state), therefore it is not taking into consideration that the banking system has a striking ability to add to the money supply (or to reduce it) (Ramskogler [2014]). Thus, the money supply is not solely set by state institutions like the ECB but also driven by “endogenous” factors, factors within the economy (Ryner 2015). Shadow banking refers to financial institutions that act like banks but are not supervised/controlled like banks and therefore pose a higher risk to the economy On a theoretical level, heterodox theories – such as Hyman Minsky’s work on financial instability (1992) – rose to public prominence during the GFC because they turned out to provide powerful explanations for the US housing bubble and the resulting global financial crisis. His explanation on how a speculative euphoria develops helped a lot in understanding the crises phenomena that mainstream theories failed to predict and struggled to address. However, on a political level, the actual policies to prevent, for example, shadow banking from posing a risk to the financial system are still not in place. A prominent topic, namely to “cure” high state debt in the aftermath of a crisis, was austerity measures. Before Covid-19, austerity had dominated the

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policy agenda over the past decade. Although it appeared to end with the Covid-19 pandemic, a future return to harsh cutbacks cannot be ruled out and is indeed very likely. Against this background, Diane Perrons exemplifies in her latest book that, while austerity policies have devastating effects on people’s lives, their gendered dynamics are particularly conspicuous. Budget cuts have been overwhelmingly aimed at services used by women. She proves how the gender aspects of this economic and social catastrophe intersected with a range of other factors, making the experience of austerity very different for different groups – and highly unjust. That withstanding, it also undermined responses to Covid-19 (Perrons 2021). She finishes by criticising the justifications for austerity policies (for earlier literature in that vein see Atkinson 2014 and 2015; Taylor-Gooby at al 2017; Mirowski 2014) and poses the question whether there are compelling alternatives that can re-invigorate economies and societies after the pandemic and avoid a return to austerity, such as public policies to fight inequality, e.g., public health and public transport infrastructure, active housing, etc. (Perrons 2021; Atkinson 2014). Another factor, one that, for example, James Galbraith (2014) reintroduced into the discourse, is that many economic policies are old-fashioned in the way that they still rely on a concept of growth that was to be found at the beginning or the industrial height of capitalism but not in our economies of sluggish growth, environmental concerns and saturation. Turning to the latest crisis, some advocates of heterodox pluralism recognise a significant chance in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic: “Not least, thanks to its global synchronisation, the epidemic is also a unique challenge and opportunity for heterodox-pluralism and ecological-democratic research and teaching, evidencing the complementarity of various schools of thought” (Peukert 2020, p. 225; van Staveren 2015). 5.  The Role of Markets, Market Imperfections2

Whenever we reason about economics, the market is an important factor in those reasonings. But what exactly is a market? Take a Moment When you talk about a “market”, what do you mean by it? Please reflect. Think about a few examples of a “market”. After reading this section, examine which ones you think carry the name correctly and which should be labelled differently.

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⇨ The market, according to textbook economics, is an arrangement whereby buyers and sellers come to sell and buy goods. The market is seen as providing the equilibrium of demand and supply via the price mechanism.

For example, in the housing market people can buy and sell houses. When there are more people than houses, or more of a demand for houses, prices can go up. However, the market is more complex, with issues such as speculation, corruption, hoarding (for example of land) and state regulations, which make vulgar supply and demand economics idealistic at best.

Whenever there is talk about economics, the market is given a decisive role in several respects. Two mainstream versions of the highly positive role of markets are the following: 1. Market fundamentalism, best described as the belief that unfettered markets bestow welfare and prosperity, and that state interference with market processes generally decreases human well-being. This standpoint typically involves normative claims concerning the economic or moral superiority of free markets. 2. Market universalism, which involves the claim that markets are ubiquitous. Accordingly, the term “market” is used to describe a large number of varied processes or arrangements in the real world. Yet still, there is a paradox in the importance of the term and a lack of discussion about it, as, for example, Nobel laureate Douglass North already noted in the 1970s: “It is a peculiar fact that the literature on economics and economic history contains so little discussion of the central institution that underlies neo-classical economics – the market” (1977, p. 710; Ronald Coase 1988, p. 7, argues in the same vein). Much of the heterodox critique of the strong bias towards market-based theory and policy challenges the idea that “the market” and its specific logics can always lead to the best outcome. Hence, for many heterodox economists, this discussion is mainly about acknowledging pluralism. This implies that there are different ways to analyse an economic phenomenon, and competing approaches, methods and theories lead to different policy implications. Let us turn to a more foundational, fundamental question: What is, and what should be, the definition of “economics”? As highlighted at the very beginning of this chapter, heterodox economics defines economics as:

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⇨ The study of the process of social provisioning. In doing so, they expand the economic field beyond the market concept.

AN EXTENDED DEFINITION OF ECONOMICS AS SOCIAL PROVISIONING Here, it is feminist economics that played a crucial role in giving a clear-cut answer to what is important in the study of economics: social provisioning instead of maximising utility (Nelson 1995, van Staveren 2010; Grisold 2017). The great achievement of feminist economics – one of the strands of heterodox economics – is to bring non-market activities into the analysis of economics. According to its aim to acknowledge the important role women play in the economy, it puts special emphasis on the non-market provision of goods and services. Unpaid work, either at home or in general in the care sector, is therefore both a prerequisite and an important growth factor for the economy in general. Let’s take the Covid-19 crisis as one of the current examples where the role of women was specifically strong in absorbing the shocks (both from the online home schooling of kids as unpaid work and providing essential work throughout all the lockdown measures, such as supermarket cashiers, nurses, doctors, teachers, and other caring personal).

MEDIA AND MARKETS To present a paradigmatic example of the difficulties we are confronted with when relying exclusively on market forces, let’s analyse the media sector. In doing so, we can exemplify both market fundamentalism and market universalism as flawed. A few years after the outbreak of the GFC, the first analyses of the role of the media in the crisis, and how they dealt with the crisis (Schifferes and Roberts 2015), conceived media reporting in a less than favourable light, asking for an urgent transformation of financial journalism. The media’s dual role of cheerleader and doom-monger (Barber 2015, p. xxiv), as it was pointedly labelled, described the very extremes of the spectrum that the media can occupy. However, there is another take on the media and the function of markets. Throughout recent decades, deregulation and competition were – and still are – two essential features of economic policy. According to neoclassical

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economic theory, the merits of deregulation were to be the diversity of content that a notably enhanced supply would guarantee. This was to be the necessary outcome of opening up the markets to new entrants. Deregulation was the main target of economic policy for most economic sectors in both Europe and the US. But the consequences were different than expected. The more competition the legal authorities prescribed, the higher the market concentration got. Now we are faced with an oligopolistic structure of the sector, a few powerful companies with a high degree of power. In recent years, the new media players, very dominant platform companies such as Facebook aka Meta, Google aka Alphabet, Amazon, etc., show monopolistic behaviour and monopolise power, and regarding their network effects, this is not going to change in the near future). That Facebook’s business model relies on a massive surveillance machinery used for political advertising (as the 2018 scandal of Cambridge Analytica in the US election campaign showed) is one of the examples of the dangerous power of monopolies to push ideology (Pickard 2019; Zuboff 2019; Herman and Chomsky 1988). The existence of those “market failures”, as neoclassical economists would call them, implies that a free market does not provide the best results for consumers or the public interest. On the contrary, extended competition can even be devastating for the diversity of opinions in the mass media, be it the press or broadcasting (Grisold 2004; Grisold and Theine 2017).

6.  The Role of the State

Different approaches towards the role of the state correspond quite closely to different underlying economic theories, assumptions and ideologies. Whereas neoclassical economics, for example, sees the role of the state exclusively in providing a general frame for market economies, (Post-)Keynesian and other heterodox theories take a (critical) political economy approach, stressing the necessity of state intervention to curb the self-destroying tendencies of capitalism. It does so without neglecting the fact that state intervention may also yield counterproductive effects (as a result of bureaucratic structures, mis-regulation, time lags, misuse of state power, etc.) and is not, in itself, a prescription for prosperity. A distinct feature of the changes in capitalistic structures in recent decades is the changing role of ownership of enterprises. With the ongoing financialisation, the shareholder value had gained in importance, and with it the necessity of short-term capital gains/profits for the shareholder. Often labelled “managerial capitalism” (Dumenil and Levy 2015), it is managers who decide about the strategic direction of firms, driven by the necessity to produce for short-term capital gains. This is not a driver of innovation, as

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innovative experiments take time, risk and money. Lazonick and O’Sullivan (2000) argue that “maximizing shareholder value” is in effect a managerial ideology that has enabled top executives to get extremely rich in many countries, and particularly so in the US. This is why Mazzucato speaks about “patient capital” being necessary for innovative products/technologies (Jo and Henry 2015). From the Internet to nanotechnology, most of the fundamental technological advances of the past half century – in both basic research and downstream commercialisation – were funded by government agencies, with private businesses moving into the game only once the returns were in clear sight. [Mazzucato 2015, p. 104] State finance initiates innovation (examples being the internet, nanotechnologies and Covid-19 vaccines). As soon as the innovation process produces products with a fair chance of being profitable, private firms step in to take over. A very topical issue (at the time of writing) is the Covid-19 pandemic. With remedies to curb the pandemic, one finding is that public health and the availability of medical services are closely interlinked (Langley 2021). Not necessarily in not getting infected, but in securing good testing and treatment. Once again, state intervention to provide public health infrastructure as an indispensable public good proved beneficial for society and its economies as a whole. THE NEWS ON PUBLIC POLICIES When public policies are referred to or discussed in news articles, there is a high focus on taxes and regulation and not so much on the investing aspects of public policies, such as in schools, kindergartens, hospitals or infrastructure (Grisold and Preston 2020; Bell and Entman 2011). The fact that both the incentives for innovation and the re-distributional features of today’s everyday life (health, general education, etc.) are based on regulation and public policies seems to be of minor interest for media content. But these are an active counterpart to the forces of deregulated capitalism and a major focus of research for heterodox economists as well. As many heterodox scholars have stressed in recent decades (Galbraith 1964; Grisold 2011; Mazzucato 2015), it is exactly this mix of market forces and counteracting forces that provided for a system that manages to stabilise the economy and curb at least some of the rising social imbalances (Laplane and Mazzucato 2020). Moreover, the state, through taxation and other policies, acts to subsidise, if not pay outright for, much of the science and development behind innovation in private industry, to say nothing of supplying educated workforces and other social structures needed to support the market economy.

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The different attitudes towards private companies and public or state organisations have clear implications for journalism and sourcing. Here, journalism, when examining issues of finance and economics, has been found to be less than critical of sources from the banking and finance industries.3 Moreover, journalists tend not to put industry sources under the same kind of questioning that would be typically expected of politicians or representatives of public companies. This may represent the separation of “the public” and “the private” in liberal ideology, where private companies are not exposed to the same standards as state institutions are – notwithstanding public subsidies to the private sector and the state provision of external costs such as education, healthcare and transport (Mazzucato 2015). However decisive the role of the state, one has to bear in mind that public goods need not necessarily be provided by the state. Community organising is another possible way and a distinct feature of heterodox theories as well. Whereas heterodox thinkers such as Stephen Marglin stress that the community was weakened by crude economistic views such as the ever-maximising individual (Marglin 2008), Nobel laureates such as Elinor Ostrom (1990) investigated community decision-making in small communities. (See, for example, the blog Social Europe [https://socia​leur​ ope.eu/] for a further discussion on these topics.) There was a fine example of community organising after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Countless grassroot initiatives came to help rebuild the devastated city, whereas state authorities were much too slow and partly reluctant to respond to the catastrophe. 7.  Conclusion: What Does All This Mean for Journalistic Practice?

While mainstream economics has been highly focused on market-based explanations, heterodox approaches provide competing theories, thus pluralism in economics, and incorporate a broader range of multidisciplinary analyses of economic problems. Heterodox approaches emphasise market and non-market aspects of economic phenomena, the latter including social identity, cooperative collective action, power relations, and psychological biases. This chapter dealt with the existence, use and analyses of heterodox economics. Although parts of it may have seemed a bit too theoretical for journalism practice, they have down-to-earth practical consequences for how we approach, explain and change economic processes. I would like to highlight a few of these consequences as the conclusion to this chapter.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR ECONOMIC JOURNALISTS 1. There is a wide range of different explanations for economic phenomena, problems and criteria. 2. The standard, mainstream recipe might not be the most appropriate. 3. Neutral reporting on economic topics is hardly ever achieved. 4. There is always social conflict in which explanation and – even more importantly – which policy solution is adopted when confronted with an economic problem. 5. There are many different paths that public policy can take. The important thing is to find out whom, as a consequence, it is going to help and who is going to lose in the process. 6. Never miss a chance for critical examination; it holds a strong possibility for new insights.

So, be it which economic expert we ask or which sources we use, it is always useful to know from which theoretical standpoint/approach they argue, thus which social group they are helping. Universal truths may not be so universal after all, but value laden. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that economics is not about the economy only. The way economics is conducted has huge implications for democracy as well. Elections are fought and won on economics, while social policy is based on how people think it will affect the economy. Therefore, it will certainly prove helpful to take a close, interested and critical look at the explanations for economic processes, policies and possible changes. List of Concepts Introduced

• Heterodox economics; • Power in economics; • Crises; • Market; • Feminist economics; • Economy; • State.

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Notes 1 Note that uncertainty is totally different from probability, as Keynes already taught: while probability can be calculated and quantified, uncertainty offers none of those features. 2 See Chapter 2 for an in-depth discussion on market-liberal thinking. 3 Conversely, Doyle (2006) argues that business journalism does, in fact, challenge overly positive press from business and corporations (PR information), even though it does so in a system-immanent way.

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Grisold, A. (2017). “Kongeniale Partner? Das 5-Sektorenmodell, Plurale Ökonomie und Feministische Ökonomik”. Kurswechsel, 2, pp. 27–36 Grisold, A. and Preston, P., eds. (2020). Economic Inequality and News Media: Discourse, Power, and Redistribution. Oxford University Press. Grisold, A. and Theine, H. (2017). “How Come We Know? The Media Coverage of Economic Inequality”. International Journal of Communication, 11, pp. 4265–4284. Herman, E.S. and Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: A Propaganda Model. Manufacturing Consent. Hirschman, A.O. (2001). Crossing Boundaries: Selected Writings. Zone Books. Jo, T.-H. and Henry, J.F. (2015). “The Business Enterprise in the Age of Money Manager Capitalism”. Journal of Economic Issues, 49(1), pp. 23–46. Krugman, P. (2012). End This Depression Now! W. W. Norton & Company. Kvangraven, I.H. and Alves, C. (2019). “Heterodox Economics as a Positive Project: Revisiting the Debate”. ESRC GPID Research Network Working Paper 19. ESRC Global Poverty and Inequality Dynamics (GPID) Research Network. Available from: https://gpid.uni​v ie.ac.at/wp-cont​ent/uplo​ads/2019/07/ GPID-WP-19.pdf. Langley, P. (2021). “Economy and Society in COVID Times”. Economy and Society, 50(2), pp. 149–157. Laplane, A. and Mazzucato M. (2020). “Socializing the Risks and Rewards of Public Investments: Economic, Policy, and Legal Issues”. Research Policy, 49(Supplement). Lazonick, W. and O’Sullivan, M. (2000). “Maximizing Shareholder Value: A New Ideology for Corporate Governance”. Economy and Society, 29(10), pp. 13–35. Marglin, S.A. (2008). The Dismal Science. How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community. Harvard University Press Mazzucato, M. (2015). “Innovation, the State and Patient Capital”. The Political Quarterly, 86, pp. 98–118. Mearman, A., Berger, S. and Guizzo, D. (2020). What is Heterodox Economics? Conversations with Leading Economists. Routledge. Minsky, H.P. (1992). “Profits, Deficits and Instability: A Policy Discussion”. In Papadimitriou, D.B., ed., Profits, Deficits and Instability, pp. 11–22. Palgrave Macmillan. Mirowski, P. (2014). “The Political Movement That Dared Not Speak Its Own Name: The Neoliberal Thought Collective under Erasure”. Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series, 23. Morgan, J. and Embery, J. (2018). “Heterodox Economics as a Living Body of Knowledge: Community, (In) Commensurability, Critical Engagement, and Pluralism”. In Jo, T-H., Chester, L. and D'Ippoliti, C., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics, pp. 515–533. Routledge. Nelson, J.A. (1995). “Feminism and Economics”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(2), pp. 131–148. North, D.C. (1977). “Markets and Other Allocation Systems in History: The Challenge of Karl Polanyi”. Journal of European Economic History, 6(3), pp. 703–16 Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press. Perrons, D. (2021). Is Austerity Gendered? Polity Books.

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Peukert, H. (2020). “Virus Eco2nomics: Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste – What Are the Questions? Inspirations for Plural, Heterodox, and Progressive Research Programs from a European Perspective”. International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 11(3), pp. 224–242. Pickard, V. (2019). Democracy without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society. Oxford University Press. Pickett, K. and Wilkinson, R. (2010). The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. Penguin UK. Ramskogler, P. (2014). “Tracing the Origins of the Financial Crisis”. OECD Journal: Financial Market Trends, 2014(2), pp. 47–61. Reisz, M. (2016). “Economics Degrees Still ‘Too Narrow in Focus’ ”. Times Higher Education, 26 March. Available from: www.times​h igh​ered​ucat​ion.com/news/ econom​ics-degr​ees-still-too-nar​row-focus. Robinson, J. (1962). Economic Philosophy. Pelican Book. Romer, P. (2016). The Trouble with Macroeconomics. Stern School of Business, New York University. Rothschild, K.W. (2007). “Einige Bemerkungen zum Thema Mainstream und Heterodoxie”. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 33(4), pp. 581–590. Available from: https://wug.akw​ien.at/WUG​_ Arc​h iv/2007_3​3 _4/200​7_33​_4_0​581.pdf. Ryner, M. (2015). “The Crisis of European Integration and Economic Reason: Orthodoxy versus Heterodoxy”. In Jäger, J. and Springler, E., ed., Asymmetric Crisis in Europe and Possible Futures. Critical Political Economy and Post-Keynesian Perspectives, pp. 17–33. Routledge. Schifferes, S. and Roberts, R. (2015). The Media and Financial Crisis. Routledge. Shiller, R.J. (2000). Irrational Exuberance. Princeton University Press. Skidelsky, R. (2018). How Economics Survived the Economic Crisis. Project Syndicate. Solow, R. (2010). “Building a Science of Economics for the Real World. Prepared Statement for the House”. Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Available from: www2.econ.iast​ate.edu/clas​ses/ econ​502/tes​fats​ion/Solow.State​OfMa​cro.Con​gres​sion​a lTe​stim​ony.July2​010.pdf. Steinbaum, M. (2019). “Economics after Neoliberalism”. The Boston Review, 28 February. Stiglitz, J.E. (2012). The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. W. W. Norton & Company. Taylor-Gooby, P., Leruth, B. and Chung, H., eds. (2017). After Austerity: Welfare State Transformation in Europe after the Great Recession. Oxford University Press. Turner, A. (2016). Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance. Princeton University Press. Van Staveren, I. (2010). “Feminist Economics, Setting out the Parameters”. In Bauhardt, C. and Caglar, G., eds., Feministische Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, pp. 18–48. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Van Staveren, I. (2015). “Capabilities and Wellbeing”. In Dolfsma, W. and Davis, J.B., eds., The Elgar Companion to Social Economics, 2nd ed., pp. 165–179. Edward Elgar Publishing. Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Public Affairs.

4 IDEOLOGY, ECONOMICS AND JOURNALISM Henry Silke

Advance Organiser

We begin with a basic introduction of ideology before going on to discuss why the study of ideology is important. The following section, “Ideology: Some Definitions”, introduces basic concepts of what ideology is. The chapter will then go on to discuss: • Marx and the materialist concept of ideology; before going on to consider: • Althusser; • Gramsci; • Foucault. We will then discuss the media industry from a materialist perspective before finally going on to examine journalistic ideologies and economic ideologies as discussed in the media and, finally, how we can uncover economic ideologies in the media. 1. Introduction

Economic ideologies are everywhere, surrounding us at all times, and they can be found in all aspects of the media. How journalists describe everyday events and everyday problems can often be based on assumptions deriving from economic theories such as “supply and demand” or economic ideologies DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-5

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such as those that posit private enterprise to be fundamentally superior, or alternately (and less often) journalists may come from ideologies that are more inclined towards public enterprise and the regulation of markets.

Take housing as an example. Housing is a critical aspect of life on numerous levels, and there are numerous ways of supplying housing at a macro level, e.g., the private housing market, public housing or non-profit housing agencies. It can be funded by the state, savings, long-term funds, cooperative building societies, private financial institutions such as banks or funds such as pensions or REITs (real estate investment trusts). However, in recent times there has been an overemphasis on the commodity view of housing, which is that the primary role of housing (or property) is as a commodity to be sold or rented on the market. This is opposed to the view of housing as a public good to be supplied (as cheaply as possible). Assumptions about this are not just found in economics texts or journals such as the Financial Times or the Economist but can also be found in the news pages, in property supplements and the numerous “property porn” television programmes that are a feature of many television schedules around the world. These programmes, while appearing to be “practical” guides to homebuying or renovation, are in fact some of the most deeply ideological shows on television and are a good example of economics theory and practice becoming a “common-sense” ideology. One can recall in Ireland, for example, months before a massive housing crash (prices fell 60 per cent from peak to trough), how numerous economists, financial journalists and their sources were absolutely certain that such a crash was impossible due to the “self-regulating” nature of the market, while the property supplements barely discussed the possibility of such a crash and the numerous property TV shows ignored the situation completely.

The purpose of this chapter, and indeed the book, is to explore how these economic ideologies can underline economic reporting and analysis and indeed how some ideologies can take hold as “common sense”. And, likewise, we will explore how economic ideologies can be challenged and even change. For example, the policy choices taken during the Covid-19 pandemic have shown that austerity policies established after the great financial crisis were, in fact, a political choice rather than a necessity. Likewise, the return of state intervention seen in response to the pandemic and changes in working practices, with more autonomy and a move towards tele-working, has seen huge changes in what is deemed possible, compared to only a few short years before.

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Why Study Ideology?

In his seminal work Power: A Radical View, Stephen Lukes (1974) challenged methods of measuring power in the pluralistic and political science traditions. To briefly summarise both of these, the pluralistic tradition effectively rejects the notion of an overall ruling class, seeing power divided up (albeit unequally) by various social groups with various elements of power. Their method of measuring this power was by the empirical study of successful or unsuccessful attempts at passing legislation. In other words, how successful a significant collective group is in getting laws passed in their favour, for example a labour or workers’ political party getting laws passed on working hours or minimum wage. Lukes termed this the “first dimension of power”, and while it does illuminate one aspect of power, it is far from complete and in many ways represents power already won. Lukes argued that this approach was overly simplistic and behaviourist, and later researchers became more concerned with examining the means by which agenda and debate was set in the first place and how issues were successfully introduced to the legislature (Lukes termed this the second dimension of power); for example, how issues such as laws on working hours get onto the agenda in the first place. However, this too was rejected by Lukes as being incomplete, as it assumed that all social groups were aware of both the various intricacies of power and where their interests lay. Moreover, he argued that the concept remained wedded to the study of behaviour only. Lukes maintained that, to understand power structures fully, one needs to consider the third dimension, that of ideology. He maintained that the ultimate form of power is not to force an individual or group into a position or to do something, but rather to make them unaware of the issue or to support the imposition of it – or what Herman and Chomsky (1994) would later term “manufacturing consent”.

If we think of the example of legislation on working hours, the third dimension would ask: Do workers define themselves as workers in the first place? And as such, do they support laws on working hours? Or maybe they define themselves in other ways and believe that such interference in the market may be bad for the nation (another way of defining yourself).

In contemporary politics, we might consider ideology in light of the media’s representation of reality or what can be termed “the imagination of the possible”. For example, in much discourse around the GFC, the question is not “if” cuts on wages or services should happen but rather “which” services or wages must be cut to restore so-called “competitiveness”, representing a narrow discourse that excludes other economic policies such as Keynesian or socialist strategies.

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However, ideology does not stand still and is tied to the material world. For example, the shock delivered by the Covid-19 pandemic, raging at the time of writing, has seen a major shift in thinking in terms of how the role of the state is perceived. As a result of this, we expect to see changes in ideological thought and other economic ideologies fought out over the next period. Likewise, other crises such as wars or ecological collapse can see ideological changes follow. Ideological processes that are expressed mainly but not exclusively through the media play an important role in this process. The aim of this chapter is threefold: 1. To introduce the various concepts of ideology and their role in both economic and political power structures; 2. To apply those concepts to the media sphere; 3. To consider how we might uncover such ideologies in media texts. 2.  Ideology: Some Definitions

Ever since French philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracy first coined the term in his work Eléments d’idéologie (1817–1818), ideology has been a controversial and often misunderstood concept. In many cases it has been seen as a pejorative term – that is, as a “blinkered” set of views – rather than a scientific study of power and power relations. The recent period, which saw a recession followed by a further embedding of neoliberal policy followed almost immediately (in historical terms) by a worldwide pandemic, has again underlined the need to understand the concept of ideology and its practice in political and social power. The popular definition of ideology is that of a political “world view” of ideological political practitioners or parties, such as socialists, anarchists and communists, or party politicals such as liberals and conservatives. The Cambridge English Dictionary, for example, defines ideology as: “A set of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party or organisation is based” (Cambridge English Dictionary 2022). However, as we shall see, ideological processes are far more complex, insidious and powerful than simple notions of political or economic self-identification. In fact, ideological structures make up the basis for various forms of power, including the reproduction of class domination. While this chapter acknowledges that there are numerous types of ideological power structures (for example, race, gender and national chauvinism), due to lack of space and time, and in keeping with the theme of the book, it will primarily focus on issues of class and economics and economic and class power. This is not to say that issues of race and gender are not a big part of economics and economic ideology, but it is beyond the scope of this chapter, which focuses on economics and class

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rather than issues such as gender and race as individualised concepts. With a focus on economic ideologies, this chapter, drawing from Eagleton, Marx, Althusser, Miliband and Foucault, offers nine key definitions for various forms of ideological structures and power before going on to discuss them in more detail: ⇨ Ideology can be defined as “a set of ideas by which men [sic] posit, explain and justify ends and means of organised social action, and specifically political action, irrespective of whether such action aims to preserve, amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order” (Seliger 1976, p. 11). ⇨ Ideology is the “general material process of production of ideas, values and beliefs in social life” (Eagleton 1991, pp. 28, 29). ⇨ Ideology can be defined as the ideas and beliefs (whether true or false) that symbolise the conditions and life experiences of a specific socially significant group or class (ibid.). ⇨ Ideology is “the promotion and legitimation” of the interests of a specific socially significant group or class in the face of opposing interests (ibid.). ⇨ Ideology is the false or deceptive beliefs arising not from the interests of the ruling group but from the material structure of society as a whole (ibid.). ⇨ Ideology is closely related to the broad problematic of modern Western Marxism, namely the attempt to understand how relations of domination and subordination are reproduced with only minimal resort to direct coercion (Purvis and Hunt 1993, p. 474). ⇨ Ideology is the process of rule by consensus in the first instance, backed up by coercion when necessary (Gramsci and Gerratana 1975). ⇨ Ideology acts as the mechanism for the internalisation of law where men and women can work without the need for constant coercive supervision, as the laws of society are internalised as their own (Althusser 1971). ⇨ Ideology can also be seen in the micro power relationships between actors in various positions of power (Foucault 2000; Miliband 1969). Marx and Ideologies

One of the key theorists of ideology was Karl Marx, and scholars following in this tradition have continued to think about how ideological power structures are central to how societies operate. Classical Marxism does not see a separation of the material aspects of society and the idealistic aspects of society; moreover, it sees the ideas of society coming from and linked to the material base (Jakubowski 1976, p. 27). In other words, for Marx, the cultural

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norms in a given society are intrinsically linked to the material conditions of that society. Likewise, for Marx and his collaborator Engels, ideas have no independent history but are products of specific historical conditions (Eagleton 1991, p. 121). While Marx does not deny individual human agency, he maintains it is present within real and determined structures that are inherited from historical circumstance. Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. [Marx and Engels 1852/1999] Marx was opposed to what is termed the idealistic view of ideology – that is, the idea comes first followed by the material change. Marx, in what turned Hegelian dialectical philosophy on its head, posited that philosophical ideas originate not in an autonomous idealistic manner but in the material conditions of life. Therefore, in the Marxist paradigm, the legal and political structures present, for example, after the American and French revolutions were necessities of the newly developing mercantile and early capitalist mode of production rather than stand-alone metaphysical ideas. As the economic structures changed, the old feudalistic political and legal structures could not accommodate them, and the philosophies of the enlightenment then followed. In Marx’s words, “The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure” (Marx 1859). The “immense superstructure” that Marx cites incorporates the entirety of legal, political and social forces, including, in the contemporary sense, religion, education and the mass media. To put it crudely, it is the change in mode of production that leads to political change rather than political change that leads to changes in production. However, as will be discussed below, ideology cannot simply be reduced to economics and history, as ideology in politics and culture can itself affect the material and economic processes. Eagleton (1991, p. 83) describes four major definitions of ideology offered by Marx: ⇨ Ideology is illusionary or socially disconnected beliefs that are seen as the grounds of history; ⇨ Ideology represents the interests of the dominant classes; ⇨ Ideology can “encompass all of the conceptual forms in which the class struggle as a whole is fought out”; ⇨ Ideology is the “actual social relations between human beings … governed by the apparently autonomous interactions of the commodities they produce”.

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In the first definition, ideology represents the illusionary or socially disconnected beliefs that are disconnected from material reality. This illusionary and idealistic view of the world can be seen, for example, in religion. For Marx, this form of ideology acts to distract men and women from their actual social conditions (including the social determinants of their ideas) and helps sustain the oppressive class relations of an epoch. An example of this may be seen in the feudal “divine right” of the aristocracy to rule. The second Marxist definition of ideology is that it represents the material interests of the dominant social class, which are also useful in promoting its rule. The class that has the material means of production at its disposal generally also has the means of mental production at its disposal. And those without the means of mental production are subjected to it. As Marx famously put it: “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, grasped as ideas” (Marx and Engels 1845/1970, p. 64). Marx posited that one of the major divisions of labour in a given society is that of material and mental labour (ibid., p. 65). While the active members of a class do not have the time to form ideologies, this task is left to intellectuals, who form the ideologies that are passed as natural or universal in a given epoch. We could consider the role of well-funded think tanks and public relations companies in a more vulgar sense of this concept, but we also have universities, intellectuals and public intellectuals as well as broader media in the development of ideology and discourse. The third definition is that ideology can “encompass all of the conceptual forms in which the class struggle as a whole is fought out, which would presumably include the valid consciousness of politically revolutionary forces”. In other words, ideology is a site of struggle. This means ideology is constantly changing, and it may reflect conflict between classes. This form was developed further by Gramsci’s (1971/2003) theory of hegemony, which will be discussed below. The fourth definition is tied up in the commodity market itself, where the actual social relations between human beings are governed by the apparently autonomous interactions of the commodities they produce. For Marx (1976), the commodity fetish disguises the real social nature of society. In the contemporary world of the media, we can think of expressions of how the market reacts to certain government policies, and whether the market “likes” or “dislikes” certain policies. The “market” is often expressed as a semi-deity entirely unconnected to the actual world of men or women and, by definition, unreformable. This process also acts to hide the class and political nature of government policy. For example the “market” will almost always react badly to any redistribution of wealth across society because the market is, in fact, the investment class (for want of a better word), while at the same time “the market” generally reacts well to cuts in public spending, which act either to protect or expand the profit base of the capitalist class. Political and economic

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terms such as the “consumer market” and “labour market” separate the issue of the working class and its spending power from the politics of pay cuts and rises, and workers themselves may be recast as “human resources” that can be employed or discarded when necessary. Material Ideology: Base and Superstructure

Marx unifies the public (political) and private spheres of society into a totality of base and superstructure. For Marx, the economic relations of the mode of production are the base of society that everything else rests on. It is the economic structure that is the foundation on which the legal, political and intellectual superstructure rests (Marx 1859). For Marx, “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life” (ibid.). Therefore, the ideology or “common sense” in a society is derived from its economic base. In simple terms, this makes the material economic base the most important factor in political relations, which is represented in class conflict. In fact, for Marx and Engels, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx and Engels 1848/1998). However, while Marx maintained that the economic base is at the root of society, it does not follow that society is completely economically determined. The superstructure affects the base as much as the base affects the superstructure. Engels, in his letter to Bloch, was at pains to point this out: According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its results … exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. … We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one. … Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. [Engels 1890]

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The point is to consider not that the political state is economically determined or that the economic structure is politically determined, but that both are two sides of a single process, with one having an effect on the other. For example, it could be argued that, in the case of Ireland, the economic, historical and social relations led to the adoption of quite extreme neoliberal policies, and these polices, in turn, had a widespread effect on the economy itself. As Franz Jakubowski puts it: The superstructure depends on its economic foundations. But it is necessary to emphasise the fact that the superstructure operates retroactively on its base. The retroactive superstructual influence in no less important than the influence of the base itself. The historical process can only be explained by observing the interaction of the two. They do not affect each other mechanically or as externally independent factors; they are inseparable moments of a unity. [Jakubowski 1976, p. 57] Jakubowski (ibid., p. 40) divides the superstructure into two. Above the economic base and forces of production lie the legal and political order, above which lies a superstructure of ideology. In terms of the current economic recession, the implementation of Marxist theory is clear, which is that the effects of the recession on the material base of society will be felt in civil society. This, in turn, will affect the economic base and so on. The widely used concept of consumer confidence is an empirical expression of this phenomenon. For Stuart Hall (1986b, p. 43), Marxist materialism should be considered in terms of determination of the economic in the first instance, rather than economic determination in the last instance. In other words, while the economic structures may begin a social, political and economic process, it does not show exactly where that process will lead. If we think about the outcomes of the GFC, where the banking system collapsed, the political outcomes were not straightforward. Rather than ending in a major reform of banking, in some cases it ended up with the blame for the crisis being shifted elsewhere. Ideology and the Reproduction of Power: The Materialist View of Individual Consciousness

Ideology is, at once, a collective and individual concept; while we think as individuals, our ideas are still part of the structures of everyday life. Much as human language cannot exist without other humans to converse with, our very thoughts are socially constructed. For Marx, “Man is a social animal in the most literal sense: he is not only a social animal, but an animal that can individualise himself only within society” (Marx 1970, p. 125). For Marxists,

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human beings therefore have a socially constructed epistemology rather than an individual one. For example, the developmental psychologist Vygotsky describes how children develop complex thought alongside the development of language, rather than develop complex thought and then language. For Vygotsky, “The true direction of thinking is not from the individual to the socialised but from the socialised to the individual” (1962). Therefore. It is the individual’s relationship to other individuals that is the most important aspect in human thought. In fact, for Marx, “society” itself is the “sum of interrelations” of the individual, and it is this class structure that is at the base of individual thought. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. [Marx 1859] Therefore, individual ideas, while having agency, are developed from within the economic and social structures already existing in society. Here, Marx sees the cultural structures of society as something that are determined by the nature of society (Marx and Engels 1845/1970, p. 47) and, at the same time, support the very structures of the society (ibid., p. 57). As he put it, the mode of production leads to the mode of life of the individual (ibid., p. 42). However, as Jakubowski (1976, p. 59) points out, the social being does not simply mean economic relations. While economic relations “are the foundations of social life and prevail in the last instance”, it is social being as a whole that has to be taken into account. This includes ideological traditions such as religion and previously established political or philosophical ideas and prejudices. Louis Althusser: The Reproduction and Internalisation of Domination

Louis Althusser was a French philosopher whose theories of ideology were influenced by Marx. Althusser argued against the notion that there is a guarantee that the ideological position of a social class will always correspond to its position in social production (Hall 1985, p. 97). Ideology for Althusser is one of three regions of social formation (the other two being the economic and political). Therefore, for Althusser, ideology can be connected closer to either the economic sphere or the political sphere and may in fact be contradictory. One of Althusser’s major interests was how domination was reproduced (Purvis and Hunt 1993, p. 487). In other words, the purpose of ideology is to reproduce the social relations of production – in effect, class structures. For

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example, why do people accept their positions in a class-based society with all its inherent inequalities? Althusser maintained that the social relations of production are reproduced in the superstructure in institutions such as the family and the church, and they also require cultural institutions that are not directly linked to production such as the media, trade unions and political parties (Hall 1985, p. 98; Schmid 1981, p. 60). For Althusser, ideology acts as the mechanism for the internalisation of laws that encourage work without the need for constant coercive supervision, as the laws of society are internalised as their own (Eagleton 1991, p. 146). This works “in the vast majority of cases, with the exception of the ‘bad subjects’ who on occasion provoke the intervention of one of the detachments of the (repressive) state apparatus” (Althusser 1971, p. 181). Althusser sees the education system, the family, the church and the media as “ideological state apparatus” that, on the one hand, act to socialise subjects into the social system and, on the other hand, are sites of class struggle. For Eagleton (1991, p. 148), Althusser marks a break from classical Marxist theory, which viewed ideology as a distortion or false reflection between people and the structures of capitalist society; instead, ideology for Althusser is a mechanism for the very production of human subjects. In this light, David Harvey, reflecting on Althusser and Gramsci, defines ideology as the historical disciplining of the labour force to capital accumulation that is renewed with every generation: The socialisation of the worker to conditions of capitalist production entails the social product of physical and mental powers on a very broad basis. Education, persuasion, the mobilisation of certain social sentiments (the work ethic, company loyalty, national or local pride) and psychological propensities (the search for identity through work, individual initiative, or social solidarity) all play a role and are plainly mixed in with the formation of dominant ideologies cultivated by the mass media, religious and educational institutions, the various arms of the state apparatus, and asserted by simple articulation of their experience on the part of those who do the work. [Harvey 1990, p. 123] Eagleton (1991, p. 148) and Hall (1986a, p. 32; 1985, p. 99) critique Althusser for overemphasising the functionalist domination in such structures, which does not allow for counter hegemonic ideological forces. It may also be argued that Althusser does not emphasise the dialectical nature of some of the cultural institutions – for example, education. Teaching students dominant values and the skills to work also, in the same process, arms students with potentially liberating skills such as reading and writing. Althusser, however, does bring a useful functionalist and psychological side to Marxist theory.

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While ideology gives capitalist society the social norms that allow it to function and to preserve the domination of the ruling classes, it is, at the same time, a site of class struggle itself. Miliband (1969, p. 164) terms this process one of “political socialisation”, where the values, norms, cognitions and symbols are learned and internalised. The fact that the capitalist and class social norms are internalised means that ideology acts to allow rule by consensus rather than direct domination. For Marxist theorists, this self-domination is a major concern, reflected by the fact that, often, a disunited working class can support political and social groups that arguably do not represent their broader interests. Antonio Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci was a leading Marxist theorist and founding member and leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) before his imprisonment in 1929 (Ginsborg 1990, p. 42; Hoare and Smith 1971/2003, p. xvii). Gramsci’s most important work, collectively known as the Quaderni del Carcere (Prison Notebooks), was written between 1929 and 1935 while he was incarcerated (Gramsci 1971/2003). After witnessing decades of class struggle, strikes and insurrections and, finally, the rise of fascism, Gramsci attempted to consider the problem of the Italian and Western European revolutions and question why they failed. Gramsci reconfigured the theory of the state to reintroduce the concept of civil society. After the failure of the Western European and specifically Italian revolutions, Gramsci concluded that, at least in the West, the ideological and hegemonic apparatus of “civil society” played a more powerful role in the sustentation of the state than dominant Marxist theory at the time allowed. As he famously put it, even “when the economic and coercive apparatus of the state is shaken a ‘sturdy structure’ of capitalist civil society is revealed” (Gramsci 1971/2003, p. 238). In comparing the Russian Revolution with the Western European revolution, Gramsci commented that, in the West, “the state was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks” (ibid.). Gramsci therefore returned to early Marxist philosophy in unifying the sphere of the civil society and the political society in his conception of the state. In this theory, he maintained that power and the state reside on two major superstructural levels: the first he termed civil society, which includes institutions such as the church, schools, media and culture in general; the second he termed the political society or the state, which includes institutions such as the police, army, government and judicial system. Gramsci therefore investigated the state in its inclusive sense (political society + civil society) and showed how state power in capitalist societies rested on “hegemony armed by coercion” (Jessop 2001). That is, society

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is ruled by consent backed up by the state, which holds coercive power to enforce discipline on groups who refuse to consent (Gramsci 1971/2003, p. 12). Therefore, the ruling class had a multifaceted system of power with an underlying hegemony in popular culture (Gramsci 1971/2003, p. 12; Germino 1986, p. 26). ⇨ What is hegemony? Hegemony can be defined as rule in the first place by consent and in the second place by coercion. It also includes elements of “soft power”. If we consider American world hegemony, it does not only include military power but also cultural power such as the entertainment industry, its leadership position in international organisations, and most importantly its leading position in world markets. While Marx and Engels (1845/1970) wrote about a new hegemonic ideology coming in a revolutionary period, Gramsci described hegemony as a constant battle between differing sections of society struggling for dominance (Traube 1996, p. 132). The dominant class therefore incorporates its interests into the state and exercises its power to maintain these interests by keeping the subaltern social groups divided and passive within civil society (Howson and Smith 2008, p. 5). We might consider how low corporate tax rates are justified by discourses of employment generation for the middle and working classes, which act to win over support. While the state in the final analysis may represent the interests of the dominant groups, class struggle is a constant feature of civil society, whether consciously or unconsciously.

For example, Stuart Hall and others maintained that the ideology of Thatcherism was fought within civil society long before Thatcher won state power itself. David Harvey (1990) maintains that her election represented the end rather than the beginning of the economic processes inherent in Thatcherism. In other words, the political battles took place in the years before Thatcher’s electoral victory. By 1985, it is argued, Thatcher had established a new “common sense” in favour of what came to be termed neoliberalism and an authoritarian state articulated through “popular” demands for the restoration of social order against crime and delinquency and the “selfish” and partial interests of trade unions. In other words, the new right did not win “hearts and minds” by arguing for inequality and deindustrialisation but rather used the issue of crime and other social issues to win power. This new “common sense” according to Hall was based on traditional aspects of British popular culture (Davidson 2008, pp. 72–77; Purvis and Hunt 1993, p. 496). This was seen in the US with the use of the so-called “culture wars” to win over working class voters.

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The collapse of the hegemony of Keynesian social democracy and the birth of the hegemony of what would later be termed neoliberalism led to a proliferation of research on politics and culture using the Gramscian framework of civil and political society (see Johnson 2007, p. 98). Ideology and Micro Power

Ralph Miliband (1969, p. 163) maintains that hegemony is not something that happens as a mere superstructural derivative of economic and social conditions. Rather, hegemony results from a deliberate, permanent and persuasive effort conducted through multiple agencies. He maintains that hegemony exists not only in the world of macro-politics but also in the world of micro-politics, where members of the dominant classes by virtue of their various positions, for example as employers, can act to dissuade their subordinates from voicing radical viewpoints. For Eagleton (1991, p. 113), hegemony is not just a successful form of ideology but may be discriminated into its various “ideological, cultural, political and economic aspects”. In the economic sphere, for example, outright ideology or coercion is not always necessary. Under capitalism, it is the “dull compulsion of the economic” (the need to survive) that keeps workers in work and subservient rather than any overt sense of national or religious duty. Foucault is interested in the operation of power as a force throughout society rather than centred on the state (Finlayson 2006, p. 167). Foucault was a critic of a priori state theory and favoured a bottom-up approach to the study of social power (Jessop 2007, pp. 34, 36). State and government activities for Foucault are not self-contained but derive from “a whole series of power networks that invest the body, sexuality, the family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so forth” (Foucault 1980, p. 122). Foucault grounded his theory of power and control in modern society in social norms and institutions rather than sovereign authority (Jessop 2007). He called for a “political philosophy that isn’t erected around the problem of sovereignty, nor around the problems of law and prohibition” (Foucault 1980; Collier 2009, p. 79). Unlike sovereign power, power in contemporary society does not flow from a central point but “circulates through the capillaries of collective life” (Collier 2009, p. 81). In later work, he included a “macro level” of power relations at a society level, and he termed this technology of power the “biopolitics” of the human race (Collier 2009, p. 83). Here, power is applied through regulatory rather than disciplinary logic and includes issues such as health care, urban planning and the management of disease. Foucault says that the two forms of power are distinct but dovetail into one another (Foucault et al. 2003, p. 242). Foucault argues that the idea of government offers a “strategic codification” of power relations and provides a bridge between the micro and the macro

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(Jessop 2007, p. 39). He argued that “the state is nothing more than the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities” (Foucault et al. 2004, p. 79; Jessop 2007, p. 36). For Foucault, the contemporary state has “no essence, is not universal, is not an autonomous source of power”; instead, it is an “emergent and changeable effect of incessant transactions, multiple governmentalities and perpetual stabilisation”. Therefore, the modern state can be seen as a set of practices and strategies rather than a universal, fixed and unchanging phenomenon (Jessop 2007, p. 37). Eagleton (1991, p. 8) maintains that if the Foucault’s concept of discourse power comes to cover every social action, it ceases to hold any strength. He concurs that Foucault was correct to point out that power is indeed everywhere, but he maintains that the concept is found wanting in not distinguishing between more and less central instances of it. For Eagleton, there are some issues that are more important than others. Stuart Hall (1985, p. 93) critiques that Foucault, in his concentration on the “dispersed microphysics of power”, effectively ignores issues of state power. Figure 4.1 is a conceptual model of ideological power structures drawing from Marx, Gramsci, Althusser, Miliband and Foucault. The model shows the relationship, as discussed, between the base and superstructure and the division of superstructure into civil and political society (or the broader state). This is further developed into the concept of ideological state apparatuses

FIGURE 4.1 A

conceptual model of ideological power structures

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and coercive state apparatuses as discussed by Althusser. Drawing from Miliband and Foucault’s observations of the ideological micro powers in class relations, for example between workers and employers in private enterprises, I have included the concept of an ideological coercive power sphere that falls between ideological and coercive power. Class relations means, in most cases, that employers have an unofficial coercive power over their employees as well as considerable ideological power. Employers, after all, have the power to hire and fire employees, depending on the legal framework, which itself depends on the strengths of classes in a given society. For example, a society such as Germany or France with a tradition of powerful working class organisations will tend to have stronger legislation protecting workers. The ideological coercive sphere is, however, a site of struggle, as workers will resist coercion and will not necessarily take on board the ideological assumptions of the employer. They may, in fact, offer oppositional ideologies to them, whether in a class conscious fashion or not. The ideological coercive sphere is linked to the economic sphere and issues such as the ability of the employer to compensate workers and workers’ ability to move between employers and extract wages, and it is therefore vulnerable to capitalist crisis. 3.  Media and Crisis – Base and Superstructure

A factor that has become apparent in communications and media research is the connection between issues of political economy in the wider economy and the literature on research in institutional issues in the field of journalism. One of the clear issues inherent in the literature is that crisis, rather than being an unusual or infrequent event, is an inherent condition of capitalist production and class relations (Marx 1967). What is interesting in terms of the political economy of the media is how the general trends of capitalist crisis seem to be replicated in the media industry (Schiller 1999), and this in turn has a direct effect on media practice and, indeed, may even impede critique of the overall economic system itself. This reflects Marxist theory on the dialectical connections between economic structures and class relations and the various superstructures of society (including the media) that go beyond simple issues of private ownership; and it may act to explain why differing models of media ownership are being affected by similar institutional issues. As discussed in the literature of economic crises, capitalism is beset by tendencies of crisis such as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Kliman 2012) and the tendency to overproduce (Clarke 1990). Inherent within this is a drive to innovate and a general tendency towards monopolisation (Shaikh 1978). Likewise, as seen in studies of the political economy of communications, the media too is beset by a squeeze on advertising revenue (and profits); tendencies towards overproduction, in terms of the number

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of competing media channels and content (Siapera 2013, p. 21), and a tendency towards monopolisation (Corcoran 2007; Davis 2007). There is a contradiction inherent in this process in that, while we see a growing number of media channels, ownership (of the more popular media channels) is concentrating in giant global media companies and, as pointed out by Siapera (2013), the distribution of online content including news is being increasingly concentrated on major online platforms such as Facebook and Google. This commodification circuit is also challenged by the ability of users to download, upload and exchange digital products online for free, despite various attempts to close down the “digital commons”. Some have argued that the battle over audiences has also led to a “dumbing down” of news itself and the development of a superficial and ideologically laden “infotainment” television news service (McManus 1994). The above processes, in turn, via technical innovation and a squeeze on the workforce has led to a generalised deterioration of working conditions for journalists and a lessening of resources for journalistic investigation (Preston 2009). While there has been much innovation in terms of technology, some have argued that this has partly led to a deskilling (Braverman 1975) of journalism itself, with some of the basic skills such as fact checking falling by the wayside, while many contemporary desk-bound journalists are simply regurgitating both wire and online news stories (Davies 2009; Preston 2009; Simon 2009). The process of the financialisation of news organisations – that is, news organisations taken over by larger (often heavily indebted), more overtly finance-orientated organisations – has also lead to a paring back of funding for news gathering and, in worst case scenarios, an asset stripping of resources. It is important not to be overly deterministic towards the role of technology and especially the internet in the process of the financialisation and monopolisation of the media sphere; rather, this process is a long-term secular trend typical of capitalist industry. In his testimony to the US Senate, David Simon (2009), pointed out that key changes in the news industry long preceded the online revolution: In fact, when newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, their industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street money. We know now – because bankruptcy has opened the books – that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly 100 editors and reporters in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits. In the years before the Internet deluge, the men and women who might have made The Sun a more essential vehicle for news and commentary – something so strong that it might have charged for its product online – they were being ushered out the door so that Wall Street could command short-term profits in the extreme. [Simon 2009]

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Much as neoliberal ideology has become an apparent discursive superstructure in the ideological sphere, neoliberal work practices are commonplace within the media and journalistic field. This represents a relationship between base and superstructure that is far more insidious than simple private ownership and reaches into every aspect of journalistic work practices and content. Moreover, a precarious news production workforce is much less likely to publicly critique his or her workplace or the system it is based on. As discussed above, the economic and relations of production base and the various superstructures (including the state and the media) have a dialectical relationship with one another, which may in fact act to reinforce one another, as the media, through ownership, institutional practice and overarching ideologies, tends to act to defend or at least defer critique of the economic system it is based on. 4.  Ideology and Journalism, Journalistic Norms and Ideologies

The profession of journalism itself has a number of self-identified normative “news values” that describe the ideal role of journalism and the media in democratic society. Davis (2007, p. 37) describes this as the “occupational ideology” of professional journalism. This ideology includes a set of normative values including a public service ethos, a sense of objectivity and ethics, immediacy and autonomy. This ethos requires the selection of stories according to what is perceived as the “public interest”. Deuze (2005, p. 447) describes the concepts, values and elements of journalist ideology as being of five ideal types: • Public service: Journalists provide a public service as active collectors and distributers of information and as watchdogs; • Objectivity: Journalists are impartial, neutral, objective, fair and (thus) credible; • Autonomy: Journalists must be autonomous, free and independent in their work; • Immediacy: Journalists have a sense of immediacy, actuality and speed; • Ethics: Journalists have a sense of ethics, validity and legitimacy. Journalists should practice objectivity by sourcing various sides to a dispute and by sourcing independent or expert evidence to support news claims. Journalists are traditionally given “newsbeats” to cover, which include physical location, contacts with sources and procedures. There has been much critique of this normative view of journalism. Critics from the field of journalism such as Nick Davies (2009) and David Simon (2009)) have recently argued that news organisations are putting increasingly less resources into such “newsbeats”, which, in turn, has led to a narrowing

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of the news focus. The lack of resources, in turn, play into the hands of “official sources” and public relations companies happy to fill the space. Critics from the political economy tradition have pointed to the media’s role as an ideological filter on what is deemed newsworthy (Herman and Chomsky 1994). The role of the marketisation of media is important too. Advertisers, for example, choose which publications to fund, whether by mass audiences with modest spending power or modest audiences with larger spending power (Curran 1978). Financial and business sections of the media, for example, are far larger than their audiences justify. As pointed out by Hall et al. (1978), journalists in their attempts to source “experts” often reinforce and reflect power imbalances by underlining these “primary definers’  ” legitimacy. Moreover, journalist sourcing itself can affect the setting of agendas, meaning that “public interest” is often defined by those already in or with power rather than the wider public. Balance is often represented by a balance of elite forces in conflict rather than a wider sourcing (Hallin 1994). Balancing can also distort coverage in masking what may be a minority or artificially created view. The holding of the powerful to account or the speaking of “truth to power” is often more concerned with personal conflicts and scandals than areas of policy interest (Davis 2007, p. 40). Another normative value of journalism is defined as a “journalistic role conception” or the journalists’ own conception of how they should do their work. Mellado (2020) has conceptually connected various characteristics of professional role ideals with specific journalistic styles and narrative schemas. This conception attempts to bridge journalism as an institution with individual journalists’ own conceptions. Mellado and Van Dalen (2013) define six models of professional role performance, including the disseminator-interventionist, where the disseminator journalist is removed from the story while the interventionist includes the values and opinions of the journalist. The loyalfacilitator role takes the ideals of the propagandist, lapdog or “guard-dog” roles of journalism. The watchdog role seeks to hold the de facto power to account, and here journalists can be seen to be in conflict with those in power. The civic model is concerned with educating citizens on both complex and controversial topics. Service journalism acts to inform the public about day-to-day problems and solutions, and, finally, the infotainment concept, where the journalist is connected to the role of entertainment and the public is viewed as spectator. WATCHDOG JOURNALISM – SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER OR POWER TO TRUTH? One key normative conception of journalism is that of its role as a civic watch­ dog to hold those with power in check. As Usher (2013) puts it: “Journalists embrace this professional ideology in their codes and professional standards,

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their prizes, and their claim to professional authority”. Usher points to four themes of watchdog journalism: a focus on the transmission of information, where journalists are expected to supply the information that may allow us to take action but no more; a focus on journalism to act as a guide to moral discussion; a focus on watchdog journalism as identity and practice; and finally a focus on watchdog journalism that compels us to take action.

5.  Journalism and Economic Ideology

In this book we will think about how economic ideas and issues you have read in previous chapters can appear as ideological “common sense” in journalistic copy. In other words, are contested economic theories reported as facts and assumptions? Moreover, are these ideas ever questioned by journalists covering the economics and financial beats? We must also consider links between dominant classes, and how economic ideologies may reflect vested interests. For now, we will discuss the issue in broad terms, and in later chapters we will look in more detail at the practices we may use to research ideology in economic reporting via various methodologies such as framing analysis, discourse analysis and sourcing analysis. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the issue of housing is an interesting area of study, as it is a clearly important area of policy that is often presented as “practical” and non-ideological. For instance, in the headlines below we can see some examples of how issues of regulation, and balances of interest, between landlords and tenants have been presented. Some very dramatic language may be used to amplify economic or political positions, for example in the headlines opposing the regulation of the housing market, by using verbs such as “petrified” and narratives about how regulation is destroying their (landlords’) livelihoods. It should be noted that, at the time these articles were published, rents were some of the highest in Europe. The headlines below, from the Irish Times, express two different, broadly defined ways of thinking about the housing issue: an area needing regulation and government intervention, or an area that needs less regulation if any at all. In a research project we may aim to uncover which economic arguments are present, how they relate to economic theories, such as anti or pro regulatory, and whether we can see any overall bias in the coverage. Likewise, the sources used by the journalists will impact the copy and can be researched to investigate balance (or lack of) in the sources used.

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Flight of Small Landlords Will Worsen Dublin Housing Crisis – Estate Agent Owen Reilly says small landlords accounted for more than 60% of its sellers in 2021 Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 06:00 Eoin Burke-Kennedy1

‘Landlords Are Petrified’: Property Owners’ Perspective on the Rental Crisis Subscriber only

Tenant rights, caps on rent and investment yields appear to be forcing landlords out Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 01:00 Colm Keena2

Shift Needed on ‘Serious Power Imbalance’ between Landlords, Tenants – Bacik Labour party Bill aims to make renting ‘long-term, viable, sustainable option’ Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 19:40 Marie O’Halloran3

A Landlord’s Life: ‘On the Darker Days I’ve Been Spat at and Threatened with a Knife’ Subscriber only

Numbers don’t add up for small landlords who are exiting the market Sat, Feb 26, 2022, 06:00 Joanne Hunt4

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Renters Just Waiting ‘For Disaster to Strike… It’s the Vulnerability’ – Belfast Tenant Subscriber only

Rent on west Belfast house costs £550 a month while mortgage would be £350-£375 Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 05:00 Freya McClements, Northern Editor5

If we look at the articles in detail (see URLs in the endnotes), we can ask a number of questions to approach the articles, as seen in the activity box, and try to understand what perspective they are coming from, which economic arguments are used, and which economic theories are performed. Throughout the rest of the book, you will learn techniques such as content analysis, corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis and souring analysis, and through these you will learn how to scientifically uncover economic theory and ideology in the media text. On completion of the book, why not relook at “Activity: Questions to Approach the Articles” and see if you have any further insights. Activity: Questions to Approach the Articles Pro-rent Anti-rent Economic regulation? regulation? arguments made? Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4 Article 5

Sources used?

Assumptions without evidence?

Economic theories performed?

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List of Concepts Introduced

• Ideology; • Base and superstructure; • Hegemony. Notes 1 www.iri​s hti​m es.com/busin​e ss/econ​o my/f li​g ht-of-small-landlo​rds-will-wor​ sen-dub​l in-hous​i ng-cri​sis-est​ate-agent-1.4764​474#:~:text=Owen%20Rei​l ly%20s​ ays%20sm​a ll%20la​ndlo​rds,of%20its%20sell​ers%20in%202​021&text=The%20ongo​ ing%20e​x it%20of%20sm​a ll,agent%20O​wen%20Rei​l ly%20has%20war​ned 2 www.iri​shti​mes.com/news/consu​mer/landlo​rds-are-petrif​i ed-prope​r ty-own​erspers​pect ​ive-on-the-ren​tal-cri​sis-1.4760​344 – comments 3 www.iri​shti​mes.com/news/polit​ics/oir​each​t as/shift-nee​ded-on-seri​ous-powerimbala​ n ce-betw​ e en-landlo​ r ds-tena​ nts-bacik-1.4681​ 158#:~:text=A%20c​ u ltu​ ral%20sh​ift%20is%20nee​ded,ption%20for%20peo​ple%20in%20Irel​a nd%22 4 w w w. i r i ​ s h t i ​ m e s . c o m/ l i f e - a n d - s t y l e/ h o m e s - a n d - p r o p e ​ r t y/a - l a n d l​ ord-s-life-on-the-dar​ker-days-i-ve-been-spat-at-and-thr​e ate​ned-with-a-knife1.4810​195 5 www.iri​shti ​mes.com/news/soc​ial-affa ​i rs/rent​ers-just-wait ​i ng-for-disas​ter-to-str​ ike-it-s-the-vulner​abil​ity-belf​ast-ten​a nt-1.4761​109

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Deuze, M. (2005). “What Is Journalism? Professional Identity and Ideology of Journalists Reconsidered”. Journalism, 6(4), pp. 442–464. Eagleton, T. (1991). Ideology: An Introduction. Verso. Engels, F. (1890). “Engels to J. Bloch in Konigsberg” [Online]. Available from:www.marxis​ ts.org/archi​ ve/marx/works/1890/lette​ rs/90_09_​ 21.htm[Accessed 23/03/2010]. Finlayson, A. and Martin, J. (2006). “Poststructuralism”. In Hay, C., Lister, M. and Marsh, D., eds., The State: Theories and Issues, pp. 155–171. Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (1980). “Truth and Power”. In Gordon, C., ed., Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writing 1972–1977. Harvester Wheatsheaf. Foucault, M. (2000). Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, Volume III. Penguin. Foucault, M., Bertani, M., Fontana, A., Ewald, F. and Macey, D. (2003). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1975–76. Picador USA. Foucault, M., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. and Senellart, M. (2004). Naissance de la Biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France (1978–1979). Gallimard. Germino, D. (1986). “Antonio Gramsci: From the Margins to the Center, the Journey of a Hunchback”. Boundary 2, 14(3), pp. 19–30. Ginsborg, P. (1990). A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988. Penguin. Gramsci, A. (1971/2003). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (1929–35). International Publishers. Gramsci, A. and Gerratana, V. (1975). Quaderni del carcere. G. Einaudi. Hall, S. (1985). “Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and The PostStructuralist Debates”. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 2(2), pp. 91–114. Hall, S. (1986a). “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity”. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), pp. 5–27. Hall, S. (1986b). “The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees”. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), pp. 28–44. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. Macmillan. Hallin, D.C. (1994). We Keep America on Top of the World. Routledge. Harvey, D. (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell Oxford. Herman, E. and Chomsky, N. (1994). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Vintage. Hoare, Q. and Smith, G.N. (1971/2003). “Introduction”. In Hoare, Q. and Smith, G.N., eds., Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (1929–35). International Publishers, Howson, R. and Smith, K. (2008). Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion. Routledge. Jakubowski, F. (1976). Ideology and Superstructure in Historical Materialism. Allison and Busby. Jessop, B. (2001). “Bringing the State Back in (Yet Again): Reviews, Revisions, Rejections, and Redirections”. International Review of Sociology: Revue Internationale De Sociologie, 11(2), pp. 149–153. Jessop, B. (2007). “From Micro-Powers to Governmentality: Foucault’s Work on Statehood, State Formation, Statecraft and State Power”. Political Geography, 26(1), pp. 34–40.

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Johnson, R. (2007). “Post-Hegemony?: I Don’t Think So”. Theory Culture Society, 24(3), pp. 95–110. Kliman, A. (2012). The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession. Pluto Press. Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A Radical View. Macmillan. Marx, K. (1859). “Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” [Online]. Available from: www.marxi​sts.org/arch​ive/marx/works/1859/criti​ que-pol-econ​omy/pref​ace.htm [Accessed 02/03/2010]. Marx, K. (1967). Capital, Volume III. International Publishers. Marx, K. (1970). “Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy”. In Arthur, C.J., ed., The German Ideology: Part One with Selections from Parts Two and Three, together with Marx’s Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy, pp. 124–151. Lawrence and Wishart. Marx, K. (1976). Capital, Volume One: A Critique of Political Economy. Penguin Classics. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1845/1970). The German Ideology. Lawrence and Wishart. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1848/1998). The Communist Manifesto. The Merlin Press. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1852/1999). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [Online]. Available from: www.marxi​sts.org/arch​ive/marx/works/1852/18thbruma​ire/index.htm. Marx/Engels Internet Archive. McManus, J. (1994). Market-Driven Journalism. SAGE. Mellado, C., ed. (2020). Beyond Journalistic Norms: Role Performance and News in Comparative Perspective. Routledge. Mellado, C. and Van Dalen, A. (2013). “Between Rhetoric and Practice”. Journalism Studies, 15(6), pp. 859–878. Miliband, R. (1969). The State in Capitalist Society. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Preston, P. (2009). Making the News: Journalism and News Cultures in Contemporary Europe. Routledge. Purvis, T. and Hunt, A. (1993). “Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology…”. The British Journal of Sociology, 44(3), pp. 473–499. Schiller, D. (1999). Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. MIT Press. Schmid, H. (1981). “On the Origin of Ideology”. ActaSociologica, 24(1–2), p. 57. Seliger, M. (1976). Ideology and politics. Allen & Unwin London. Shaikh, A. (1978). “An Introduction to the History of Crisis Theories”. In US Capitalism in Crisis, pp. 219–241. Union for Radical Politica”l Economy, Monthly Review Press. Siapera, E. (2013). “Platform Infomediation and Journalism”. Culture Machine, 13, pp. 1–29. Simon, D. (2009). “Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. Hearing on the Future of Journalism, May 6, 2009. Testimony of David Simon (Baltimore Sun, 1982–95, blown deadline productions, 95–09, Baltimore, MD)” [Online]. Available from: www.govi​nfo.gov/cont​ent/pkg/CHRG-111sh​rg52​162/pdf/ CHRG-111sh​rg52​162.pdf [Accessed 06/04/2023]. Traube, E.G. (1996). “The Popular in American Culture”. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25(1), pp. 127–151.

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Usher, N., 2013. Ignored, uninterested, and the blame game: How The New York Times, Marketplace, and TheStreet distanced themselves from preventing the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Journalism, 14(2), pp.190–207. Vygotsky,L. (1962). “Thinking and Speaking”. Edited and translated in part by E. Hanfmann and G. Vakar, and in part by N. Minnick. MIT Press. Available from: www.marxi​sts.org/arch ​ive/vygot​sky/works/words/index.htm [Accessed 30/10/2007].

5 JOURNALISM STUDIES AND “CASCADING CRISES” Towards a Political Economic Approach Paschal Preston

Advance Organiser

This chapter argues that the current crises in the institution of journalism (i.e., their roots and potential solutions) can best be understood when they are addressed in relation to macro-level, political and economic, crisis trends. To this end, it reviews major works in the field of journalism studies and evaluates their ambition to name and address crises and risk-laden imbalances and related macro political and economic trends impacting on journalists. The chapter will begin by discussing the nature and importance of links between “cascading crises”, both in and around journalism, while identifying some neglected themes in the journalism studies field. The second section introduces select typologies of the major influences on journalism. Typologies are like overview maps of the terrain; they help identify and describe the major categories of influences on news making (Preston 2009). This section introduces and briefly discusses two typologies based on multicountry studies of journalism, including the latest round of the World of Journalism study. The third section discusses how the field of journalism studies tends to neglect or downplay economic factors (and other macro-level influences) while also identifying certain influencing factors and themes that are favoured in the field. Section four describes the rise and meaning of neoliberalism as well as why and how certain features of this political economy paradigm matter for journalism studies. Section five discusses the benefits of reconnecting contemporary research with classic and later researchers who linked political and economic concerns. It then considers work that addresses the contemporary rise in populism and DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-6

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its links to material matters, including work under the heading of the postpolitical and technocultures. Section six concludes by exploring the potential benefits of political economy approaches and perspectives amid interlinked crises, public discourse and important silences. 1.  Introduction: Crises and Neglected Areas in Journalism Studies

In his inauguration speech as US president, Joe Biden (2021) referred to the current period as “a time of testing” marked by “cascading crises”, ranging from “growing inequity”, “systemic racism” and “a climate in crisis” to the rise of “political extremism, [and] white supremacy”. He declared that his presidency and administration will be judged by how it “resolves the cascading crises of our era”, even if the resolution of these challenges will also require many different institutions and individuals to “step up”. At the same time, we observe that the term “crisis” has also been invoked in many studies and analyses of the journalism field and the news media sector in recent years. Here, the term “crisis” has been invoked to refer to phenomena such as the rapid decline in the numbers and status of professional journalists now employed in mainstream news media, worsening levels of pay and working conditions (increased precarity and weak job security) and the parasitic and poorly regulated role of new entrants winning shares of the markets for audiences and advertising but not generating original new stories. The term “crisis” has also been invoked at this institutional level to refer to declining confidence and trust (on the part of citizens and potential customers) in the stories and narratives provided by mainstream journalism and news media. This is manifest in the fashion for ideas such as “fake news”, “disinformation” and the role of outlandish conspiracy theories. Indeed, rather similar declines in “trust” and “crisis” tendencies are shared by neighbouring institutions such as the established political parties and their leaders. This is manifest in the recent rise of neofascist and other right-wing currents of nationalism and racism alongside the growing profile and appeal of authoritarian forms of leadership mobilising racist and xenophobic tropes and “dog whistles”. These shifts can include threats to the independence and rule of law that have formed the very foundations of the liberal model of electoral democracy. That these developments are now manifest even in the core heartlands of the liberal model of electoral democracy (the UK and US) is noteworthy and somewhat unprecedented since the nineteenth century. All this serves to underline that the crisis of journalism and news media is not an isolated moment; rather, it must be seen and addressed in relation to profound or “cascading” crises in the prevailing capitalist or liberal political and economic order. These include “growing inequity” in the form of the 40-year onward march of wealth and income inequalities and an interlinked

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set of ecological and planetary crises alongside such matters as the “rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism” (Biden 2021). In a highly mediatised world, it should be obvious that the crises of journalism and news media cannot be treated in isolation from the political and economic institutions whose performance and operations are now so deeply media dependent. At the same time, and in a similar spirit, it is now also increasingly obvious, if not an epistemological imperative, that political and economic crisis tendencies and challenges must be viewed in tandem, in their relation to each other. Much of what follows in this chapter elaborates on why and how the current crises in the institution of journalism (i.e., their roots and potential solutions) can best be understood when they are addressed in relation to (or greater engagement with) the kinds of macro-level crisis trends. The chapter explores how, despite its remarkable growth in recent decades, the field of journalism studies continues to be marked by several blindspots. Thus, it seeks to identify certain neglected thematic areas or orientation biases and silences in the journalism studies field that are highly significant. More specifically, this chapter focuses on the onward march of inequalities in economic processes and outcomes, as well as the massive threats posed by cascading ecological crises and new cleavages in social power structures. It argues that these themes, alongside other relatively new socio-political gaps and power grabs, should become central concerns in the revamped agenda of a journalism studies field that aims to be orientated to public interests. Thus, this chapter highlights and explicitly addresses certain key silences and neglected themes in the journalism studies field with respect to the material realities of contemporary economic processes, the unequal stakes, relations and outcomes involved, and how these have spillover effects in the political realm. 2.  Typologies as Maps: Categories of Influence on Journalism Introduction: Typologies as Maps of Categories of Influence

There is an enormous body of research on the factors influencing the production of news and the shaping of journalism, how news stories or texts are read, understood or interpreted and how they might affect readers’ or viewers’ beliefs and actions. When entering any new terrain, it is useful to have some overview maps, guides or schema. Typologies or simplifying conceptual maps identify and classify the different theoretical and methodological approaches to journalism studies, which vary according to the researcher’s priority focus, conceptual concerns and characteristics. We now have many typologies that identify how each cluster or category of research offers distinct, often complementary ways of understanding the influences on journalism and news culture, based on (or associated with)

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differing assumptions about the key forms of action, initiative, power and influences shaping journalism. Typologies based around four or five different categories are now quite common and draw from a long tradition of work in this field (Weber 1910/1998; Gans 1979; Gitlin 1980/2003; Shoemaker and Reese 1996; Reese 2001; Whitney et al. 2004; Preston 2009). Thus, in this chapter we briefly consider two examples of five-fold typologies that are based on multi-country empirical studies and that highlight important features of the different approaches in the vast body of prior research. The first selected typology (from Preston 2009) is constructed around refinements to the micro, meso and macro levels of analysis, a frequent distinction mobilised in many areas of sociology, psychology, and politicalsociology research. 1. The micro level category of influences covers all those many prior research studies that focus on individual level factors and considerations. 2. The meso level identifies (and contains) two specific categories: a. Research focused on influences and shaping factors linked to a specific media organisation; b. Studies that focus on institutional routines, typical production practices, procedures and norms that apply across (and are common to) the news industry as a whole. 3. The macro level embraces all research that highlights either a. the broader political economic or b. cultural and ideological features of the setting in which the news media are situated. Each of these five categories of research focus are not water tight; rather, their related sets of themes and explanatory concepts may be treated as highly complementary (Preston 2009, p. 6). For our second case study of typologies, we turn to a recent book based on an unusually large-scale international research project, Worlds of Journalism: Journalistic Cultures Around the Globe (Hanitzsch et al. 2019). As well as its rich empirical base, this book aims to offer readers more detailed insights and analyses on many specific themes. Below, we will focus on its rather distinctive and specific version of the five-category typology of influences on journalism. The Value of Comparative and International Studies of Journalism

As the journalism studies field began its rapid growth in universities after the end of the Second World War, the majority of research studies were centred on a single country, usually one of the major Western powers, or else the USSR. The minority of journalism studies research that did engage with international,

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FIGURE 5.1 A

summary representation of the five categories of influences on news making according to the typology in Preston (2009, p. 7)

FIGURE 5.2  A

summary representation of the five categories of influences on journalism according to the typology in Hanitzsch et al. (2019)

cross-national or comparative studies was strongly stamped by the Cold War setting and its associated military and political economy rivalries. Besides, many of the efforts at cross-national and comparative examination, description and especially evaluations of news media and journalistic forms, performance and quality were highly ethno-centric in tone. But the past few decades have seen a much greater recognition of the need for more open-minded and inclusive

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(or more cosmopolitan) approaches to the developing roles and forms of news media and journalism across the globe. Apart from the World of Journalism project discussed above, the second major contribution in this regard comprises the international research project on journalists’ roles versus their actual performance and the resulting edited book, Beyond Journalistic Norms (Mellado 2020). This work set out to interrogate certain assumptions about the existence of “a dominant type of journalism prevailing in different political, economic, and geographical contexts”, and it highlights the fluid and dynamic nature of journalistic roles in different settings. Such recent works highlight the benefits of the trend towards multi-country and comparative empirical studies that examine the evolving practices, ideas, perceptions and values of working journalists across different national settings. This area still comprises a relatively novel, ambitious and demanding, but potentially very fruitful, approach towards better-grounded understandings of contemporary journalism. We should note and underline that attempts to map journalists’ own perceptions of their practices and comparisons of key influencing factors in very different institutional settings are complex and challenging. Since they began, such undertakings demand huge, if not heroic, efforts in the face of the limited availability of research resources (e.g., Weaver 1998). The earliest outputs of such multi-country studies of working journalists were sometimes criticised on methodological grounds or for inadequate attention to economic factors and influences relative to political and other institutional factors. However, these pioneering research efforts must be warmly welcomed for opening up significant new empirical insights and lines of inquiry.

Besides these two major empirical studies, the growing reorientation towards more genuinely internationalist, culturally nuanced and representative perspectives on the evolving field of journalism studies is manifest in the second edition of The Handbook of Journalism Studies, edited by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch (2020). This book provides some very insightful descriptions of the very different growth patterns of journalism across the world and the kinds of conditions now shaping and influencing journalism across different countries and settings.

The WJS Project: Typology of Key Influences

As the title suggests, Worlds of Journalism: Journalistic Cultures Around the Globe (2019) draws from the findings of the latest round of the “Worlds of Journalism” (WJS) study, which surveyed some 27,500 journalists in 67

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countries. This latest round of the WJS study sought to adopt a more pluralist perspective in an effort to avoid the common Western-centric (“imperialist”) tendency to patronise, disregard or criticise journalism practices in other parts of the world. Furthermore, the WJS questionnaire was modified in an attempt to direct more attention to economic factors deemed relevant to journalistic performance and practices. The internationally based WJS team were mindful of the long-established “Western dominance” (especially that of the UK and US, the two successive hegemons of the modern imperialist system) concerning what is taken as the sole or optimal standards (or “prism”) when gauging journalistic norms, good practice and quality journalism in other regions of the world. The prevailing practices often led to developing and transitional countries being portrayed as substandard or needing to “catch up”. For the WJS project researchers, this kind of perspective (or ideology) is problematic because “cultural contexts and communicative needs in many … societies differ considerably from those in the West and may thus call for a different understanding of what constitutes journalism and what journalism ought to be” (Hanitzsch et al. 2019, p. 2). When analysing the findings of the latest round of the WJS project, the research team collapsed an initial list of 19 potential sources of influence on journalism into “a parsimonious set of [five] meaningful indexes: political influences, economic influences, organizational influences, procedural influences, and personal networks influences” (ibid., pp. 106–107). They then used the five indexes of categories described above “rather than the individual sources of influence as measured in the original questionnaire”, while observing that these “indexes were based on theoretical rather than statistical considerations” (ibid., pp. 108–116). 1. Political influences: This category or index covers pressures from “politicians”, “government officials”, “pressure groups” and “business representatives”. 2. Economic influences: According to the WJS book, this index includes “profit expectations”, “advertising considerations” and “audience research and data”. 3. Organisational influences: This category combines the perceived pressures or influences from “the managers of the news organization”, “supervisors and higher editors”, “owners of news organizations” and “editorial policy”. 4. Procedural influences: This comprises five specific factors: “information access”, “journalism ethics”, “media laws and regulation”, “available newsgathering resources” and “time limits”. 5. Personal networks influences: This category of perceived influences refers to “friends, acquaintances, family”, “colleagues in other media” and “peers on the staff”.

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Let us now turn to summarise the results of the WJS study by utilising its own specific typology of influences. In summary terms, the WJS project team found that journalists tend to view “procedural and organizational influences as much more powerful in their work than influences from personal networks or economic and political factors” (Hanitzsch et al. 2019, p. 109). This headline-level result “reaffirms a pattern extracted from the first wave of the study … and it also echoes findings from other, similar studies” (ibid., p. 109). RANKED SUMMARY OF PERCEIVED INFLUENCES ACROSS COUNTRIES, ACCORDING TO THE WJS STUDY (2019): 1. Procedural influences; 2. Organisational influences; 3. Economic influences; 4. Personal networks influences; 5. Political influences. [Hanitzsch et al. 2019, pp. 109–110]

The WJS team define “procedural factors … as the strongest set of influences on news work”. The authors suggest that the reported strength of this category of influences may well “reside in the fact that it is composed of influences closely related to key processes of journalistic work and is experienced unmediated by journalists” (ibid., p. 110). In this light, it may come as little surprise that organisational influences were perceived as the second-strongest influence on journalistic work across the countries surveyed. Economic influences were accorded the third highest category of influence on average, but, here, the editors add a qualifying comment to the effect that “even though journalists perceived these forces to have only some or little influence” (ibid., pp. 110–111). This may be some evidence of a blindspot towards some of the more major macro-level influences on journalism, and below we argue that more attention needs to be shone on macro-economic factors, which should be reflected in both research and teaching. 3.  How Journalism Studies Tends to Neglect or Downplay Economic Factors Introduction: Journalism Studies and Economic Aspects of Power

One common criticism of the contemporary academic field of journalism studies is that it tends to neglect or ignore the key forms and sources of economic power and their potential to influence journalism and news

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making. This is despite the fact that many of the classic, early studies of journalism, dating from the late nineteenth century, tended to highlight the importance of economic factors. They also addressed the close relationship between key political economy developments and the very emergence, as well as subsequent growth and expansion, of modern news media (e.g., Preston 2001, 2009; Grisold and Preston 2020). But as the academic field of journalism studies rapidly expanded from the mid-twentieth century, attention to economic power and other factors rapidly declined, and such matters were only addressed by a minority, many of whom were scholars engaged in critical research perspectives (Preston 2001, 2009; Grisold and Preston 2020). This can be briefly explained by the fact that US-based scholars and universities played a big and early role in the growth of this academic field, and they were situated in (and informed by) a very specific national political culture and discourse, one that tended to ignore or downplay economic forms of power compared to the agenda of public discourse that developed in many European countries in the modern era. This difference arises not least because of the distinctive roles and influence of large-scale labour and socialist movements in several major European countries and their impact on public discourse in explicitly naming and addressing economic forms of power and coercion as part of the “unfinished project” of building modern democratic forms. Conceptions of the Economic Contexts of Journalism: Procedure over Structure

Nielsen (2020) provides a clearly written and succinct descriptive overview of the specific economic aspects of news as an economic “good”. He describes how these are related to the specific features of media markets, including the role of advertising and tendencies towards exceptional levels of concentration of ownership and control in these sectors. Beyond the personal and professional ambitions of journalists, Nielsen argues that “there are three basic motivations for investing in news production: power, public service, and profit” (2020, p. 328). This account also presents a pithy and succinct summary of the key trends and major challenges facing established media, especially news providers, since the rise, application and diffusion of digital technologies (Nielsen 2020). However, as is common in such economistic accounts, these trends are largely treated as matters of pre-ordained technological logics and (instrumentalist) efficiencies rather than matters of the appropriation, application and diffusion of new media within highly specific forms and conditions determined (or shaped) by the neoliberal policy and regulatory regime. Nor does Nielsen identify how some policy factors are currently determined in Washington more than in Europe. In sum, Nielsen

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fails to recognise that neither the supposed technological or competition logics nor the “economic laws” – nor the narrow and brutal options they are presumed to imply for future journalism – are either fixed, pre-ordained or immutable, let alone legitimate or “sustainable”. Nielsen remains silent on how his informative discussion of different types of media ownership and/or of the exceptional levels of concentrated media power today may require new regulatory regimes. There is no linkage to questions of how such concentrations of wealth and oligopolistic (or oligarchic) power in high-profile media domains relate to the fundamental political issues and challenges now unfolding in liberal democracies. Nielsen fails to consider how concentrated wealth and power in media (and other) sectors alongside the declining professional autonomy/authority of professional journalists (apart from the largely power-compliant “celebrity journalists”) relate to the onward march of economic inequalities and insecurities. In both Nielsen’s chapter and the handbook as a whole, as elsewhere in the field, the silences on such fundamental questions in the journalism studies field are screamingly loud and obvious (Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch 2020; Nielsen 2020). Techno-Centrism and the Neglect of Political Economy Factors

In The Handbook of Journalism Studies (Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch 2020) we also encounter a marked tendency to name and frame the (digital) technology moment as the prime if not sole driver of key changes unfolding in the news media sector in recent decades. In essence, a supposedly autonomous technology factor features here as the only pervasive macro-level actor or factor prompting change or influence on journalism – without consideration of the specific and changing economic, legal, policy, etc. settings that have shaped the design, forms, applications and uses of technological developments in recent decades. The editors approvingly cite what Nielsen (2020, p. 61) terms “the unfinished digital media revolution”, framed as a pervasive force for change manifest in digital platforms, social media and datafication processes, personalisation, big data and AI, and so operating as the sole pervasive or macro-level forces that challenge “understandings of journalistic authorship, voice, and authority, posing new questions likely to transform our inquiry” (Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch 2020, p. 15). This proposal to borrow, appropriate and bend the terms of prior critical scholars (who identified enhanced democracy as the “unfinished project” of modernity) connotates a refeudalisation or tabloidisation of the journalism studies field, where the “digital” replaces the “democratic” or “public” as the “god term”. In contrast, there is little or no mention in this large handbook of other macro forces such as the veritable revolution in state media policy and regulatory (non)interventions, or the massive leaps in concentrated economic power and

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corporate/industrial muscle within and beyond the media and communication and technology sectors, thanks to successive waves of neoliberal policies over the past 40–50 years. Instead, we are largely left with the not-so-innocent world of techno-fetishism, where increasingly commodified technological innovations and developments, abstracted from the changing economic and political structures in which they are embedded, are framed as the prime source of challenges and problems while also offering pointers to potential solutions (Curran 2022; Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch 2020). 4.  Neoliberalism and Journalism Studies The Importance of Long-Run Shifts in Political and Economic Paradigms

Not only does mediated news have a very short shelf life, as a specific form of knowledge it is almost exclusively focused on the immediate, on short-term issues and horizons, on individual actors, actions and motivations. In terms of what is covered and how, journalism pays relatively little attention to the strategic, long-term patterns of events, or the strategic analysis of deep or more enduring structures and their impacts on current events. The field of journalism studies is based in a very different institutional setting compared to news production, yet it seems to share some similar key features as its object of study – at least when compared to the spectrum of ideas, values and methodologies operating in neighbouring academic fields in the social sciences and humanities. For example, the field has a predominant focus on individual and/or meso-level (organisational, institutional and professional) factors shaping news production, which often ends up implying that nothing much has changed since the 1950s, apart from more obvious disruptions ascribed to technological innovations. Too frequently, it presumes and presents a business-as-usual view of the surrounding political and economic setting and power structures relevant to the challenges, performance and practices of journalism and news media and surrounding institutional contexts. Despite some rare but compelling early diagnoses by working journalists (e.g., Thomas Edsall), this academic field still has little or no mention, recognition or analytical engagement with the massive, macrolevel shifts and changes in the macro-level political, economic and ideological orders (or systems) in which the news media and journalism profession have been embedded over the past 80 years or so (since journalism studies became institutionalised as an academic field in the core capitalist countries). This might seem like a rather sweeping generalisation (which it is) about a major field of study that may fail to find empirical supports when put to the test. However, I believe such claims can be sustained when tested against significant works such as the major handbook edited by Karin

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Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch. Despite the many valid claims to novelty and efforts at reconstructing the field noted by the editors of the handbook, analytical emphasis still falls on the journalism studies field’s longestablished preoccupations with meso-level, organisational, professional and individual-level concerns, processes and influences. There is no mention of or engagement with the deep paradigm shifts in political and economic practices and thinking from the Keynesian “mixed-economy” era (which prevailed from the late 1940s to the late 1970s) and its displacement by the rise and diffusion of neoliberalism in subsequent decades (Grisold and Preston 2020). The name of this paradigm shift is neoliberalism, but apart from one mention (on page 471) in a chapter on ethics, neither the word nor its profound implications for the meaning of, and boundaries between, the “political” and “the economic”, not to mention for the practice and study of journalism, feature as key concerns in the handbook. The Rise and “Non-Death” of Neoliberalism – From Edsall (1984) to Gerstle (2022)

The key contemporary economic paradigm can be described as the dominance of neoliberalism – that is, a paradigm shift from the 1970s mixed-economy Keynesian paradigm to the more market-focused current epoch. The insightful, thick descriptions and early analysis by one journalist (Edsall 1984, 1990) make clear that the rise of neoliberalism was not the outcome of the free play of ideas in academic towers or seminar rooms or intellectuals persuaded by the sheer intellectual force of the arguments advanced by von Hayek, Freedman and the like. Rather, it was the result of a very well-funded, money-powered and motivated movement to wage a veritable class war on behalf of its directors, the corporate elite and the capitalist interests they represented. In essence, we are describing a highly class-conscious and deliberate movement, marked by a laser-sharp and consistent focus on policies affecting the material interests of the elite (Winters 2011). This movement launched in the US by powerful economic, corporate and business interests (see, for example, Edsall 1984, 1990; Gerstle 2022; Harvey 2005; McQuaid 1994; Speth 2014). It was able to subsidise, buy, bribe or otherwise use its command over wealth and money power to mobilise various kinds of expertise and knowledge to assist its war against the Keynesian, mixed-economy paradigm that had prevailed up to the late 1970s. In essence, the rise of neoliberalism amounts to nothing less than an ideological (counter) revolution in which the mainstream media (at least their strategic leadership – owners and CEOs) have been far from innocent or ignorant bystanders. One of the early, sharp-eyed and informative descriptions of the initial stages of this class-conscious counterrevolution was penned by a working journalist (Edsall 1984; 1990).

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The results of the ideological counterrevolution wrought by neoliberalism and rising oligarchic power plays over the past several decades are all too evident today. They include the growing celebration of the “titans’ ” top-down rule within private sector corporations, allied to the persistent promotion of public distrust in all politics and in the capabilities or potential role of the state, especially in electoral democracies. The results include the onward march of economic inequalities and ecological crises and the deeper commercialisation and commodification of all forms of knowledge production, including the expanded marketisation and trivialisation of news (Murdock 2020; Preston 2009). The accumulated effects of these decades-long developments are now closely resembling the features of “despotic” as opposed to “democratic” regimes as defined by Lasswell shortly after the Second World War. And they are manifest in the interlinked and “cascading crises” evident across all of the world system today, as outlined in section one. The shift to a neoliberal paradigm also means more centralised and topdown (i.e., “authoritarian”-like) power and decision-making structures in corporations, other industrial organisations, including state bodies, and even within political parties. There is no space or time anymore for heart-warming ideas of an information society where key knowledge forms and technological innovations will be de-commodified and subjected to assessment by public interest criteria (Bell 1973; Preston 2001). Meanwhile, for the first time in modern capitalism, many working class communities in their core homelands can only aspire to lower real standards of living compared to their parents, while many are condemned to declining levels of life expectancy (Grisold and Preston 2020). Meanwhile, the risk of ecological catastrophe raised by the (real) hippies and other pioneers of the environmental social movement, both in the US and Europe, back in the 1970s has continued to accumulate and amplify (Speth 2014). The Anthropocene: More than a Mere Word, Red Flagging a New Era

The term “Anthropocene” has been invoked to describe how the prevailing organisation of the economy and industry by humans is having deep and irreversible negative impacts on nature. The very idea and the reality of the Anthropocene as heralding a new era in geological time is big news – or should be, at least in our view – and should be treated as a systemic and macro-level factor with major implications for the reconstruction of the vocabulary, news agenda, discursive forms and narratives and ethical concerns in all areas of journalism, news media and the mediated public sphere more broadly. It must be “mainstreamed” and not simply relegated to some presumed specialist niche called “environmental studies” or “stories”. Rather, these escalating ecological crises demand to be “mainstreamed”, in journalism studies as much as in news rooms, treated as an essential consideration and relevant

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dimension in the analysis and writing that informs any pro-public journalistic news stories and output. Yet we find that the term “Anthropocene” and its neighbouring and more familiar analogies such as cascading or interlinked “ecological crises” are missing from the action. For example, they are not accorded any attention as keywords or major themes in The Handbook of Journalism Studies, a large book dedicated to the consideration of a new, reconstructed or revamped field of journalism studies for the contemporary times (Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch 2020). Both the shift to neoliberalism – with its enduring “new politics of inequality” (Edsall 1984) and pervasive economic insecurities for the majority of citizens – and the “Anthropocene” moment underlining the cascading ecological crises comprise two significant “events” freighted with risks for a sustainable future and just society. For such reasons, they pose deep and pervasive implications for all fields of knowledge production. It is well past the time for the study of journalism (no less than the practice of journalism) to embrace these macro-level developments and “mainstream” them – so that they animate and inform the framing, analysis and ethical concerns underlying every news story and research study. Neoliberalism: More than a Purely Political Economy ‘Factor’ or Influence? Questions for Reflection You can draw from this chapter as well as Chapters 2, 3 and 4 to consider these questions. 1. What is neoliberalism? What are its key features? 2. What do you think it means to say that the rise of neoliberalism has had both major material and ideological impacts? 3. In what ways can we think of neoliberalism as a key macro-level influence on journalism and news-making practices today? 4. Neoliberalism, it can be argued, can be simultaneously seen as both a major political economy event, fact and influencing factor and operating as a macro-level ideological and cultural influence on journalism by shaping everyday assumptions and ideas about what is just, fair, valid, doable or possible to change (forming the “cultural air we breathe” or the contemporary “zeitgeist”). Discuss with reference to the preceding chapters.

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5. Have you ever heard of the “TINA view of the world”? What does it mean or imply? 6. Can you identify any key links or tensions between neoliberalism and the Anthropocene with respect to revamping the agenda of journalism studies and education?

5.  Reconnecting with Classic and Later Researchers Who Linked Political and Economic Concerns

One key resource for a much-needed radical revamp of journalism studies comprises a strand of pioneering political economy and societal-level analyses that has been ignored or neglected in recent work. This includes works by certain founding figures in what we now define as the academic field of journalism education and studies. Another parallel resource comprises other contributions to the wider analysis of mediated communication – some dating back to the decades that witnessed the emergence of truly mass media in the closing decades of the nineteenth century (see, for example, Hardt 1988; Preston 2009; Wasko et al. 2011; Tworek 2019; McChesney 2008, 2015; McChesney and Pickard 2017; Grisold and Preston 2020). Jumping forward to the emergence of a mature field in the mid-twentieth century, we can find inspiration not only in the work of radicals such as C. W. Mills but also in some works by Harold Lasswell and others deemed “legitimate” founding figures by mainstream histories of the field. Indeed, Mills and Lasswell both recognised the economic as well as political aspects of power and addressed their implications for the media system and meaningful democratic society. In the years following the Second World War, Lasswell warned that analysts, like citizens, must be alert to the distinction between a meaningful and valid “democracy” and the alternative of despotic rule. He warned that a despotic rule, when marked by excessive concentrations of wealth and money power, may well accommodate or hide behind the surface shell of certain seemingly democratic institutions and practices. Despite the apparent existence of institutional features associated with “democratic rule”, massive inequalities in wealth and other resources can really mean “despotic rule” (e.g., Lasswell and Kaplan 1950/2013). Linking Populism and Material Matters: Economic Inequalities and Insecurities

A second key potential resource to help inform a revamped journalism studies agenda comprises efforts to explore the linkages between the growing material

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inequalities and insecurities/precarities linked to the neoliberal turn and the decline of trust in political institutions and parties and the rise of extreme nationalism, racism and ethno-centric movements (see work by Arestis and Sawyer 2018; Tooze 2018, 2021; Piketty 2020, 2021, 2022; Grisold and Preston 2020; Gerstle 2022). This work helps to understand how trust in established political institutions and liberal democratic norms has been severely eroded by the neoliberal norms and its legitimations and the ramping up of the logics of greed and selfinterest. These, in turn, generate growing material inequalities (or inequalities related to wealth, income, economic security, health, life expectancy and the like as well as the growing sway of oligarchic and corporate power even since the 1980s). It also alerts us to the ideological myth-making associated with the neoliberal turn and how today’s economic and “market” system is ever more dependent on state, financial, legal and marketing communication functions, symbolic analysts and other specialist/expert inputs. It serves to highlight the manner in which neoliberal dogmas have reasserted and reimposed pro-market and pro-capitalist bias as the default position in most or all knowledge fields. The much higher levels of international mobility amongst the economic and political elites may also facilitate the spread of practices that are corrosive to the standards of political and public affairs in the core liberal democracies. For example, Chayes (2020) suggests that this factor is also facilitating the more obvious manifestations of new and old (if once derided) forms of corruption and clientelism in the populist political practices that have recently become manifest in the UK and US, the former standard bearers of liberal governance. One further relevant resource is the insightful strand of work by political sociologists and institutional theorists who have employed notions of the post-political or post-democracy to explore macro-level linkages between recent political and economic developments. This stream of work also pays attention to the industrial democracy dimension of the struggles over the “unfinished project” of modernity (Streeck 2022). The crucial authors here include Crouch (2011, 2017, 2019) and Streeck (2022). In a complementary vein, Swyngedouw (2018) provides well-grounded, insightful analyses of key shifts in public discourse, political cultures and economic trends, while in their book Technopopulism (2021), Bickerton and Accetti offer an overlapping but distinctive analysis of contemporary developments. 6.  Conclusion: Benefits of Political Economy Approaches amid Interlinked Crises and Silences

Having considered certain blindspots, neglects and other problem with recent work in journalism studies, we now turn to some concluding remarks. The

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first is to emphasise that the crisis of journalism in Western liberal democracies is very material;it is largely to do with declining levels of human resources and other economic factors – and this, in turn, has negative impacts on the quality of politics, life and processes. We have tried to show how this is related to fundamental political economy shifts – more than any technological logics presumed to be autonomous and self-steering. The big drop in the numbers of journalists (supposedly orientated to the public) over recent decades has been more than matched by the expansion of public relations, advertising and lobbing operatives who are paid by and orientated towards very partial and private interests. The result is a massive and growing imbalance between a declining set of mediated storytelling and information flows orientated to wide public interests, on the one hand, and the rapidly growing flows and narratives that actively promote the private interests of the wealthy and are orientated to highly partial concerns of the elites, on the other. Such trends, along with the decades-long onward march of economic inequalities, are deeply implicated in the declining trust in the media and other key institutions of electoral democracies. As the main discipline responsible for the education of future cohorts of journalists, the field should be to the forefront in naming and addressing such risk-laden imbalances and related trends. Yet we only observe a widespread failure to name and address the substantive facts and strategic implications of such imbalances as key aspects of the real and existing crisis of journalism. Finally, we must note that the gaps between the theory and professed ideals of the modern Western model of professional journalism and their actual realisation and delivery in practices and performances have never been greater than those manifest today. The ideal of a liberal model of professional journalism with the public as the “god-term” (as Carey put it) is now much more rarely proclaimed with confidence in the core homelands of its origins and even less frequently treated as a key metric of actual practices and journalistic performance. This shift seems closely, if not exactly, in line with the yawning gap that has opened up between the theory and promises of modern liberal democracy and the actual electoral processes, legislative outcomes and political practices that prevail today in many Western countries. (Crouch 2011, 2016, 2019; Streeck 2022; Swyngedouw 2018; Bickerton and Accetti 2021). As regards the immediate future of the academic field of journalism studies and education, the implications seem obvious. Our conclusions clearly suggest the urgency of a major commitment to reconstruct the field so that it no longer ignores or neglects engagement with the kinds of critical macro-level forces and factors described above.

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List of Concepts Introduced

• Typology; • Categories (or clusters) of influences; • Neoliberalism; • Onward march of economic inequalities and insecurities; • Macro, meso and micro levels; • Techno-Centrism; • The Anthropocene. Further Reading Linking Populism and Material Matters: Economic Inequalities and Insecurities

• Arestis and Sawyer 2018; • Tooze 2018, 2021; • Piketty 2020, 2021, 2022; • Grisold and Preston 2020; • Gerstle 2022; • Swyngedouw 2018. References Arestis, P. and Sawyer, M., eds. (2018). Inequality: Trends, Causes, Consequences, Relevant Policies. Springer. Bell, D. (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Basic Books. Bickerton, C.J. and Accetti, C.I. (2021). Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics. Oxford University Press. Biden, J. (2021). “ ‘America Has to Be Better’: Joe Biden’s Inauguration Speech – Full Text”. The Guardian, 20 January. Available from: www.theg​uard​ian.com/ us-news/2021/jan/20/joe-biden-inaug​u rat​ion-spe​ech-full-text. Chayes, S. (2020). Everybody Knows: Corruption in America. Oxford Unversity Press. Crouch, C. (2011). The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism. Polity Press. Crouch, C. (2016). The Knowledge Corrupters: Hidden Consequences of the Financial Takeover of Public. Polity Press. Crouch, C. (2017). “Neoliberalism, Nationalism and the Decline of Political Traditions”. The Political Quarterly, 88(2), pp. 221–229. Crouch, C. (2019). “Post-Democracy and Populism”. Political Quarterly, 90(Supplement 1), pp. 124–137. Curran, J. (2022). “An End to Futility: A Modest Proposal”. In Zylinska, J., eds, The Future of Media, pp. 45–58). Goldsmiths Press. Edsall, T.B. (1984). The New Politics of Inequality. Norton-Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Edsall, T.B. (1990). “The Changing Shape of Power: A Realignment in Public Policy”. In Fraser, S. and Gerstle, G., eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, pp. 269–293. Princeton University Press.

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Gans, H.J. (1979). Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBS Nightly News, Newsweek and Time. Pantheon Books. Gerstle, G. (2022). The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order. Oxford University Press. Gitlin, T. (1980/2003). The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. University of California Press. Grisold, A. and Preston, P., eds. (2020). Economic Inequality and News Media: Discourse, Power, and Redistribution. Oxford University Press. Hanitzsch, T., Hanusch, F., Ramaprasad, J. and de Beer, A.S., eds. (2019). Worlds of Journalism: Journalistic Cultures Around the Globe. Columbia University Press. Hardt, H. (1988). “Comparative Media Research: The World According to America”. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 5(2), pp. 129–146. Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. Lasswell, H.D. and Kaplan, A. (1950/2013). Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry. Routledge. McChesney, R.W. (2008). The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas. New York University Press. McChesney, R.W. (2015). Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. The New Press. McChesney, R. and Pickard, V. (2017). “News Media as Political Institutions”. In Kenski, K. and Jamieson, K.H., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication. Oxford University Press. McQuaid, K. (1994). Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 1945–1990. John Hopkins University Press. Mellado, C., ed. (2020). Beyond Journalistic Norms: Role Performance and News in Comparative Perspective. Routledge. Murdock, G. (2020). “Profits of Deceit: Performing Populism in Polarised Times”. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(6), pp. 874–899. Nielsen, R.K. (2020). “Economic Contexts of Journalism”. In Wahl-Jorgensen, K. and Hanitzsch, T. eds., The Handbook of Journalism Studies, 2nd ed., pp. 324– 341). Routledge. Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press. Piketty, T. (2021). Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016–2021. Yale University Press. Piketty, T. (2022). A Brief History of Equality. Harvard University Press. Preston, P. (2001). Reshaping Communications: Technology, Information and Social Change. SAGE. Preston, P. (2009). Making the News: Journalism and News Cultures in Europe. Routledge. Reese, S.D. (2001). “Understanding the Global Journalist: A Hierarchy-of-Influences Approach”. Journalism Studies, 2(2), pp. 173–187. Shoemaker, P.J. and Reese, S.D. (1996). Mediating the Message. Longman. Speth, J.G. (2014). Angels by the River: A Memoir. Chelsea Green Publishing. Streeck, W. (2022). “In the Superstate”. London Review of Books, 44(2). Swyngedouw, E. (2018). Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-Political Environment. MIT Press. Tooze, A. (2018). Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Allen Lane. Tworek, H. (2019). News from Germany: The competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945. Harvard University Press.

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Wahl-Jorgensen, K. and Hanitzsch, T. (2020). The Handbook of Journalism Studies. 2nd ed. Routledge Wasko, J., Murdock, G. and Sousa, H. (2011). The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications. Wiley Blackwell. Weaver, D.H., ed. (1998). The Global Journalist: News People Around the World. Hampton Press. Weber, J. (1910/1998). “Preliminary Report on a Proposed Survey for a Sociology of the Press”. History of the Human Sciences, 11(2), pp. 111–120. Whitney, C.D., Sumpter, R.S. and McQuail, D. (2004). “News Media Production: Individuals, Organizations, and Institutions”. In Downing, J.D.H., McQuail, D., Schlesinger, P. and Wartella, E.A., eds., The SAGE Handbook of Media Studies. SAGE. Winters, J.A. (2011). Oligarchy. Cambridge University Press.

PART II

Methodological Approaches for the Evaluation of Economy-Related Media Output Chapter 6: The Content Is the Thing: Using Content Analysis to Study Economic Journalism Chapter 7: Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak? Chapter 8: Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts Chapter 9: Breaking Down the Discourse, Exposing Power in Economic Journalism: Critical Discourse Analysis Chapter 10: Deconstructing Economic Discourses on Broadcast News Chapter 11: Deconstructing Discourse: Applying Interview Research in the Economic Newsroom Chapter 12: Researching Audiences: Understanding How Economic News Is Received

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-7

6 THE CONTENT IS THE THING Using Content Analysis to Study Economic Journalism Fergal Quinn and Muireann Prendergast

Advance Organiser

This chapter provides an introduction and overview to content analysis as a means of analysing economic news content. We begin by exploring it as a broad approach that includes a number of strands that can be qualitative or quantitative, inductive or deductive and involve various means of investigation, for example: • Thematic analysis; • Framing analysis; • Semiotic analysis. We set out these three types along with their backgrounds, theoretical principles and methods of analysis. Each one reveals how meaning is constructed and sustained, offering a range of different tools for the analysis of texts, images and multimodal content. Content analysis has been used to study economics textbooks, policy documents and multimodal material relevant to the field, for example advertisements, cartoons and various social media responses to important economic events. Prominent critiques and limitations of these approaches will also be addressed. Guidance is also provided on selecting material for analysis, choosing the appropriate strand of content analysis for a project and selecting key principles to follow to ensure robust analysis and transparent findings. Examples pertaining to economic media specifically will be provided throughout from a range of textual and graphic media analyses.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-8

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1.  An Introduction to Content Analysis: Background and Approaches

When addressing a particular research question or testing a hypothesis in economic studies of the media, one important strand of enquiry lies in the observed and recorded patterns employed by journalists and media organisations in representations of key events and actors. Content analysis offers methodological tools to trace the usage and development of themes and concepts in media output, for example in texts (e.g., newspapers, books, magazines, interviews, surveys), images (e.g., photographs, cartoons), audiovisual (e.g., film, television content) and contemporary multimodal material (e.g., YouTube, social media posts, blogs, podcasts, etc.).The application of this approach has evolved from a focus on counting word usage in texts in the seventeenth century to a contemporary emphasis on tracing concepts and their overall place in communicative systems (Krippendorff, 2019). Content analysis has established itself as a core method in media and communications research (Hansen and Machin 2018), in the main due to it being relatively easy to use, adaptable and systematic. Concurrently, aspects of the content analysis approach became integrated into broader and theoretically richer social and political analyses in combination with other methodologies, for example surveys, participant observation and other types of ethnographic research (Hansen and Machin 2018). This has led to its increased application beyond media texts, to analysis in fields including psychology and the social sciences. This chapter is primarily interested in how content analysis can be used to make sense of the mediation of economic news and theory. Recent applications of it include Torelli et al.’s (2020) unpacking of sustainability reports, Chen et al.’s (2020) explorations of media representations of the impact of Covid19 on tourism in China and the examination of the influence of bias on the agenda-setting of economic news in the United States by Larcinese et al. (2011). Overarching approaches to conducting content analysis tend to be either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative content analysis comes from a more positivist philosophical tradition, focusing on data that is observable and verifiable. Broadly speaking, it involves counting the frequency of specific features, for example the use of particular phrases, as a means of relating these kinds of texts and images to their wider social significance. Using this approach, large datasets can be included in analysis. While Neuendorf and Skalski (2009) warn that quantitative approaches to content analysis can lead to over-simplification, they highlight its effectiveness for diachronic comparative analyses of changes in phenomena across different time periods and for statistics-based studies. Critiques tend to be less about the validity of quantitative approaches to content analysis per se than the

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degree to which the indicators generated can be relied on, given that they can often omit critical information about the intensity of meaning within or social impact of texts, and how texts relate to realities they purport to reflect. This underlines the need, as Hansen and Machin (2018) explain, for placing what is counted in content analysis within a theoretical and interpretive framework that contextualises it properly. Qualitative approaches to content analysis are informed by the interpretive strand of European philosophical thought. These approaches examine relationships between a media text and how its audience perceive it, recognising as a given that media texts are open to multiple meanings. Thus, the audience, type of media and other contextual factors are crucial, as well as the subjectivity of the researcher’s interpretation of the text. Qualitatively oriented content analysis is time-consuming, meaning it generally focuses on smaller datasets, probing in greater depth thematic and conceptual patterns. Researchers attempting to formulate a qualitatively-oriented content analysis must keep in mind the various critiques of the approach and ask themselves the following: How can an inquirer persuade his or her audiences (including self) that the findings of an inquiry are worth paying attention to, worth taking account of? What arguments can be mounted, what criteria invoked, what questions asked that would be persuasive on this issue? [Lincoln and Guba 1985, p. 290] Criticisms of qualitative content analysis approaches tended to converge around its lack of a single unifying, theoretical framework and verifiable quantitative/ statistical data and the fact that findings can suffer from researcher bias. In response to these critiques, several key principles were developed to encourage a more robust and transparent research process. The best-known of these is “trustworthiness” (Lincoln and Guba 1985) and has four main components: • Credibility: Are descriptions used recognisable to others that shared the same experience? • Transferability: Can findings be applied to other settings or groups? • Dependability: Is the data consistent over similar conditions? • Confirmability: Can you show that the data represents the participants’ responses and not your own bias or viewpoint? While quantitative content analysis is the more conventionally and demonstrably “scientific” approach, it lacks a sense of the deeper meanings that can inform audience interpretations of media output. Most modern communications researchers do not establish a clear dividing line between quantitative and qualitative content analyses. Instead, they are seen as

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complementary (Macnamara 2005). To reduce the limitations of quantitative and qualitative forms of content analysis, a mixed-methods approach is often employed containing elements of both approaches. Using more than one method to analyse the same or different datasets is called triangulation. Benefits of this include: • Wider perspectives and more comprehensive findings; • Incorporating larger datasets in qualitative studies. 2.  Content Analysis: Processes of Analysis

It is important to acknowledge that when we use the term “content analysis” we are referring to several distinct approaches. These include framing, thematic and semiotic analyses. Before deciding on the specific form of content analysis to be employed, researchers need to consider, firstly, whether the project design or research question should be developed inductively or deductively and the type of analysis that data gathered should be subjected to. An inductive research process firstly gathers data, analyses it carefully to trace key patterns and then generates a theory from these findings that inform the research project and its core question(s). For an economics-oriented example, see Tang et al.’s (2019) examination of smart city archetypes in municipal plans. Conversely, a deductive approach begins with a hypothesis or theory and then tests whether this is confirmed or refuted by data under analysis. This approach is exemplified by Nilsson and Nilsson’s (2021) study of organisational measures and strategies proposed for extended working life and employability. Take a Moment Think about which best suits your project – an inductive or deductive approach. On what basis have you made this decision?

Having decided on starting with an inductive or deductive approach to the overall research design, the practical means of analysis should be factored into your choice of an overall content analysis approach, i.e., should this be more machine or human led? Media content analysis increasingly uses computer software to carry out analysis. While approaches in this regard continue to get more sophisticated, Neuendorf (2002) warns against the notion of completely automatic content analysis: “The human contribution to content analysis is still paramount” (p. 40).

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As we noted previously, content analysis is not one singular method but instead encompasses several different approaches, each one with a distinct aim and focus. Now, let’s explore these main strands in more detail and see how they can be employed when analysing economic media output. 3.  Framing Analysis

Media framing analysis is a method of uncovering, analysing and interpreting the angle from which a news story is presented across various types of media. Taking a critical position on the claim that news is an objective representation of reality, this approach conceptualises news as a selective reconstruction of the event being covered. It sees this kind of selectivity as something that is operationalised during the news production process, consciously and unconsciously, via the active selection, emphasis on and ordering of particular sources, semantic processes and other elements of news output. Reasons for this include the various types of biases held by journalists and editors, both conscious and unconscious, and also conditions related to work practices, resource limitations and other political economic factors. Frame manifestation tends to be driven by elites, for example government leaders or experts, but are also implemented and accelerated via different elements within the media and within the audience itself. This is related to hegemonic concepts that are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3 and 7. What is a Frame?

Frames organise central, or core, ideas on a particular issue. These are selected from a plurality of possible interpretations of an issue and are then, as Nisbet (2010) describes, used as “interpretive schema” that function to make sense of and discuss an issue and as a means of condensing complex events into engaging news reports. For Entman (1991, p. 51), frames are used “to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described”. Key Factors Influencing Frame Construction in Economic News Output

• Ideology: Barnhurst (2005) defines ideology as “the particular set of shared ideas that obscure how powerful groups dominate others” (p. 241). When analysing economic media it is helpful to consider what kind of ideological positions can be traced. These include, but are not limited to, consumerism, neoliberalism, capitalism, libertarianism and socialism. It is worth noting that ideologies are sustained by being presented as

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“common-sense” economic analysis, i.e., “Everyone knows that the wealthy cannot be taxed over a certain point”. • Characteristics of news producers/audiences: The race, class and gender of those involved in news production and consumption can have an interlinking effect on the lens through which a story is presented. This relates to journalists, editors, media owners and target audiences. For example, gender can affect framing via economic news output that emphasises in positive terms a tax cut for higher earners (predominantly men) while obscuring predominantly female-oriented effects, for example that tax cuts are prioritised over funding childcare services (women would be disproportionately affected here). • Production process: These frames can emerge via the dependence of news producers on certain sources. For example, in economic news reporting this might include economists who follow a particular school of thought, powerful business-oriented lobby groups or government-embedded or special-interest funded economic think tanks.

Take a Moment Is a framing analysis appropriate to your research question? Why? Are you more interested in ideological influences on news frames? Is your focus on those producing or receiving the content or on the news production process?

Media framing rests predominantly on two broad theoretical frameworks – psychological and sociological. • Psychological: These kinds of approaches to framing look at the kinds of psychological processes that go into the formation of the frame from the producer perspective, as well as psychological effects on audiences. Foundational texts here include Iyengar (1994) and Druckman (2001). • Sociological: Research from this perspective focuses more on factors influencing the actual construction processes that contribute to framing, for example, ways in which these interact with word, images, phrase usage in news and other means of presentation of news. Influential texts here include Entman (1991), Goffman (1974) and Gitlin (2003).

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This checklist, which draws from Linstrom and Marais (2012), is useful here: KEY STEPS IN A FRAMING ANALYSIS 1. Choose your medium First things first – what type of media will you be examining? Your choice here may be led by the nature of the research question or by convenience of access. Newspapers tend to be the most common choice, in large part due to ease of access and process (TV and radio can be more time consuming due to having to transcribe the material before analysis). 2. What timeframe will you be examining? It is important to choose a timeframe for analysis that is significant in terms of the research question. A further consideration is that enough evidence needs to be yielded from the period so that you can credibly answer the question posed. 3. Decide on the unit of analysis Choosing the correct unit of analysis is a crucial part of a framing analysis process. According to Wimmer and Dominick (2006), in written content a unit can be a single word or symbol or an entire article. Units of analysis should be consistent within a particular study and their parameters clearly defined. 4. Process of frame selection Frames can be selected inductively (emerge from the ground up) or deductively (led by a hypothesis or theory). The researcher can count either the dominant frame per article or note secondary frames also. Secondary frames are subframes that relate to a main frame but are not uniquely significant enough to merit being a frame in themselves. 5. Define frames Each frame must be described specifically and precisely in such a way that is replicable and comparative, with identifiable conceptual and linguistic characteristics (De Vreese 2005).

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6. Identify news frames within the dataset Once sufficient groundwork has been laid, frames should then be identified via multiple deep, active engagements with the media output under examination. In this way, frames should be continually elaborated on and refined via comparison with one another. Key information to enhance frame identification includes different rhetorical (for example word choices, metaphors, catchphrases or thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgements) or technical devices (headlines, photo captions, pull quotes, ledes or placement of sources) with which judgements or ideas are insinuated or reinforced.

Here is an example of the framing analysis carried out by Bell and Entman (2011) to interrogate how the media framed the tax cuts of US President George W. Bush between 2001 and 2003. Bell and Entman were interested in what they saw as the media’s role in facilitating broad-based public support for government policies that were skewed heavily in favour of the wealthy elite. A framing analysis of the national TV coverage of the period led them to conclude that by framing the tax cuts’ alleged collective benefit in terms of economic growth while deemphasising the likelihood of greater economic inequality, the coverage failed to give the public a balanced assessment of the measures. THE MEDIA’S ROLE IN AMERICA’S EXCEPTIONAL POLITICS OF INEQUALITY: FRAMING THE BUSH TAX CUTS OF 2001 AND 2003 In this study, Bell and Entman (2011) examined what they hypothesised was a selling and obscuring the effect of Bush’s tax policies. After examining transcripts of 197 network evening news stories, the presence or absence of assertions in four categories was coded, two of which we will look closer at here: 1. Particular individuals benefitting from the policies; 2. Collective economic and societal impacts. In the first category, the analysis highlights that less than a third of the stories reporting on the cuts looked at particular socio-economic classes or

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income groupings. Instead, they framed the tax cuts in positive terms as benefitting the nation collectively, i.e., emphasising “Americans”, “consumers”, “taxpayers” or “you” as opposed to more specific descriptors. For example, the coverage stated that the tax plan was “designed around giving Americans a $1.6 trillion tax cut”. By accentuating the size of the cuts while omitting particularistic effects, the analysis found that the coverage obscured differences between those who would benefit slightly if at all (the vast majority) and those who would gain massively from the new policies (a small elite minority). TABLE 6.1  Stories identifying particular groups benefitting from Bush tax

cuts (Bell and Entman 2011) Group

Number of stories mentioning Percentage of all the group stories

All Americans 124 Upper-class income level 51 Married couples/Families 50 Investors/Businesses 44 Middle class 30 Working class 27 Inheritors 18 Lower class 15 Upper-middle class 10 Other 25

66.3 27.3 26.7 23.5 16 14.4 9.6 8 5.3 13.4

Note: Presence or absence of each was coded per story. See full paper for details of income ranges for different categories.

Meanwhile, when considering the second category, discussions about impacts focused primarily on the expected economic stimulation the cuts would provide (over 60 per cent) with a far smaller proportion of stories (less than 20 per cent) focusing on the unequal wealth distribution that was projected to result. Tax cut impacts on funding for key federal programmes, for example welfare-oriented ones, was also broadly ignored. Overall, Bell and Entman’s work concludes that broadcast media framing of Bush’s tax cuts assisted wealthy elites and associated political groupings by suppressing individual citizen’s awareness and political expression of their individual economic self-interests and accentuating the collective, sociotropic value of economic growth rather than economic equality.

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4.  Thematic Analysis

Thematic analysis is a means of analysing qualitative data, primarily emanating from interviews but also from other types of media content, via the identification of recurrent topics or ideas that are gathered into themes and subthemes. Terry et al. (2017) describe a thematic approach as being experientially oriented, with a focus on what participants (in the case of interview-based datasets) think, feel and do. Thematic analysis has been used in almost all fields of scholarship and suits any subdiscipline where qualitatively oriented research questions are asked about experiences, understanding, social processes and human practices and behaviour. Braun and Clarke (2006), who were hugely influential in terms of establishing thematic analysis as an approach, argue that it is a particularly accessible and theoretically flexible means of analysis. This adaptability also means it can be used with various types of data, for example interview transcripts, focus group data, textual data gathered from qualitative surveys and online discussion or other media sources. Dataset quality is prized over quantity, but sample sizes can be contentious. Braun and Clarke (2006) very broadly indicated 30 interviews for a large project, for example, 10 focus groups, 200-plus surveys and anything up to 400-plus media texts. However, these recommendations are far from prescriptive and are intended as broad guidelines only. Take a Moment Why is a thematic analysis the most appropriate approach for you? What kind of dataset will you be working with to best answer your research question?

TABLE 6.2 Thematic analysis versus framing analysis

Thematic analysis

Framing analysis

Analyses of qualitative data. Output Can be used for both qualitative and will almost always be more broadly quantitative data. Output of analysis descriptive than numerical. lends itself to numerical expression. Most commonly used to analyse Most commonly used to analyse media experientially oriented data, for output, for example newspaper articles example transcripts of interviews with or TV broadcasts. journalists. Frames tend to be narrower and more Themes tend to be broader, more specific. abstract and encompass a wider array of data fragments.

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The below steps to doing a thematic analysis draw strongly on Braun and Clarke’s (2006) approach. KEY STEPS IN A THEMATIC ANALYSIS 1. Get familiar with the data Begin by actively engaging with the dataset generated (for example, transcripts of interviews or broadcast output), reading through it while noting emergent patterns and generating provisional ideas related to the research questions, i.e., assumptions or world views evidenced in accounts. 2. Generate initial codes Systematically create meaningful labels or codes. These can be more semantically (explicitly present) or latently oriented (more implied or suggested). As codes are revised and refined, data is organised and reduced, culminating in the production of a list of codes that identify both patterns and diversity of meanings. 3. Search for themes Research questions should orientate and guide initial codes into clusters or patterns that are, in turn, collapsed into “themes”. Good quality themes should be distinctive, should be linked to and work alongside other themes, and must have their own distinct, central organising concept. Thematic maps help conceptualise relationships between emergent themes and subthemes. 4. Reviewing, defining and naming themes The candidate theme should now be reviewed, shaped and clarified, while checking how well suggested themes work in terms of capturing meanings in coded data segments. At this point, analysis becomes more interpretive, forming what Terry et al. (2017) describe as an analytic narrative that encases the presented data extracts. Short, summary theme definitions serve as a kind of abstract for the theme, while theme names should both give a clear indication of the content of that theme and engage readers with analysis.

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5. Writing up During the write-up phase, data segments can be used for illustrative and analytical purposes.

The next section outlines how a thematic analysis was applied to BBC news coverage of economic policies of austerity. Specifically, it looks at the debate around the UK public deficit, which was a key foundation on which to politically justify this kind of economic approach. NO ALTERNATIVE TO AUSTERITY: HOW BBC BROADCAST NEWS REPORTED THE DEFICIT DEBATE This study by Mike Berry (2016) asks how the news media explained (1) the origins, (2) the consequences and (3) the potential responses to the rise in Britain’s public deficit, which spiralled in the aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis. Berry looked at the BBC News at Ten coverage of the deficit debate from January to August of 2009, due to it being the key period when the deficit began to increase sharply, leading to heightened political debate and public concern. All bulletins that covered the public finances were transcribed and then subject to a thematic analysis, alongside a sourcing analysis. Berry’s analysis measures: 1. The quantity of news text given to different arguments (space given); 2. The frequency with which they appeared (how routinely they were used). Having gathered this data, he outlined common themes that emerge in the dataset under three headings: A. What Caused the Deficit?; B. Consequences of the Deficit; C. Response to the Deficit. Let’s focus on the first of these: “A. What Caused the Deficit?” Following a contextualising of this question via a discussion of proximate cause for deficit rise, he outlines a dataset generated from the news coverage that highlights the following: first, a disinterest in providing explanations for the deficit – just 3.3 per cent of overall coverage focused on explaining reasons for the deficit; and second, where explanations of the deficit were focused on in the coverage, they focused on immediate causes for the deficit rise rather than any reference to broader systemic reasons for it. While the explanatory factors are found to be broadly accurate, Berry, via excerpts and examples, highlights the confusion and muddying of the waters that characterise much of the editorial. For example:

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“Back in the 90s, these two ambitious young chaps would bound around the City of London, declaring that Labour had changed. Gone were the days of taxing high earners until the pips squeak, they would say. And never again would a Labour government court financial disaster by borrowing too much. Crusty old bankers and crotchety old business leaders listen politely and didn’t believe a word, although in the early years of the Labour government, such scepticism seemed well a bit unfair. But today as the Chancellor pushes up the top rate of tax and forecasts an eye-watering increase in public sector debt, the noise you can hear from the city is of older bankers saying ‘I told you so’.” (BBC, 22 April 2009) The above, as Berry points out, highlights some sectoral responsibility (government) while underplaying others (financial speculation by the banks). A similar approach is taken to answering how the media reported on the “consequences” of such a deficit, which highlights how both sourcing and discussion points frame the debate from a pro-austerity perspective while excluding macro-economic positions that questioned whether a deficit would inevitably lead to interest rate rises or inflation. The first two sections of analysis culminate in a breakdown of what is being advanced in the media to “address” or “fix” the deficit problem. Just over a fifth of total coverage focused on the reporting of possible solutions to the deficit problem, with the vast majority (73 per cent) of news text devoted to arguments about public spending cuts and regressive tax rises. Overall, Berry finds that the coverage operated as “a closed circle excluding those who offered alternatives to cuts … or regressive taxation” (Berry 2016, p. 858).

5.  Semiotic Analysis

Up to now we have focused primarily on how to make sense of the textual content of economic media output. These methods in broad terms see the likes of audio-visual broadcast content reduced to datasets generated via the transcription of that content, from which an analysis can then be carried out. But the text in and of itself is not the whole story. Semiotics is the science of symbols in a broader sense and encompasses mediated content including and beyond the text, for example how the text is presented, and the accompanying photographs and drawings that can make up a magazine, newspaper or webpage. Semiotic media analysis offers an extra dimension to content analysis and is particularly important in a modern digital context, where media communication encompasses a vast array of multimedia content, as opposed to the more visually limited media of the past.

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The term semiotics involves two aspects: • A theory for understanding communication as a complex system; • A methodological approach for identifying and unpacking the meaning produced by these communicative systems. The field of semiotics has been informed by three key thinkers: • Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913); • US philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914); • French literary and cultural theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Their various contributions to semiotics as a field of inquiry can be summarised as follows: 1. De Saussure • Language involves a systems of signs. Each sign, or speech unit, has two parts, the signifier (material form) and the signified (the concept this evokes). If we take the example of a “coin” as a sign, the signifier would be the round metal object used to purchase items, while the signified would be the concepts that “coin” brings to mind when we hear or see it, e.g., subsistence or wealth. • Although he proposed that the relationship between the sign and the signified is arbitrary, the connection between them is decided on by participants in speech communities. For example, we are in broad agreement that the sign “coin” is connected to other signs in our language system, e.g., “currency”, “economy”, etc. 2. Peirce • While de Saussure proposed a two-part sign, Peirce identified three parts: the representamen (form), an interpretant (idea in mind) and an object (reference point). • Peirce also offered a broader understanding of signs, beyond that of the linguistic arbitrariness explored by de Saussure. He explored universal categories that exist outside our minds, which we interpret as signs. 3. Barthes • Barthes focused on a wider understanding of signs beyond language to include images. His items of investigation included photographs. • He was concerned with the social, political and economic factors that influence the formation of signs. • He was concerned more with the significance carried by signs than their compositions within systems.

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MAIN TAKEAWAYS • Semiotics can be used to analyse not just language but visual imagery too. The understanding of semiotics has developed over time, from focusing on the arbitrariness of relations within systems of signs to highlighting the impact of social, political and economic contexts on our forms of communication.

Take a Moment We have established above that a semiotic analysis can be applied to textual, visual and audio-visual material. Now ask yourself the following: What material have you selected for analysis? On what basis have you made this decision? Think carefully about this, and we will return to this question later in the chapter with some important factors to consider.

KEY STEPS IN A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS When conducting a Semiotic study, Barthes (1977, 1964, 1957) offers a number of analytical tools that can be applied to textual, visual and even audio-visual studies. First, it should be noted that signs have two key “orders of signification”, which can be understood as layers of meaning. 1. Denotation

This is the first-order, or the literal or explicit meaning, of the sign, where the links between the signifier and the signified can be traced. It is this level of meaning that is the focus of de Saussure’s model.

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Key questions to ask when you first look at your material selected for analysis are as follows: • What signs can you see? • What signifiers and signifieds can you identify for each sign? • Based on these signs, signifiers and signifieds, what general theme do you observe?

2. Connotation

This refers to second-order meaning that is wider than the level of denotation. Barthes called the signified at this level “general, global and diffuse … fragments of ideology” (1977, p. 91). The significance of connotative meaning is generally agreed on by language communities and can change over time as social, political and economic circumstances change. Further questions to ask are: • What references can be found in your material to broader contextual factors? • Where are these found? • How are these presented? • How do these factors relate to the signs, signifiers and signified identified above? • Considering all these elements together, what overall message can you see?

A Word of Caution Some researchers have critiqued Barthes’ clear distinction between denotation and connotation, suggesting that sometimes it can be difficult to tell these apart. What do you think about this point? How do you think you would address this if it became an issue during your analysis? Cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s response to this issue is as follows: From our point of view, the distinction is an analytic one only. It is useful, in analysis, to be able to apply a rough rule of thumb which distinguishes those

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aspects of a sign which appear to be taken, in any language community at any point in time, as its “literal” meaning (denotation) from the more associative meanings for the sign which it is possible to generate (connotation). But analytic distinctions must not be confused with distinctions in the real world. There will be very few instances in which signs organised in a discourse signify only their “literal” (that is, near-universally consensualised) meaning. In actual discourse most signs will combine both the denotative and connotative aspects (as redefined above). It may, then, be asked why we retain the distinction at all. It is largely a matter of analytic value. [Hall 2003, p. 122]

Central to the construction and maintenance of ideologies at the level of connotation is myth. Myth can be defined as a story emanating from the past, which is used to explain a natural or social phenomenon. While this is presented as “natural and eternal” (Barthes 1957, p. 16), he underscores that this is generally decided on by ruling elites through traditional dominance in agenda-setting processes and environments. The aim of semiotic analysis is to identify and unpack the process of myth-making. In order to achieve this, there are some important questions to ask: • Considering all the elements you have identified in your analysis of denotation and connotation together, what overall message can you see? • Is there a commentary on some aspect of society? If so, what is it? To further develop our understanding of these three resources for analysis proposed by Barthes, let’s work through an example now.

Denotation (First-Order Meaning) On a literal reading of this magazine cover, we can see a warrior, likely an Anglo-Saxon due to the weapons and helmet used. This is also evinced in the style of shield, which bears a British flag. The stance is defensive as the warrior looks out to sea. He is alone, standing on a small rock in a solitary position. The text accompanying the image supports this reading.

Connotation (Second-Order Meaning) This edition of the Economist was published on 2 January 2021, a mere days after the Brexit transition period ended and the United Kingdom exited the

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FIGURE 6.1 “Britain

Has Lost the EU. Can It Find a Role?”

© The Economist Newspaper Limited, London (2 January 2021). Illustration by Matt Murphy.

European Union customs union and single market. This is evoked in the image of the soldier, who appears to be floating away from the European continent on a single rock. His stance is defensive and he is alone, bringing to mind the UK’s stance in the Brexit negotiations. His back is to the reader, suggesting that

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the UK has similarly turned away from the rest of the continent and the world, more broadly, in adopting this position. This is echoed in the caption.

Myth Defensiveness, separatism and isolation of the United Kingdom evoking the warring tribal period of the early centuries AD. This is in stark opposition to the solidarity and community among nations espoused by the European Union in the aftermath of the Second World War, which the UK is shown to have turned away from with the Brexit referendum.

Along with denotation, connotation and myth, further tools proposed by Barthes (1977) and de Saussure (2011) for analysis include: • Syntagm; • Paradigm. Chandler (2001) offers a helpful entry point to these terms as “codes” or “axes”, with the syntagm and paradigm representing the horizontal and vertical axes respectively. Chandler’s visual representation of this relationship, for textual analysis, is set out in Figure 6.2. Syntagms

Both de Saussure and Barthes consider syntagmatic relationships to be characterised by “chains” and “associations”. As de Saussure (2011) highlights, “in the syntagm, a term acquires its value only because it stands in opposition to everything that precedes or follows it, or to both” (p. 123). Meaning is created by the relationships, and interrelationships, between signs in textual, visual and audio-visual grammar systems. In textual and

FIGURE 6.2 Chandler’s

Syntagm/Paradigm relationship (Chandler 2001, p. 84)

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spoken language, a combination of verbs and nouns, subjects and objects are employed to communicate; in visual discourse, colours, shapes and text are used; and in audio-visual discourse, a combination of angles, lighting and sounds are connected together to convey meaning. Stop and Think • In your material selected for analysis, what syntagmatic relationships can you trace? • How are these relationships constructed?

Paradigms

While syntagms are notable for their relationships of association and connection, paradigms are defined by their differences. For example, in Chandler’s example above, we can substitute the verb “cried” with “died” or “sang”, and while each would make grammatical sense, they each convey a different meaning. For paradigmatic analysis, the choice of one word or image over another is significant. Absences, and the motivations behind these, can be significant in terms of the message communicated.

Key Questions • What paradigmatic alternatives are possible? • Why do you think the signifiers chosen were selected above these alternatives within the same set of paradigms? • What is the result of this choice in terms of the message communicated?

To unpack these two terms further, let’s work through another example now: SYNTAGMATIC ANALYSIS The message of this cover in relation to the “green boom”, or rise in sociopolitical initiatives around the world to protect the environment, is conveyed through a combination of textual and visual signs. To look at the text first, the phrasal verb used, “bunged up”, suggests congestion. This is reinforced by the subtext that this “green boom” could “get stuck”.

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FIGURE 6.3 “How Green Bottlenecks Threaten the Green Energy Business”

© The Economist Newspaper Limited, London (12 June 2021). Illustration by Justin Metz.

The “green boom” highlighted in the text is reflected in the image through the choice of colour for the bottle. The environmental theme is reinforced through the collection of solar panels inside the bottle. The idea of congestion

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is also supported by the obstruction generated by the large number of solar panels. This is in harmony with the bottleneck, or blockage, mentioned in the text.

Paradigmatic Analysis Why was green chosen as the key colour of the image rather than alternatives such as blue or red? Green is the colour that is most associated with the environment, and we can assume that it was chosen for this reason. Why does a bottle feature here rather than a can or a cup? Glass bottles are strongly associated with recycling and the movement to protect the environment. The strong association between bottlenecks and congestion is also noteworthy here. Why are solar panels shown to be causing the bottleneck in this image rather than alternatives such as wind turbines or electric cars? These alternatives could also have been chosen here, and it is likely that the same message could have been conveyed. However, the choice of solar panels is significant in that they are arguably more immediately identified with the environmental movement.

To conclude, Gemma Penn (2000, p. 244) offers a helpful five-step model for conducting a semiotic analysis. This can be summarised as follows: SELECT MATERIAL FOR ANALYSIS At this initial stage, important decisions to make and factors to consider include the following: • Will I choose a contemporary or historical timeframe for study? With a contemporary study it is likely that material for analysis can be found online and is open access, but with a historical study perhaps material will only be available in paper format in a local or national media archive.

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• How much time and what resources do I have to conduct this study? Penn notes the importance of adopting a realistic approach to the amount of material that can be included in analysis. • Identify denoted meaning first and adopt a systematic approach to this. Penn suggests keeping a list and also annotating material in a specific file for reference. Here, the importance of including as much detail as possible to support analysis, including the size and colour, etc., of texts and images, is highlighted. Attention should also be paid to absent signs as well as to those included (e.g., paradigmatic analysis). • Analyse connotation and myth. Next, it is important to note the “signified” elements. What social, political and/or economic context is referenced and how is this done? What connotations can be identified? What is the myth communicated? Here, it is proposed that a syntagmatic analysis be conducted, i.e., how do these different elements relate to and connect with each other to communicate meaning? • Know your end point. For illustrative purposes, two examples of semiotic analysis have been included here. However, more will likely be required to answer a research question. However, the analysis can be concluded as soon as the research question(s) are adequately addressed. • Carefully choose the presentation format. Choosing an appropriate presentation form (e.g., table, text and structure) is important. Examples should be included for each point made. Consistency in the presentation of material, analysis and findings improves transparency and clarity for the reader.

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6. Conclusion

This chapter has shown that content analysis offers helpful resources to identify and analyse the thematic and conceptual patterns in economic news output, enabling us to unpack the devices used in the construction of news stories and trace the strategies that sustain the stances of journalists and news outlets on specific topics. Content analysis is an established option for the study of media representations of key economic issues, such as those presented here on the repercussions of national policy, climate change and Brexit. It allows us to identify who and what is included (and excluded) from coverage and what and how specific events and viewpoints are prioritised in news reports. The range of analytical tools offered within the scope of content analysis positions it as a revealing research approach for a contemporary media landscape dominated by the increasing interplay between new and traditional news platforms and the central role of visual elements. It is also sufficiently adaptable to be applied to the spectrum of cross-cutting issues intersecting with economic media studies, including, but not limited to, social, political and environmental themes. List of Concepts Introduced

• Content analysis; • Qualitative; • Quantitative; • Mixed methods; • Triangulation; • Inductive; • Deductive; • Thematic analysis; • Codes; • Framing analysis; • Ideology; • Semiotic analysis; • Signs; • Signifiers; • Signifieds; • Denotation; • Connotation; • Myth; • Syntagm; • Paradigm.

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Further Practical Reading for Content Analysis Evolution of Content Analysis

• Harold D. Lasswell: His World Politics and Person Insecurity (1935) sets out the outline of a design for a “world attention survey” based on quantitative content analysis. • George Gerbner: The hugely influential Towards “Cultural Indicators”: The Analysis of Mass Mediated Public Message Systems (1969) outlines the use of content analysis for monitoring trends and developments in American TV to see how far television “cultivates” certain world views of audiences. • Dearing and Rodgers (1996) and McCombs (2005) were prominent in a wave of agenda-setting studies that established via content analysis and surveying how specific issues dominate the media agenda and influence public opinion. • Gans (2004) and Fishman (1988) produced two widely replicated studies of news production that combine observational methods, interviews and content analysis of the “product” of news. Quantitative Analysis in the Field of Economics

• Essman, M., Stoltze, F.M., Carpentier, F.D., Swart, E.C. and Taillie, L.S. (2021). “Examining the News Media Reaction to a National Sugary Beverage Tax in South Africa: A Quantitative Content Analysis”. BMC Public Health, 21(1), pp. 1–14. Qualitative Content Analysis in the Field of Economics

• Lyytimäki, J. (2018). “Renewable Energy in the News: Environmental, Economic, Policy and Technology Discussion of Biogas”. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 15, pp. 65–73. Mixed Method Content Analysis in the Field of Economics

• Damstra, A. and Vliegenthart, R. (2018). “(Un)covering the Economic Crisis? Over-Time and Inter-Media Differences in Salience and Framing”. Journalism Studies, 19(7), pp. 983–1003. Some Recent Studies Using Semiotic Analysis in the Field of Economics • Crowther, D. (2018). A Social Critique of Corporate Reporting: A Semiotic Analysis of Corporate Financial and Environmental Reporting. Routledge.

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• Müller, M. and Springer, B. (2016). “Liquid Images: A Semiotic Analysis of On-Air Promotion and TV Design of TV Stations”. In Nöth, W., ed., Semiotics of the Media, pp. 417–430. De Gruyter Mouton. Acknowledgements

Thank you to Justin Metz for allowing his illustration to be reproduced in this chapter. References Barnhurst, K.G. (2005). “News Ideology in the Twentieth Century”. In Høyer, S. and Pöttker, H., eds., Diffusion of the News Paradigm, 1850–2000, pp. 239–262. University of Gothenburg. Barthes, R. (1957). Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. Jonathan Cape. Barthes, M. (1964). “Rhétorique de l’image”. Communications, 4(1), pp. 40–51. Barthes, R. (1977). Image Music Text. Translated by S. Heath. Fontana Press. Bell, C.V. and Entman, R.M. (2011). “The Media’s Role in America’s Exceptional Politics of Inequality: Framing the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003”. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 16(4), pp. 548–572. Berry, M. (2016). “No Alternative to Austerity: How BBC Broadcast News Reported the Deficit Debate”. Media, Culture & Society, 38(6), pp. 844–863. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006). “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology”. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101. Chandler, D. (2001). Semiotics: The Basics. Routledge. Chen, H., Huang, X. and Li, Z. (2020). “A Content Analysis of Chinese News Coverage on COVID-19 and Tourism”. Current Issues in Tourism, 25(2), pp. 1–8. Crowther, D. (2018). A Social Critique of Corporate Reporting: A Semiotic Analysis of Corporate Financial and Environmental Reporting. Routledge. Damstra, A. and Vliegenthart, R. (2018). “(Un)covering the Economic Crisis? OverTime and Inter-Media Differences in Salience and Framing”. Journalism Studies, 19(7), pp. 983–1003. De Saussure, F. (2011). Course in General Linguistics. Columbia University Press. De Vreese, C.H. (2005). “News Framing: Theory and Typology”. Information Design Journal & Document Design, 13(1) , pp. 48–59. Dearing, J.W. and Rogers E.M. (1996). Agenda-Setting, Vol. 6. SAGE. Druckman, J.N. (2001). “On the Limits of Framing Effects: Who Can Frame?”. The Journal of Politics, 63(4), pp. 1041–1066. Entman, R.M. (1991). “Framing US Coverage of International News: Contrasts in Narratives of the K AL and Iran Air Incidents”. Journal of Communication, 41(4), pp. 6–27. Essman, M., Stoltze, F.M., Carpentier, F.D., Swart, E.C. and Taillie, L.S. (2021). “Examining the News Media Reaction to a National Sugary Beverage Tax in South Africa: A Quantitative Content Analysis”. BMC Public Health, 21(1), pp. 1–14. Fishman, M. (1988). Manufacturing the News. University of Texas Press. Gans, H.J. (2004). Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. Northwestern University Press.

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Gerbner, G. (1969). “Toward ‘Cultural Indicators’: The Analysis of Mass Mediated Public Message Systems”. AV Communication Review, 17(2), pp. 137–148. Gitlin, T. (2003). The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. University of California Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Harvard University Press. Hall, S. (2003). “Encoding/Decoding”. In Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A. and Willis, P., eds., Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79, pp. 117–128. Routledge. Hansen, A. and Machin, D. (2018). Media and Communication Research Methods. Macmillan International Higher Education. Iyengar, S. (1994). Is Anyone Responsible?: How Television Frames Political Issues. University of Chicago Press. Krippendorff, K. (2019). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. SAGE. Larcinese, V., Puglisi, R. and Snyder Jr, J.M. (2011) “Partisan Bias in Economic News: Evidence on the Agenda-Setting Behavior of US Newspapers”. Journal of Public Economics, 95(9–10), pp. 1178–1189. Lasswell, H.D. (1935). World Politics and Personal Insecurity. McGraw Hill. Lincoln, Y.S. and Guba, E.G. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. SAGE. Linstrom, M. and Marais, W. (2012). “Qualitative News Frame Analysis: A Methodology”. Communitas, 17, pp. 21–38. Lyytimäki, J. (2018). “Renewable Energy in the News: Environmental, Economic, Policy and Technology Discussion of Biogas”. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 15, pp. 65–73. Macnamara, J.R. (2005). “Media Content Analysis: Its Uses, Benefits and Best Practice Methodology”. Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, 6(1), pp. 1–34. McCombs, M. (2005). “A Look at Agenda-Setting: Past, Present and Future”. Journalism Studies, 6(4), pp. 543–557. Metz, Justin. (2021). Cover image: “How Green Bottlenecks Threaten the Green Energy Business”. The Economist, 12 June. Available from: www.econom​ist.com/ lead​ers/2021/06/12/how-green-bott​lene​cks-threa​ten-the-clean-ene​rgy-busin​ess [Accessed 31/08/2022]. Müller, M. and Springer, B. (2016). “Liquid Images: A Semiotic Analysis of On-Air Promotion and TV Design of TV Stations”. In Nöth, W., ed., Semiotics of the Media, pp. 417–430. De Gruyter Mouton. Murphy, M. (2021). Cover image: “Britain Has Lost the EU. Can It Find a Role?”. The Economist, 2 January. Available from: www.econom​ist.com/lead​ers/2021/01/02/ brit​a in-has-lost-the-eu-can-it-find-a-role [Accessed 31/08/2022]. Neuendorf, K.A. (2002). Defining Content Analysis. Content Analysis Guidebook. SAGE. Neuendorf, K.A. and Skalski, P.D. (2009). “Quantitative Content Analysis and the Measurement of Collective Identity”. In Abdelal, R., Herrera, Y.M., Johnston, A.I. and McDermott, R., eds., Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists, pp. 203–236. Cambridge University Press. Nilsson, K. and Nilsson, E. (2021). “Organisational Measures and Strategies for a Healthy and Sustainable Extended Working Life and Employability – A Deductive Content Analysis with Data Including Employees, First Line Managers,

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Trade Union Representatives and HR-Practitioners”. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(11), p. 5626. Nisbet, M.C. (2010). “Knowledge into Action: Framing the Debates over Climate Change and Poverty”. In D’Angelo, P. and Kuypers, J.A., eds., Doing News Framing Analysis, pp. 59–99. Routledge. Penn, G. (2000). “Semiotic Analysis of Still Images”. In Bauer, M.W. and Gaskell, G., eds., Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical Handbook for Social Research, pp. 227–245. SAGE. Tang, Z., Jayakar, K., Feng, X., Zhang, H. and Peng, R.X. (2019). “Identifying Smart City Archetypes from the Bottom Up: A Content Analysis of Municipal Plans”. Telecommunications Policy, 43(10), 101834. Terry, G., Hayfield, N., Clarke, V. and Braun, V. (2017). “Thematic Analysis”. In Willig, C. and Stainton-Rogers, W., eds., The SAGE Handbook of qualitative Research in Psychology, 2nd ed., pp. 17–37. SAGE. Torelli, R., Balluchi, F. and Furlotti, K. (2020). “The Materiality Assessment and Stakeholder Engagement: A Content Analysis of Sustainability Reports”. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 27(2), pp. 470–484. Wimmer, R.D. and Dominick, J.R. (2006). Mass Communication Research: An Introduction. Wadsworth.

7 ANALYSING ECONOMIC NEWS SOURCES Who Gets to Speak? Henry Silke

Advance Organiser

In this chapter we will begin by discussing what sourcing analysis is and how the literature has developed on the subject. A “how to” section then outlines a step-by-step methodology for conducting sourcing analysis. We then look at an application of this methodology to our case study: sources used in reporting and analysing the Irish Bank Guarantee of 2008. 1.  Sources and News Construction

A major concern of journalism scholars from the institutional and constructivist schools is that of journalistic sourcing; that is, the epistemological study of where journalists obtain their information. A key aspect of institutional journalism practice is regular newsbeats, where journalists obtain what is deemed to be newsworthy information. Newsbeats by definition must have regular sources for news, leading to many such beats being of an official nature (Tunstall 1971), with sources such as courts, police and political press offices. Tunstall described journalists and their sources as being engaged in an exchange of information for publicity. Gans (1980) termed the source-journalist relationship a “tug of war”, where each side attempts to manage the other (Tumber 2006). A key element of source power is the ability of privileged sources to frame a discussion or debate. In their seminal work Policing the Crisis, Hall et al. (1978, p. 57) introduced the concept of primary definers: ⇨ Primary definers are institutional sources for journalists, often those to whom journalists first speak to understand a news event or issue, privileging official “accredited” or “expert” sources. DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-9

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As discussed by Becker’s (1967) “hierarchy or credibility”, those at the top of society are seen as more credible compared to those at the bottom, as those at the top of business or state organisations generally have the right to “define how things really are” (ibid., p. 241). For Hall et al. (1978), primary definers set the initial parameters of a discussion or debate: This primary interpretation then “commands the field” in all subsequent treatment and sets the terms of reference within which all further coverage or debate takes place. Arguments against a primary interpretation are forced to insert themselves into its definition of “what is at issue” – they must begin from this framework of interpretation as their starting point. [Hall et al. 1978, p. 58] In other words, primary definers have the opportunity to frame a story or political question within narrow parameters before the debate begins. Moreover, as primary definers tend to come from institutions of the already powerful, they tend to reproduce class-based ideological structures.

One example of the above in action is the framing of the problem of government deficit as one of overspending rather than under-taxation, a frame ultimately in favour of higher classes, as any rise in corporate or capital gains taxation would affect them negatively, while cuts in spending affect those from middle and lower classes more. Within this frame, the “need for cuts” is the assumed position; the only debate is on where and by how much. “Sharing the pain” (see Cawley 2011), as the issue was framed in the Irish media during the 2008 economic crisis, was in fact more about sharing the various cutbacks amongst the working and middle classes.

However, some have critiqued sourcing studies for focusing on the point of view of the journalist while omitting that of the sources themselves (see, for example, Schlesinger 1990, pp. 61–66). Research by Ericson et al. (1989) notes that the news media too are in possession of key resources that may in some cases give them the upper hand. For example, sources report that when contributing within established news frames they feel like “conduit pipes” and “secondary definers” for the news media. Gans (1980), nonetheless, maintains that, although sources do not always determine the news, they focus the attention of journalists on certain areas. And while sources do not determine news values, these news values will be implicit in the information they provide. To consolidate their preeminent position as sources, government, businesses and other official sources are said to make life as easy as possible for media organisations by a number of means, including the provision of

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  147

facilities and advance copies of speeches, scheduling press conferences geared to news deadlines and writing press releases in usable language. This curating and supplying of information leads to the issue of ‘subsidised information’. 2.  Sources as Subsidised Information and the Colonisation of News

Gandy (1982) introduced the concept of “information subsidies”. Information subsidies take many forms, such as a report, a press release or, in some cases, a fully written feature article. The term subsidy is used as the source supplies the information pre-packaged and prepared, saving the labour cost for the media company. Of course, the consequence of this is a pre-packaged piece of information that is framed in a certain way by a paying provider. While journalists should follow up, fact check and look for opposing views, often press releases and other forms of information subsidy are simply regurgitated. Reflecting this, Herman and Chomsky (1994) maintained that “the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidise the mass media”. Moloney et al. (2013, p. 260) describe it as a colonisation of journalism by the expanding public relations industry, which represents a clear threat to the normative role of media as an independent and watchful “fourth estate”, with implications for liberal democracy itself. This process has been long under way, for example in the USA there are now five times as many public relations professionals as journalists (McChesney and Nichols 2011). This is partly due to the casualisation and worsening conditions in the journalism field as compared to the more regular contracts available to public relations professionals. The authors argue that both the quality and independence of journalism has been tainted by what Moloney et al. (2013) term the “PR-isation” of journalism. ⇨ PR-isation is defined as the situation where public relations material is published without further sourcing and where public relations attitudes are incorporated into the mindset of journalism. Likewise, Davies (2009) shows that the deskilling of and lack of investment in the news industry has left it open to manipulation by PR firms and other subsidised information suppliers. Moloney et al. (2013, p. 262) describe this as the “manufacturing of news from pre-assembled parts” that favour the preferred outcome of the PR firms or their clients. Political journalism, too, has been affected by PR-isation more commonly known as “spin”. However, it can be argued that there is more public awareness of this process in political coverage compared to other aspects of journalism. The increased “PR-isation” of news has been helped by the proliferation of media channels alongside

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government deregulation, leading to huge pressures to produce copy (Moloney et al. 2013, p. 265). While the number of journalists has remained generally static (Oliver 2014), they are producing three times more content than two decades ago under poorer conditions. Journalists are increasingly processing rather than producing news, with a related exodus of journalists and senior editors into the PR field, thus eroding more of the cultural and ethical distance between the industries. The last two decades has seen increased disquiet around the issue of “churnalism” (Davies 2009). Churnalism is a process in which a media item enters the media sphere and is repeated across various media companies, each one assuming others have completed the necessary “fact checking”, which may not be the case. Weak fact checking is being highlighted by the advent of social media and increased attention on so-called “fake news”.

According to research from Lewis et al. (2008), up to 80 per cent of news stories in “top end” newspapers and broadcast channels come from direct (press release) and indirect (news agency) sources, including 41 per cent of news articles and 52 per cent of broadcast news items that played an agendasetting role. They also found that business and PR stories were three times more likely to make the news, compared to those from NGOs, charities and other civic groups.

3.  Sourcing and Economic Journalism

In a study of the London Stock Exchange, Davis (2007) conducted 95 semistructured interviews at 80 city locations over two periods (1998–1999; 2004). Davis found that, due to greater competition, financial journalists are forced to produce more copy with less resources. This has, in turn, led to a dependency on “information subsidies” from quoted companies, financial public relations firms and brokers’ analysts and investor relations companies (Davis 2007, p. 23). Davis shows how brokers’ analysts are heavily reliant on investor relations companies for information, deeply compromising their supposed position as “independent” expert sources on companies, as which they are often relied on by financial journalists. Some recent research also points to a “risk aversion” of journalists to making negative predictions, a tendency towards conformity and the “capture” of journalists by their sources, which acts to reinforce both reporters’ and investors’ opinions (Thompson 2003, p. 30). This is to say nothing of newspapers, “celebrity” economists or journalists who often have vested interests in reporting or advising on markets. Many recent studies point to the convergence of flows of information such as those on 24- hour

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  149

news channels, business channels and internet blogs and sites with market activity itself. For Hope (2010), information broadcast on such media by bankers, stockbrokers and traders themselves tends to be self-serving and inevitably leads to “a real time feedback loop that proliferates then contributes to the growth and collapse of speculative bubbles” (Hope 2010, p. 665). MAIN TAKEAWAYS • Sourcing analysis is research into where journalists receive their information. • Many sources come from institutional organisations with significant resources to put the point of view of the institution forward, for example the police, government departments or businesses. • Professional communications and public relations companies specialise in putting forward stories or positions to put their clients in a good light. • They often subsidise media companies by giving them information at no cost. • “Primary definer” is a term given to describe the source (usually from an institutional background) who sets the overall frame or angle of the story. • Churnalism describes how unverified news enters the media sphere and is reproduced by outlets assuming fact checking was done elsewhere.

4.  How to Do a Sourcing Analysis

Here, we demonstrate a simple sourcing analysis via a case study of the coverage of the Irish blanket bank guarantee (2008) and illustrate what we may infer from it, or at least discuss. A source analysis is undertaken by effectively counting attributed sources. If a journalist does not cite a source, it cannot be counted. Nonetheless, sources are generally cited, and certainly in economic journalism we can understand a lot from attributed sources. There are various ways to investigate sources, for example interviews with journalists can illuminate background knowledge or sources that do not make copy. But for this chapter we will utilise sourcing analysis via content analysis. For our case study we look at the sources used in the Irish Credit Institution (Financial Support) Bill, more commonly known as the Bank Guarantee,

150  Henry Silke

whereby the Irish state underwrote all debts of the private Irish banking system. We will follow four basic steps to undertake the analysis. CONDUCTING SOURCING ANALYSIS VIA CONTENT ANALYSIS Step One Formulate the research question. Here we ask the question: What sources were used in the coverage of the bank guarantee in the week after its implementation? Answering this may help us understand why the guarantee was so widely welcomed in the media. Step Two Gather the data. Like all research projects we are dependent on the data and sample. Whether we look at broadcast, print or online media, we need to ask: Do we have access to the data? How much data is there? And what kind of sample will we need to answer the research question? In this case we will use the database LexisNexis and look at the two major and most influential newspapers in Ireland, the Irish Times and Irish Independent. Step Three Develop a coding scheme to uncover sources. A coding scheme is the simple categorisation of sources, whether they be politician, banker, protester, etc. Categories should be as detailed or broad as is necessary to answer the research question. We may also choose to code the “primary definer”, who sets the frame or theme separately. A simple way to begin may be to simply highlight the sources in the articles or transcripts before moving them onto a database such as Excel.

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  151

Step Four Analysis. Here we will consider the sources used. Did they have vested interests? Were such interests alluded to? Was there a source bias? This means were there more sources from one area or one side of a debate? Were any obvious sources omitted? Did the sourcing reflect the overall coverage of the corpus?

Case Study: The Irish Blanket Bank Guarantee

On 29 September 2008 a meeting was held between the Irish government and the major banks. Both the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and the Minister for Finance were present at the meeting, but no minutes were taken and exactly what happened remains an area of controversy. However, the outcome was clear. At 6.45am on 30 September a government press release announced with immediate effect a guarantee arrangement to safeguard all deposits (retail, commercial, institutional and interbank), covered bonds and senior debt and dated subordinate debt with a number of banks and financial institutions. The reasoning given was as follows: This very important initiative by the Government is designed to safeguard the Irish financial system and to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy caused by the recent turmoil in the international financial markets. [Department of Finance 2008] The Credit Institution (Financial Support) Bill was then rushed through the Dail and Seanad (Parliament and Senate), which sat all night and passed the bill with huge majorities. It was signed into law just over 30 hours after the 6.45am press release (McCabe 2013, p. 196). The government had swung into action after Irish banking shares suffered catastrophic losses, themselves triggered by the failure of the US government to agree to its own bailout plan in the weeks previously. Allied Irish Bank shares had fallen by 16.7 per cent, Bank of Ireland by 20.2 per cent, Irish Life and Permanent by a whopping 39.9 per cent and Anglo Irish Bank topping them all with a fall of 46.2 per cent (McCabe 2013, p. 193). The government framed the issue as solely a problem of access to liquidity, where well-capitalised Irish banks were not able to attract short term cash due to mistrust in the so-called “credit crunch”. The main opposition party, Fine Gael, supported the bill, their main concern being the unfair competition against non-Irish banks not covered by the act, while Sinn Fein abstained,

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leaving only the Labour Party voting against. The media were generally supportive of the “innovative” move. This was in spite of the policy going against a European agreement for a coordinated action. It quickly became apparent that the Irish banking crisis was not one of liquidity but one with far deeper problems caused by the property boom and crash. Thus, the state guarantee, rather than “solve the liquidity crisis”, simply tied the Irish state and citizenry to the losses of the financial elite. The guarantee, once granted, could not possibly be called on. Therefore, the state would have to do all in its power to protect the solvency of the six banks – in short, the fate of the private banks and state were now linked. By the following December 2008 the state had injected €10 billion into the banks. It was claimed this was needed to placate “market perceptions” where even “fundamentally sound” banks found it hard to access funding (McCabe 2013, p. 204). This was followed by a re-capitalisation of €7 billion for the “pillar banks” Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland in February 2009 (McCabe 2013, p. 207), In January 2009, the poster boy of the “Celtic Tiger” era, Anglo Irish Bank, was completely nationalised. The bank was not a “high street” bank but rather a niche bank with only a few offices that supplied credit to property developers. However, its nationalisation was justified in terms of contagion. For Brennan (2013, p. 32), the purpose of the banking guarantee was twofold: firstly, to allow the supply of cheap credit to continue (something that was reported on at the time), and secondly, to prevent Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide from going bankrupt. Step One: Formulate the Question

• In this case, our question is “what sources were used in the coverage of the bank guarantee in the week after its implementation?” Step Two: Gather the Data

• For this case study, we searched all articles by the Irish Independent and Irish Times between 21 September 2008 and 5 October 2008 on the LexisNexis database, which includes the week leading up to the bank guarantee and the week afterwards. The search terms were bank guarantee, bailout, mortgage and crisis. Altogether, some 407 articles were found. The next step was to look at these articles, clean the data (this means removing any articles that were not about the Irish bank guarantee) and explore which articles would be useful to answer the research question. In the week leading up to the guarantee, 12 articles were found to have called for some form of state intervention ahead of the bank guarantee implementation (for example, Irish Independent: “Government May Have to

newgenrtpdf

TABLE 7.1 Initial categorisation of articles

Irish Times 229 Irish 178 Independent Total 407

Total no. of articles featuring or mentioning Ireland

Total no. of articles on economic/ banking crisis (about or mention Ireland)

No. of articles calling for state intervention

No. of articles calling for bank deposit guarantee directly

190 115

182 94

5 7

0 1

305

276

12

1

No. of articles on bank guarantee after implementation

No. of articles on bank guarantee after implementation – generally positive (including TINA)

No. of articles on bank guarantee after implementation – generally negative

No. of articles on bank guarantee after implementation – generally neutral

78 41

52 29

12 4

14 8

119

81

16

22

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  153

Total no. of articles after search

154  Henry Silke

Rescue Vulnerable Banks”, 29/09/2010; Irish Independent: “Government Can’t Let Banks Go Under”, 30/9/2010). However, only one article, by celebrity economist David McWilliams (Irish Times), called directly for a state guarantee. McWilliams also wrote an article calling for a state guarantee in the influential Sunday Business Post in advance of the state implementation. After the announcement and implementation of the guarantee, it received overwhelming support, with 81 of the 119 articles being generally positive towards the guarantee or supporting the guarantee on the grounds of TINA (there is no alternative), with 16 outrightly negative articles and 22 neutral (see Table 7.1). We divide up the articles in a basic coding scheme. Here, we break down the articles to ones that will be useful to answer the research question. For our purposes we will look at the 119 articles in the immediate aftermath. Step Three: Count and Code the Sources

• Next we move on to counting and coding the sources. A good way to begin is to highlight the sources in the text. From here we can start to build a database of sources and count them. A simple database in Excel can be used. In the below box, we can see how a simple highlighting of the text shows us the sources attributed. In Figure 7.1 we can see a section of the overall scheme on an Excel sheet. But as we work on it, we can concentrate on specific elements such as political sources, business sources, etc. We can break up overall sources; so, for example, Political Source can be further broken down into political parties or government spokespeople (Table 7.2, Table 7.3 and Figure 7.3).

STATE BOND IS DOUBLE TOTAL VALUE OF IRISH ECONOMY Irish Times, Wed, Oct 1, 2008, 01:00 Simon Carswell The Government has agreed to guarantee, for two years, the deposits and debts of the four Irish publicly quoted banks and the country’s two building societies to calm investors … The move will also attract foreign deposits to the Irish banks at a time of turmoil when cash is king … Mr Lenihan felt he had to act to protect the Irish banks amid the global freeze in the credit markets where banks raise their money. He said the financial crisis had created “a huge liquidity famine”.

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  155

One bank official likened the guarantee to the temporary indemnity the Government gave Irish airlines against specific war risks after insurers refused cover following the 2001 terrorist attacks. Mr Lenihan’s bank guarantee exposes the taxpayer to liabilities of €400 billion (the combined liabilities of the six institutions that the Government is guaranteeing) … The State will also be paid fees for the guarantee which could be offset against potential costs from possible calls on the guarantee. Mr Lenihan insisted this was not a bailout – the State was providing a guarantee and would be charging the banks for it. “We are not in the business here of bailing out banks or assisting those who have invested on a risk basis in a bank. The shareholders take the risks on the markets,” he said … The cost of insuring the debt of these four Irish banks against default, widely considered a proxy for gauging financial stress, fell sharply yesterday after the State’s proposal was announced. Credit rating agency Fitch, which measures financial strength, affirmed Ireland’s debt rating (its ability to meet its borrowings) with a top “AAA” ranking, saying: “This proactive measure should help buttress confidence in the Irish financial system and limit the risks of a deeper-and-more prolonged-than necessary recession at a time of unusual stress in global banking markets.” Note: Excerpts of an article with sources in bold (emphasis mine); another method is to highlight different sources in various colours.

Step Four: Analyse the Data

• The sourcing analysis is drawn from the 119 articles on the banking guarantee written after its implementation. From the charts in Figure 7.1 and Figure 7.2 we can see that the financial and “official” and mainstream political sources were by far the majority of sources used. In the first chart (Figure 7.1) we can see the number of sources in absolute terms. In all there were 273 sources or attributed sources counted. State and party political, Ireland, make up 48 per cent of the sources, business and financial sources make up 23 per cent and non-business civil society make up only 2 per cent, with none from the trade unions. A deeper bias appears when party political representation is looked into. The charts in Figure 7.2 and Figure 7.3 show party political sourcing and does

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Pol-IND

13

8

IT Opinion 1

1

2

1

52

3

IT News

34

16

3

1

1

13

4

IT Business

Irish Times Total Total

78

15

IT Total

18

4

1

1

119/ 1

30/ 1 II + IT Total

19/ 1 53/ 1 28/ 1 4/ 1 1

1

Irish 12/ 1 Independent Opinion Irish 18/ 1 Independent News

7/ 1

II Opinion

2/ 1

5/ 1

2/ 1

2/ 1

II News

6/ 1

11/ 1 8/ 1

Irish 11/ 1 Independent Business

6/ 1

II Business

8/ 1

16/ 1 10/ 1

10

Pol - SF

15/ 1 II Total

Pol-FG

41/ 1

Pol-FF

Irish Independent Total Irish Times Opinion Irish Times News Irish Times Business

Pol-LAB

Pol-SP

Articles without sources

Total no. of articles

Newspaper

TABLE 7.2 Master source in Excel

2 11

37

not count government officials (such as department of finance or central bank officials, though these sources also support government policy). The two newspapers had similar, almost identical, results, with the ruling Fianna Fail party making up almost half of all sources in both papers. Interestingly, their coalition partners, the Green Party, remain almost invisible. In terms of parties supporting or opposing the guarantee, the figures are even more stark, where pro guarantee party sources make up over 80 per cent of the total. Frequency of Sources Counted by Article

When reading the findings cited above, it should be taken alongside the charts on the number of articles the sources appeared in. For example, while

0/ 1 4

1

1

1

1/ 1

1/ 1 2/ 1

1

1

1

2

1

1

3/ 1 1

Businessman/ woman

6

Rating agency

4

Consumer lobbyist

1

Central bank Central bank (gov.)

Economist (bank)

1/ 1

Economist (academic)

1/ 1 1/ 1

ERSI

1/ 1

Government source/ Spokesperson / statement Banker

Dep Finance Government report

Pol-unamed

Pol-GREEN

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  157

4/ 1

1/ 1 4/ 1 6/ 1

1

2/ 1 1/ 1 1/ 1

3

2

3

16

1

1

9

3 1

4

25

3 2/ 1 6/ 1

2

1 4

1

3

2

5

1 4

1

3

2

29/ 1 1/ 1 9/ 1

6/ 1 1 6/ 1 2/ 1 4/ 1 2

(continued) media makes up 8 per cent of total sources with 22 counted, these sources only appeared in two articles on the international reaction to the guarantee. Moreover, we could get numerous pro- or anti-bank guarantee political sources in a single article, which may act to skew the research showing overly inflated figures due to one or two articles. To counter this we can count sources per article. In this way, sources in an article with numerous sources of the same type are counted only once. The graph can be read as such: “32 per cent of articles contained at least one business source”. This is important, as it tells us how often a particular type of source is used in terms of articles (see Figure 7.4). From this count we can see that, while over 30 per cent of all articles use at least one business source and 58 per cent of all articles include at least

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Irish Independent Opinion Irish 3 Independent News Irish 2 Independent Business Irish 5/ 1 Independent Total Irish Times Opinion Irish Times News Irish Times Business Irish Times Total Total

6

1

11

1

1

1

2/ 1

1/ 1

1

3

5

1

16/ 1 3/ 1

4 5/ 1

2

1

1

1/ 1

1

1 1

EC Commission _Internal markets (McCreevy) European Bankers Federation British Bankers Association PM UK

EU Competition Commission ECB

Financial regulator or spokesperson/ source European Commission (led by Barroso) EU Telecoms Commissioner

Financial/Stock BROKER

Newspaper

TABLE 7.2  (Continued)

2/ 1

2/ 1 1/ 1

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

2

1

1

1

1/ 1 1

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3/ 1

1

3/ 1 2/ 1

one political source, only 7.56 per cent of articles include at least one nongovernment or non-business source. Breaking the political source figures down further, we can see that, while 46 per cent of articles include at least one pro-guarantee political source, only 14 per cent include at least one anti-guarantee party political source. Again, we can see evidence of a near monopoly on mainstream political and business sources as compared to nonmainstream political and non-business sourcing. When we go on to break the political sources down into pro- and anti-guarantee sources, we can see that the bias in the absolute number of pro-guarantee political sources is upheld. Overall, these findings point to a source bias and near monopoly of mainstream political parties and financial sources, excluding other groups of civil society. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the framing analysis carried

Total sources

Pol-SP-Germany

Construction industry lobbyist German Gov Greek Gov POL - US French Gov Motor industry lobbyist Charity Elderly lobbyist NGO Vox Pop Pol-UK-Cons Pol-UK-Lab Central Bank England Gov-Italy Other newspapers/ Media (international) Pol-CDU-Germany

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  159

12/ 1 1

1 1

55/ 1 7/ 1

1/ 1

1 1

74/ 1

10 1

5

1 1 2 1 2 1 2 6 1/ 1 2 1 2 7 1

1 1 1 8 1 1 1 1

1 9

145

13

2

1

44

1 1 1 8 1 2 1

1 22

2

1

199

1 1 1 8 1 2 1

1 22

2

1 273/ 1 273/ 1

out below would betray both overwhelming support for the policy and a market-orientated framing. As the banking guarantee would severely affect Irish society in its entirety, it can be argued that the newspapers should have sourced a wider variety of opinion. In terms of any normative view of the media serving the “public” rather than sectional interests, the sourcing here can be said to be lacking. A wider range of sources would likely have uncovered a greater critical stance and more warnings about the disastrous outcomes that followed, again evidence of a failing of the two newspapers in their “watchdog” role. The generally positive treatment of the banking guarantee can at least partly be explained by the narrow selection of sources used. The research found both newspapers to have a near monopoly on official and mainstream voices from

160  Henry Silke TABLE 7.3 Categorising sources in general categories State and Party Political Ireland

State and Finance/ Media Party Business Political International

Academic NonVox Business Pop Civil Society

II opinion II news II business II total

12/ 1 29/ 1 2/ 1 43/ 1

0 4 2 6/ 1

0/ 1 17 3 20/ 1

0/ 1 0 0 0/ 1

0/ 1 4 0 4/ 1

0/ 1 1 0 1/ 1

0/ 1 0 0 0/ 1

IT opinion IT news IT business IT total

7 78 4 89

0 16 12 28

0 28 15 43

0 9 13 22

3 2 0 5

0 4 0 4

0 8 0 8

II + IT TOTAL

132/ 1

34/ 1

63/ 1

22/ 1

9/ 1

5/ 1

8/ 1 273/ 1

FIGURE 7.1 Total

sources by type

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  161

FIGURE 7.2  Total

party political sources for Irish Independent and Irish Times combined

FIGURE 7.3  Party

political sources – Anti-guarantee/pro-guarantee for Irish Times and Irish Independent combined

newgenrtpdf

162  Henry Silke

FIGURE 7.4 Frequency

of sources per article by percentage

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  163

the world of politics, finance and banking, while very few sources from nonbusiness civil society were counted. This partly reflected a wide consensus on the banking guarantee that was present within mainstream Irish polity. Both governing parties, Fianna Fail and the Green Party, and two of the opposition parties, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein, supported the guarantee. The Labour Party was the only mainstream party that voted against the guarantee. Political parties and groups without parliamentary representation at the time such as the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Workers’ Party and People Before Profit (who opposed the guarantee) were not sourced. This is a good example of the newspapers’ concept of politics as being something that solely takes place in parliaments, with outside movements or forces often ignored. While it may be argued that the extra-parliamentary parties listed above were small, they would have five national representatives elected at the following general election, meaning they did represent some social weight. Non-political or non-business actors were represented in few articles and often solely from a consumerist frame, while trade unions were completely ignored. In fact, in the news section of the Irish Times, over a third (18 out of 52) of articles written after the implementation of the bank guarantee only included government sources. In many of these articles, the government position was not questioned. Primary Definers

As discussed earlier, a sourcing analysis may also look at primary definers, or those who may set the frame and/or agenda of a news story. One example, given below, is Django Davidson of the Deutsche Bank, who established the frame of the “elegant solution” that appeared throughout the coverage. The Deutsche Bank in London describes [the bank guarantee] as “an elegant solution to the crisis of liquidity and confidence facing the banking system”. In a confidential memorandum, senior analyst in Deutsche Bank, Django Davidson, continued: “The Irish solution could well pave the way out for many of the distressed banking markets”. [Irish Independent, “Bank Experts Heap Praise on Irish Solution to Meltdown”, 1/10/2008] The opening quotation represents many of the issues prevalent in the treatment of the banking guarantee in the Irish Times and Irish Independent – that the issue was one of liquidity (rather than a deeper material malaise), that the “innovative” solution would solve the Irish (and possibly European) crisis and finally that this information came from “experts”, who were actors with interests in the financial sector. Moreover, the treatment of the quote is entirely uncritical and indeed almost celebratory. Here we see an example

164  Henry Silke

of primary definers, in this case bank experts heaping praise on an elegant solution to solve an assumed liquidity crisis, and a frame that would be repeated throughout the corpus. 5. Conclusion

In this chapter we focused on how to perform a simple sourcing analysis and discussed its usefulness for understanding how economic issues are treated. We discussed how sources, especially primary definers, can set the frame or tone of a new story. We discussed the role of subsidised information and the communications and public relations industry before going on to discuss sourcing in business and economic journalism We used the example of the Irish banking guarantee and, via the methodology, could see a source bias that excluded huge parts of Irish society from discussing a policy that would have repercussions for decades. We saw how primary definers such as the Deutsche Bank could set a frame of an “elegant solution” that would frame the positive coverage of the policy. Sourcing analysis, especially used with other methodologies such as framing or discourse analysis, is a powerful empirical tool to uncover both journalism production and ideological structures. It is also useful for journalists themselves to see which voices are being, and more importantly which voices are not being, heard across the media sphere. List of Concepts Introduced

• Sources; • Newsbeats; • Primary definers; • Information subsidies; • PR-isation; • Churnalism. References Becker, H.S. (1967). “Whose Side Are You On?” Social Problems, 14(3), pp. 239–247. Brennan, D. (2013). “Guaranteeing Recidivism”. Irish Left Review, 1(2), pp. 9–46. Cawley, A. (2011). “Sharing the Pain or Shouldering the Burden”. Journalism Studies, 13(4), pp. 600–615. Davis, A. (2007). The Mediation of Power: A Critical Introduction. London. Routledge. Davies, N. (2009). Flat Earth News. Vintage. Department of Finance (2008). Government Decision to Safeguard Irish Banking System. Government Publications. Ericson, R.V., Baranek, P.M. and Chan, J.B.L. (1989). Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources. University of Toronto Press.

Analysing Economic News Sources: Who Gets to Speak?  165

Gandy, O.H. (1982). Beyond Agenda Setting: Information Subsidies and Public Policy. Ablex. Gans, H. (1980). Deciding What’s News. Constable. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. Macmillan. Herman, E. and Chomsky, N. (1994). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Vintage. Hope, W. (2010). “Time, Communication and Financial Collapse”. International Journal of Communication, (4), pp. 649–669. Lewis, J., Williams, A., Franklin, B., Thomas, J. and Mosdell, N. (2008). The Quality and Independence of British Journalism: Tracking the Changes over 20 Years [Online]. Available from: https://orca.card​i ff.ac.uk/18439/1/Qual​ity%20&%20I​ ndep​ende​nce%20of%20Brit​ish%20Jou​rnal​ism.pdf [Accessed 10/01/2014]. McCabe, C. (2013). Sins of the Father. 2nd ed. The History Press Ireland. McChesney, R. and Nichols, J. (2011). The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again. Nation Books. Moloney, K., Jackson, D. and McQueen, D. (2013). “News Journalism and Public Relations: A Dangerous Relationship”. In Fowler-Watt, K. and Allan, S., eds., Journalism: New Challenges, pp. 259–281. Centre for Journalism & Communication Research. Oliver, L. (2008). “Number of Journalists Not in Decline, Says GMG Chairman”. The Guardian, 23 April. Available from: www.jou​rnal​ism.co.uk/news/num​ber-of-jour​ nali​sts-not-in-decl​ine-says-gmg-chair​man/ /a531447/ [Accessed 10/01/2014]. Schlesinger, P. (1990). “Rethinking the Sociology of Journalism: Source Strategies and the Limits of Media-Centrism”. In Ferguson, M., ed., Public Communication: The New Imperatives, pp. 61–83. SAGE. Thompson, P.A. (2003). “Making the World Go Round? Communication, Information and Global Trajectories of Finance Capital”. Southern Review, 36(3), pp. 20–43, Tumber, H. (2006). “Journalists at Work: Revisited”. Javnost – The Public, 13(3), pp. 57–68. Tunstall, J. (1971). Journalists at Work. Constable.

8 USING CORPUS LINGUISTICS TO INTERPRET ECONOMIC NEWS TEXTS Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan

Advance Organiser

This chapter provides an introduction and overview to corpus linguistics and corpus-based analysis as an independent and complementary means of analysing the language, and ultimately discourses, of text types such as economic news. This is a critical skill for all involved in the production and analysis of journalistic output, and we present the processes and outputs of corpus analysis as a way of making concrete, evidence-based observations of the texts themselves. We begin by sketching out the basics of corpus linguistics and discuss the concept of corpus (plural corpora) in corpus linguistics. We describe how the reader can build their own corpus and the different corpus tools that can be used to analyse corpora, such as generating raw frequency lists, n-grams, analysing pre-selected key words in context (KWIC) in concordance lines and generating different types of frequency lists, such as keywords. We introduce the key concepts that underlie these processes and demonstrate them. Ultimately, we position corpus analysis as a methodological approach that is both quantitative and qualitative, as well as inherently comparative, and underline its major strength as an independent analytical perspective not only in its own right but also as a perspective that combines well with and complements other analytical and theoretical perspectives on economics texts. 1. Introduction

Corpus linguistics (CL) involves the use of specialised software to search and analyse electronic databases of everyday language. A corpus is a DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-10

Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts  167

principled collection of texts, designed and compiled to capture a particular variety of a language or context of language use and answer specific research questions. A corpus may contain written or spoken texts, the latter comprised of transcribed spoken language, or some combination of both. A criterial feature of any corpus compiled for language-based analysis is design. That is to say, there is a rationale for the inclusion of specific types of language material in a corpus. In addition to radically enhancing linguistic description, corpora and corpus-based analysis can complement different approaches to what could broadly be termed “discourse analysis”. Hence, analysts of the same corpus might be focused on, for example, describing “hard news” as a genre by identifying its linguistic characteristics; others, the representation of vulnerable or minoritised social groups by analysing the specific language used to describe them in public discourse. Corpus-based analysis is, put simply, a very good mixer. It can bring empirical ballast to observations about language and help us to identify patterns of language use in media texts systematically. Advances in computer technologies over the years have had a major impact on our understanding of how language works and why. The use of digital techniques in media scholarship is growing, and corpus techniques have a lot to offer (see also Bednarek and Carr [2021]). After a brief discussion of language and media texts, we present the characteristics of corpus linguistics and corpus analysis processes as a “computer-powered” methodological approach. Our aim is to demonstrate the kinds of information and perspectives corpus analysis tools make possible. We encourage the reader to think critically about these in order to assess what they can bring to our understanding and interpretation of media discourse types such as economics news texts. 2.  Language and Media Texts

Media texts are core to many general language corpora because our exposure to and consumption of news are so prodigious and so central to our everyday experience of language. A simple pen-and-paper exercise in tracking how often and in how many different ways we interact with news in one 24-hour period would illustrate this convincingly. Linguists value news texts not only as objects of study for the information that they contain about how language works but also from a more critical perspective because as Fowler asserts: News is a representation of the world in language; because language is a semiotic code, it imposes a structure of values, social and economic in origin, on whatever is represented; and so inevitably news, like every discourse, constructively patterns that of which it speaks. News is a representation in this sense of construction; it is not a value-free reflection of “facts”. [Fowler 1991, p. 4]

168  Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan

Many analysts will be interested in the linguistic characteristics of the genre of, say, hard news, or opinion pieces, or financial reporting in its own right. The productivity of news discourse is a rich vein of research: the coinage of new terms such as yuppie, from Young Urban Professional first appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1983 (Grazia-Busa 2013, p. 133), or the popularisation of terms that originated elsewhere such as Brexit. The coinage or adaptation of collective terms for social groups often start their process of circulation via news and media texts: consider items such as millennials and Gen Z, and pejorative labels such as snowflake. These distinctions between groups of people become ratified, contested, recognised and discussed in the circulation and recirculation of news and other media texts. This is at the heart of the intersection between critical and linguistic studies of media output, and it is key to conceptualising the complex relationship between language and journalism (see also Richardson 2008). The importance of taking a critical perspective on the production and consumption of news is a key theme running through this book. The focus is on the empirical, systematic and defensible identification of how economic news texts communicate ideas and ideologies, either implicitly or explicitly, using language corpora and corpus tools. Corpus analysis is an addition to your toolkit as a reflective producer and receiver of economics news. It requires that you disassemble a text, break it down into its constituent parts and consider how those parts contribute to the message of the text itself.

3.  The “Corpus” in Corpus Linguistics

A corpus can be described as containing “written” language or “spoken” language, though in these times this is quite a blunt distinction, especially if we think about the nature of electronic communication. Early corpora tended

Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts  169

to contain a single mode (written text or spoken text transcribed; see Weisser 2022, p. 90), and spoken language corpora were initially rare indeed, and while they are less so now, they still present unique challenges in their compilation. Written corpora are still more in evidence than spoken corpora because written texts are relatively straightforward to access and collect, while spoken corpora still represent the more labour intensive and costly enterprise. A one-hour recording of spoken language, whatever the format, can take anywhere between five and ten hours to transcribe – perhaps more depending on how many speakers are participating: monologic language events, such as political speeches, for example, tend to be easier and quicker to transcribe. The more people participating in an interaction, the more interruptions, overlap, and other features of naturally occurring talk. Transcription is a lengthy process, but it is necessary so that a spoken corpus can be “read” by corpus analysis software. Advances in digital recording and transcription software mean that, these days, corpora can be multimodal, and spoken and/or video recordings can be aligned with their transcription. These types of corpora are still in the minority, however (O’Keeffe and McCarthy 2022). In fact, despite major advances in automated transcription software and speech recognition tools, the best that is usually produced is what Bokhove and Downey (2018) call a “good enough” transcript. This is particularly relevant for readers who are considering the analysis of spoken economic news texts, for example, economics news broadcasting. However, before considering building a bespoke corpus, it is wise to ensure that there is no currently available corpus that will suit the research purpose. The text types most associated with financial and economic news can be found in large-scale corpora with online access, such as the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). This is accessible at www.engl​ ish-corp​ora.org/, where users can sign up for a premium account, for which there is a charge, to conduct unlimited searches, or register for free to use the platform, with a more restricted number of searches per day. Access to a corpus management platform such as Sketch Engine (www.sketc​heng​ine.eu/) may also mean that suitable language datasets can be identified. A more detailed overview of different types of corpora, including examples, can be found in Vaughan and O’Keeffe (2015). Given the fact that financial and economic news reporting constitutes a highly specialised discourse world, it is likely that there will be a particular area or issue you may want to track. The texts you need to explore this may be very current or quite specific, and they will probably not be contained in more static corpora. It is likely that it will become necessary for you to build your own corpus. We move to this next, before providing you with an overview of the kinds of insights that corpus analysis tools can be used to generate with relation to your own specialised corpora of financial and economic news texts.

170  Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan

4.  Building your own corpus

To recap, the broadest definition of a corpus consists of three component parts. A corpus is 1. a principled collection of texts that are 2. stored in an electronic format and 3. analysed using specialist computer software. When building a corpus, part one of the definition has to be attended to before part two or three can be achieved. Most importantly, the type of corpus you build is determined by the research question(s) being asked. Below, we suggest some research questions relevant to students of economic journalism and provide examples to show how they may be answered using a corpusbased approach. SAMPLE RESEARCH QUESTIONS THAT MIGHT BE USED TO INVESTIGATE ECONOMIC NEWS TEXTS 1. What are the linguistic patterns that characterise the Babbage blog in the Economist? 2. How are worker(s) and employer(s) represented in media texts?

What Kind of Data Do I Use?

As previously mentioned, language corpora consist of either spoken language, written language, computer-mediated language, or a combination of some or all of these. If building a corpus of spoken economic discourse, for example, texts such as transcripts of radio or television shows that cover economic issues or podcasts related to economics could be used. A written corpus of economic discourse could include business articles from a newspaper or expert and/ or non-expert academic writing in economics. A computer-mediated corpus could feature comments from online economic fora or pages from websites dedicated to economics. Permission to collect and use texts for research is required for texts that are not publicly available (and some that are). What Size Should My Corpus Be?

Corpora may be large or small; some run to billions of words. Specialised corpora tend to be smaller in size and domain-specific. Small corpora, in the modern sense, are generally accepted to be within the 20,000–200,000word range (see Vaughan and Clancy 2013). Spoken corpora tend to be

Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts  171

smaller than written ones, as previously mentioned. There is no right answer for the “how many texts” question, but a rule of thumb is that you should be able to answer your research question with the corpus you have built. What Texts Should I Include?

There are a number of factors that guide how texts are included in a corpus. Firstly, where possible, include complete texts rather than fragments, even if this means that the texts included in a corpus may differ substantially in terms of word count. Secondly, it is recommended that a corpus be as representative and balanced as possible. Representativeness and balance form arguably two of the most difficult concepts in corpus design. They refer to the number of texts that should be included in a corpus and in what proportions. It is possible to build completely representative and balanced corpora – for example, it is conceivably possible to build a corpus containing every issue of the Economist. In reality, however, representativeness and balance are negotiable concepts, and you should note all decisions taken about corpus content and justifications for these decisions. For example, Fernández-Cruz and Moreno-Ortiz (2020) report on a large corpus project entitled the Great Recession News Corpus (GRNC), which captures online business news articles from the Guardian and the New York Times between 2007–2015 in order to study the impact that the recession has had on language. This is a useful resource for readers of this chapter, especially in terms of how the design criteria for the corpus are articulated. How to Access Texts?

It is relatively straightforward to access many written media texts by using large, searchable databases such as LexisNexis and searching for specific words or phrases – for example, Brexit, credit crunch or bank bailout. A corpus can then be constructed using the results of these searches. The internet has ensured that there is an abundance of economics texts available in electronic form that can be used to assemble corpora. This is particularly relevant for looking at how texts might repeatedly frame issues or events over time.

DESIGNING A CORPUS: THE BABBAGE CORPUS Data Babbage was a blog in the Economist that reported on the intersection between science, technology, culture and policy until 2014. It now exists as a podcast. In order to design a Babbage corpus, the first decision is whether to use the

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blog data, the podcast data or a combination of both. A corpus that uses the blog is an example of a written corpus, and one that uses the podcast, a spoken corpus.

Size: Written In terms of size, if using the Babbage blog posts, it is possible to construct a corpus of all the posts from the Economist. This corpus would be considered both representative and balanced. It is possible to estimate the corpus size by taking the average word count of an individual blog text and multiplying it by the number of posts per year.

Size: Spoken Alternatively, if you prefer to use the podcast, some decisions may need to be made due to the time needed for transcription. In this case, a suggestion might be to concentrate on one year of the podcast and build a corpus based on this. This corpus is balanced and representative of the linguistic patterns used in the year chosen. In terms of size, a common calculation is that one hour of spoken language contains approximately 12,000–15,000 words.

Corpus Construction

Once you have addressed these questions, it is time to move to part two of the definition of a corpus – storing the files in an electronic format to facilitate analysis. Here, we are moving from the corpus design stage to the corpus construction stage. It is important to preserve and manage information, or metadata, about the texts in your corpus and manage this information well. Individual texts should be saved as individual files, and electronic texts will also need to be processed and “cleaned”.

CONSTRUCTING A CORPUS: THE BABBAGE CORPUS Naming Conventions In the Babbage corpus, a blog post written on 17 December 2010 could have the file name ‘bab171210’, whereas one written on 21 December 2011 could read ‘bab211211’. Using diamond brackets < > prevents the information in the header from being included in the analytic process.

Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts  173

Metadata A sample header for a blog text looks like this:





File Format and Cleaning The most straightforward way to build the Babbage corpus of blog texts is to copy and paste the articles directly from the Economist website into, for example, a Microsoft Word document. The clean-up phase involves removing visual information, hyperlinks, boilerplate, etc. Next, save the file as plain text. This process should be repeated for each individual text that will comprise your corpus. It is then ready for the analysis stage.

These basic steps in both corpus design and construction should ensure that a corpus is ready for the next stage in the analysis – the generation of quantitative and qualitative results using specifically designed software, often referred to as concordancers. Most first-time users of corpora and corpus tools are likely to be using online tools, such as www.engl​ish-corp​ ora.org/, Sketch Engine (www.sketc​heng​ine.eu/) or CQP Web (https://cqp​ web.lancs.ac.uk/). These platforms host multiple pre-loaded corpora, and the user can access and use the corpora and tools from anywhere using their web connection and internet browser. These tools usually require at least a registration, and many operate as subscription services. Offline tools are available as downloadable, stand-alone packages, available for purchase, via subscription, or as freeware. The user installs these on their own PC or laptop and uploads their own corpora to the software. Popular examples of these include AntConc (Anthony 2022a) and WordSmith Tools (Scott 2021). There are many more tools, and an overview can be found in Anthony (2022b). The examples in Section 5 below primarily use online tools or manually created tables using output from online tools.

174  Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan

Take a Moment Think of a relevant research question that you are interested in answering. How might you design and construct a corpus in order to answer this question?

5.  What Can You Do with a Corpus Once You Have One?

Building a corpus is only the first step in the methodological and analytical processes involved in corpus linguistics. The next step is to generate results from your corpus using the specifically designed computer software. It is important to stress here, and we repeat the point below, that the generation of results in the form of the word frequency lists, etc. illustrated is just that – the generation of results. The third, final and crucial step in the corpus linguistic process is your interpretation of these results. Word Frequency Lists

A corpus word frequency list is generated quite quickly by concordancers (see Section 4 above). ⇨ A word frequency list is a list of all the word forms in a corpus coupled with the number of occurrences of each word. Table 8.1 is a visual representation of a word frequency list with the most frequent word first and the number of times it occurs in the corpus (Frequency column). This word frequency list has been generated using Sketch Engine and is the top 25 most frequent words in the Covid-19 corpus, a 224-millionword corpus of texts that was released as part of the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset. As Table 8.1 shows, most high frequency words in the Covid-19 corpus are functional or grammatical items such as the definite article the (position 1: 12,382,681 occurrences), conjunctions such as and (position 5: 7,385,890) or prepositions such as at (position 22: 937,356 occurrences). We often use word frequency lists as entry points into the data, as they can highlight phenomena distinct from an instinctive norm that warrant further investigation (Baker 2006). This enables the identification of items that may be characteristic of a particular variety, genre or context. To illustrate this, in Table 8.2, the frequency list from the Covid-19 corpus is compared to that of the British Academic Written English Corpus (BAWE). The BAWE is a 7-million-word written corpus of undergraduate and postgraduate student assessments (see Heuboeck et al. 2010).

Using Corpus Linguistics to Interpret Economic News Texts  175 TABLE 8.1 Top 25 most frequent words in the Covid-19 corpus

N

Word

Frequency

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

the of be [number] and in to a with for that by as have cell or from use on this virus at an et not

12,382,681 8,799,456 8,401,816 7,966,186 7,385,890 5,905,580 4,611,624 3,587,345 2,440,178 2,393,873 1,838,477 1,570,498 1,538,625 1,428,355 1,213,643 1,159,945 1,157,930 1,035,669 986,142 969,123 952,339 937,356 779,991 751,236 740,024

Take a Moment The usefulness of corpus word frequency lists often only comes into focus when one frequency list is compared to another. In the two word frequency lists in Table 8.2, do you notice any similarities and differences between the two lists? How might you account for these similarities/differences?

Looking at frequency in this way allows us to systematically compare corpora. For example, the top 10 most frequent items are remarkably similar in both corpora, pointing towards their shared written nature. What is noteworthy is that, in the BAWE list, there are no content or lexical items, and this is often true of the most frequent items in corpus word frequency lists. However, in the Covid-19 corpus, there are three content items: cell (position

176  Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan TABLE 8.2  Top 25 most frequent words in the Covid-19 corpus compared to

the BAWE

N

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Covid-19 Corpus Word

Frequency

the of be [number] and in to a with for that by as have cell or from use on this virus at an et not

12,382,681 8,799,456 8,401,816 7,966,186 7,385,890 5,905,580 4,611,624 3,587,345 2,440,178 2,393,873 1,838,477 1,570,498 1,538,625 1,428,355 1,213,643 1,159,945 1,157,930 1,035,669 986,142 969,123 952,339 937,356 779,991 751,236 740,024

N

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

British Academic Written English Corpus (BAWE) Word

Frequency

the be of and to in as that as for have this it with on by not from an which ‘s can they at or

492,272 289,343 271,079 208,696 191,632 153,337 136,398 79,337 68,072 59,565 57,653 54,393 51,248 42,310 40,649 40,564 35,636 31,455 29,233 29,167 26,941 25,639 25,504 23,716 23,173

15: 1,213,643 occurrences), use (position 18: 1,035,669 occurrences) and virus (position 21: 952,339 occurrences). These items are potentially worthy of further investigation to determine the reasons behind their high frequency of use.

Take a Moment Imagine you were to build the Babbage corpus using the methodology described here. What kind of corpus would be a useful comparative corpus for the Babbage corpus? Why?

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While a concordancer, in this case Sketch Engine, can generate single word frequency lists such as in Tables 8.1 and 8.2, it is also capable of generating frequency lists of 2-, 3- or 4-word clusters. These are often referred to as n-grams, chunks or lexical bundles in corpus linguistics literature. Keywords

The second corpus technique that we will examine is the keyword list. A keyword list differs from a word frequency list in that keywords are words that occur with unusual frequency or “keyness” when the concordance automatically compares two word frequency lists. ⇨ A keyword list is useful because it shows items that have statistical importance in your corpus in comparison to another corpus. This often provides further evidence to support hypotheses that have first been developed using a word frequency list. Using corpus software it is possible to identify keywords whose frequency is unusually high (positive keywords) or low (negative keywords) in a target corpus in comparison to a reference corpus. A reference corpus is, usually, a much larger corpus that acts as a baseline for comparison. In order to generate a keyword list, you first generate a word frequency list from both your target corpus and the reference corpus. The computer software then calculates the statistical significance of difference between the two. This distinguishes between frequencies that are a matter of chance and those that “are likely to be motivated by some characteristic of the communicative event” (Anderson and Corbett 2009, p. 37). Due to the statistical nature of the list, keywords are, according to Baker (2006), indicative of saliency as opposed to only providing frequency. Spoken keyword lists generally contain three types of words: high frequency grammatical words such as I, and, that or of; proper nouns; and “aboutness” words. Aboutness words are, according to Scott and Tribble (2006, p. 58), “words that are important to the text and indicative of its meaning, what it is about”. In order to illustrate the keyword function, the Covid-19 corpus was used as the target corpus and, in Table 8.3, the reference corpus used is enTenTen20, a 36-billion-word corpus of English language texts collected from the internet between 2019 and 2021 (Lexical Computing 2022). Table 8.3 reveals a keyword list that has some words that have become part of our everyday spoken and written discourse – for example, sars, viral and influenza. However, it also contains a number of words that may be only recognisable to the scientific community – for example, pedv, titer, epitope or igg. By comparison, if we generate a keyword list using a different reference corpus, we can see some notable differences in the results. Table 8.4 shows the

178  Brian Clancy and Elaine Vaughan TABLE 8.3  Top 20 keywords in the Covid-19 corpus with enTenTen20 as the

reference corpus

sars-cov mers-cov usepackage sars

pedv titer ifn viral

antiviral ibv rsv rna

influenza mm epitope rt-pcr

virion coronavirus pcr igg

TABLE 8.4 Top 20 keywords in the Covid-19 corpus with Spoken BNC2014 as the

reference corpus

antibody an rna influenza

respiratory assay viral pathogen

ml replication genome pcr

virus infectious antigen detection

receptor respectively peptide cell

results for the top 20 keywords in the Covid-19 corpus. However, this time, the Spoken BNC2014 corpus is the reference corpus. Spoken BNC2014 is an 11-million-word spoken corpus of transcribed conversations recorded in the UK between 2012 and 2016. Tables 8.3 and 8.4 share four keywords – viral, rna, influenza and pcr – all, as previously noted, in common use. Take a Moment Examine the keyword lists here. How might the similarities and differences between the two keyword lists be explained?

What is different is that, in Table 8.4, there are fewer specifically scientific terms and more terms in everyday usage such as antibody, respiratory, antigen, infectious and cell. This illustrates the importance of carefully selecting the reference corpus used and analysing the results in light of the corpus design. The enTenTen20 corpus was created using texts from 2019 to 2021, meaning that Covid-19 had become part of our everyday lives when the texts were being collected. However, the collection of spoken texts in the Spoken BNC2014 corpus was done pre-Covid. This, therefore, might account for the discrepancy in results. Words such as antibody, respiratory, antigen, infectious and cell are no longer so unusual so as to be key in the enTenTen20 corpus, hence the very scientific language as key. In the Spoken BNC2014 corpus, people were simply not talking about Covid-19, as it had yet to occur.

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Take a Moment Think of an economics text that you are particularly interested in. What word(s) do you think are key in this text? How might you construct a corpus in order to check your hypothesis?

Collocation

Collocation is an approach to word meaning that considers how frequently words occur next to or near one another. To paraphrase Firth (1957), we can tell a lot about words from the company they keep. ⇨ Collocates are items that regularly occur in company with one another. When this relationship between the items is statistically significant, we can say that they are collocates. Corpus software will generate collocates automatically. There is no strong grammatical or semantic reason that prevents us from choosing one word rather than another. Take, for example, the collocates strong tea and powerful car. Both strong and powerful are adjectives and synonyms, but we are unlikely to say powerful tea and strong car. In order to illustrate collocation, we use one of the suite of corpora available via www. engl​ish-corp​ora.org/. We focus on the TIME corpus, a 100-million-word corpus of articles from Time Magazine collected between 1923 and 2006. The online platform allows us to automatically search for collocates of any word we decide to search for – in this case, economic. Figure 8.1 illustrates the collocates occurring one item to the right, i.e., next to, the item economic. We can see, for example, that growth is the most frequent collocate: economic growth occurs on 711 occasions in the TIME corpus. We can also calculate the strength of collocation using a mutual information (MI) statistical test, visible in the furthest column to the right in Figure 8.1. The higher the MI score generated, the stronger the collocation (a score higher than 3 is usually indicative of a strong collocation). For example, economic sanctions (position 8) has the highest MI score of 9.89. This measure allows us to speculate on what topics are explored in articles in Time Magazine. In addition to sanctions, we can see that economics strongly collocates with other negative items such as problems (position 6) and crisis (position 11). What are also apparent are conceptual metaphors concerning the economy. These collocates seem to characterise the economy as a living organism, hence growth (position 1), development (position 5), recovery (position 7) and life (position 14) (see Charteris-Black 2004).

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FIGURE 8.1 Top

15 most frequent collocates for economic (1R)

Take a Moment Examine Figure 8.2. What items does financial collocate with? Do these items have positive or negative connotations? What might this tell us about metaphors associated with the use of the word financial?

In Figure 8.2, we see that financial also collocates with negative items such as crisis (position 5), problems (position 12) and trouble (position 14). Interestingly, the conceptual metaphors associated with financial appear to point toward areas associated with people living and gathering together, hence institution (position 2), market (position 4), district (position 6) and community (position 11). Another view that can be generated using www.engl​ish-corp​ora.org/, in this case using the COCA corpus, is a chart view that allows us to see frequencies per million words of particular words and phrases across different sections of the corpus and how the use of these terms is distributed across the timeframes represented in the corpus, and we can even drill down into these, as can be seen in Figure 8.3.

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FIGURE 8.2 Top

15 most frequent collocates for financial (1R)

Take a Moment Think about the phrase credit crunch. When do you think the use of this phrase became popular? Why? What type of texts (spoken, academic, newspaper, social media, etc.) do you think this word occurs most frequently in?

One of the things that is immediately obvious is that credit crunch is a term appearing primarily in spoken, magazine and news contexts; each context can be clicked in the online platform for a view of how credit crunch is used in the texts themselves (this view is then available in the form of concordance lines, see below). We can see that credit crunch should already have been a familiar phrase from the early 1990s, and it returns to prominence in the 2005–2009 cell of the corpus. When we click into this cell, the frequency pattern points to the point in time we now associate with the full ramifications of the global economic crisis, 2007–2008. As the reader will note, while the information is available at the click of a mouse, what is derived requires interaction and interpretation from the researcher. The final corpus view we present here is the one that requires the most qualitative perspective and manual analysis – analysing concordance lines.

newgenrtpdf

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FIGURE 8.3  Credit

crunch across section and time in the COCA corpus, with a focus on 2005–2009

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Concordance Lines

An important tool in the corpus analysis toolkit is the concordance line. What is characteristic of concordance lines is that the search item, or node, is presented visually in the centre of a concordance line surrounded by a number of words on either side, referred to as the co-text. This visual presentation is called the key word in context or KWIC format. ⇨ Concordance lines are useful because they allow us to see both the linguistic item we want to analyse and the textual context in which it occurs. This facilitates both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Figure 8.4 illustrates 20 randomly generated lines for the search item worker*; the * tells the computer software to search for both worker and workers. These results are generated using the English Broadsheet Newspapers Corpus (SiBol). SiBol is a 654-million-word corpus of English broadsheet newspapers collected in four specific years – 1993, 1995, 2010 and 2013. Similar to the other results generated in this section, but perhaps counterintuitively when we are presented with text in the form of KWIC, concordance lines are first read vertically, and only when this process is completed do we read horizontally. Therefore, the first step in reading these lines is to look immediately to the left or right of the node word worker*. Take a Moment In the concordance lines, examine the linguistic items immediately to the left and right of worker*. What might these items tell us about how the media, as represented in this corpus, portray workers?

If we look immediately to the left of worker*, we can see what type of worker they are – social (line 1), health (line 7) or motorway (line 20) worker*, for example. Interestingly, we also see the presence of low-paid (line 12), foreign (line 13) and female sex (line 19) worker*. If we look immediately to the right, no obvious, repeated patterns emerge. However, if we extend our search further to the right, this time reading horizontally, we can see the presence of a possible pattern. For example, the item strike occurs to the right of worker* in lines 5, 14 and 20. We can also see further items that are either negative in nature or have negative connotations in this co-text. In line 8, we can see misdirected; in line 9, debt; in line 11, hacked to ribbons; in line 16, loss and suffer; and in line 17, rude shock. This is to say nothing of line 13, which mentions a system that gives foreign workers an advantage

newgenrtpdf

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FIGURE 8.4 20

randomly generated concordance lines for worker* (unsorted)

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over Britons looking for work in their own country. This pattern of negative connotations is entirely consistent with previous work interrogating the ways in which workers are presented in the media (see, for example, the Glasgow Media Group 1980). An interesting contrast can be made between occurrences of worker* and employer*. Figure 8.5 illustrates 20 randomly generated concordance lines for the node word employer*. In this figure, in order to illustrate another aspect of the concordancing tool, we have told the software to sort the lines one item to the right (1R) of the node word. Therefore, we can see that the concordance lines are ordered alphabetically after the node word. This sorting of concordance lines is particularly useful when looking at multiple occurrences. In the SiBol corpus, worker* occurs 112,604 times and employer*, 38,263 times. Therefore, sorting these lines as we did with Figure 8.4, without the help of a computer, can be an extremely onerous task.

Take a Moment Now examine the concordance lines for employer*. What is similar and/or different about how employers are portrayed?

TO SUM UP Concordance lines represent the more qualitative end of corpus analysis given that we engage with individual linguistic items rather than treating them in numerical form. This individual, qualitative treatment can be extended to looking at each node word in its original text in the corpus. This is done in the corpus software by simply clicking on the node word you intend to look at more closely.

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FIGURE 8.5 20

randomly generated concordance lines for employer* (sorted 1R)

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6.  Corpus Perspectives on Media Texts

News texts of all types provide source material not only for the description of language in its own right but also for tracing the entry of coinages, with the advent of online news and the phenomenon of news going viral greatly accelerating new uses, meanings and terms. Highly specialised terms circulate during trigger events such as the global financial crisis, when older terms such as credit crunch came back into circulation (see Figure 8.3). Technical terms such as sovereign debt and subprime mortgages and responses to it such as quantitative easing, alongside more non-technical ones such as bailout, came into circulation. Lischinsky (2011) is a corpus-based study of 50 financial and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports published in 2008. It explores how the economic crisis was constructed at that time. Economically focused annual reports situate company performances within the relevant economic context; CSR reports foreground sustainable development. Lischinsky uses a corpus approach to provide a broad picture of how the 2008 crisis was perceived, reasoned and communicated in these reports, arguing that these constructions of an event can have a real impact on government-level policy decisions. He shows that certain responses, such as lay-offs, are linguistically presented as inevitable or “forced”, invoking a “there is no alternative” construction. In the same way, news reporting of economic events have a role to play in public perception and understandings, which in turn may put pressure on government responses or particular elements of these responses. Ground-breaking work such as Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980) argues that language is central to thought, and life events, such as birth, marriage and death, are understood primarily through what they call “conceptual metaphors”. The “essence” of metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson

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(1980, p. 5) claim, is “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another”. The idea of conceptual metaphors has been usefully applied, often in combination with corpus analysis, to financial reporting (e.g., Charteris-Black and Ennis 2001).

Conceptual metaphors are articulated using capitals, such as ARGUMENT IS WAR in the sense that an argument can be won or lost, defended or indefensible. Charteris-Black (2004, p. 13) uses a corpus approach to critical metaphor analysis. He emphasises the persuasive function of metaphor and its fundamental importance in the formation of opinions. He argues that the reporter’s degree of expertise, and the story they are trying to tell, influences their choice of metaphor. For example, when presenting as an expert, they will use what he calls an animate system of metaphor based on the conceptual key THE ECONOMY IS AN ORGANISM: it can be healthy or ailing and connected with terms such as growth, decay and atrophy. When not wishing to present as an expert, financial reporters opt for an inanimate system of metaphor, such as THE MARKET IS A FUNFAIR: it is characterised by hyperbole and terms such as swing, slide and rollercoaster. In his study of metaphor in financial reporting, he uses a subcorpus of the Bank of English consisting of 16 million words harvested from the Economist. He identifies three conceptual keys particular to the Economist’s financial reports: THE ECONOMY IS HUMAN, ECONOMIC PROBLEMS ARE NATURAL DISASTERS and MARKET CHANGES ARE PHYSICAL MOVEMENTS. Crucially, he urges consideration of how the language of financial reporting, the stock-in-trade of the financial journalist after all, “assists in sustaining a free-market ideology” and recommends further studies on the role of metaphor vis-à-vis economic ideology (Charteris-Black 2004, p. 168).

7.  Summary and Conclusion

Biber et al. (1998, p. 4) summarise the corpus-based approach to language analysis as follows: 1. It is empirical, in that it analyses patterns of language use in natural texts; 2. It uses a corpus, or “large and principled collection of natural texts”, as the basis for this empirical analysis; 3. It makes extensive use of computers for analysis, “using both automatic and interactive techniques”; 4. It depends on “both quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques”.

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Above all, corpus analysis should not be confused with primarily quantitative analysis; it consists of both qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques as shown in Section 4 above. As McCarthy et al. state: The quantitative approach usually looks for the largest corpus possible … data are then analysed computationally and the output comprises sets of figures that tell the discourse analyst about frequency of occurrence of words, phrases, collocations or structures … for the discourse analyst, statistical facts raise the question “Why?”, and answers can only be found by looking at the contexts of the texts in the corpus. [McCarthy et al. 2002, p. 70] Key for our purposes is the understanding that corpus analysis mixes well with many disparate disciplines and purposes, assuming that these are connected to how events and issues are linguistically constructed – that is, to the role that language plays in the discursive construction of reality.

An interesting synergy can be found in Touru and Koteyko (2015), who combine corpus techniques to support frame analysis. They discuss how news frames are generated and suggest that corpus linguistic methodology can be used to extract news frames more objectively while maintaining the connection between the frames and the cultural and media context that characterise them. They create a corpus of UK news texts based on coverage of the Greek financial crisis to illustrate their use of corpus techniques to generate and refine news frames.

As we have shown, where a corpus resource does not already exist, there are key decisions and considerations to think about when creating one that is appropriate for the research question being asked. However, simply having a corpus and generating output using corpus software is only the beginning; all corpus analysis requires rigorous and objective interpretation. As O’Keeffe and McCarthy (2022, p. 6) assert: “We are still, in the final analysis, practitioners of rhetoric. The persuasiveness of our arguments about language depends on the plausible and robust interpretation of the principled empirical evidence which the data throw up.” The fact that corpus software will generate automatic output should not blind us to the fact that this is just the beginning of the analysis. This output – whether it is a list of words, strings of words, keywords, concordance lines, collocate views – requires human intelligence in its interpretation. Interpretation in its turn benefits from multiple perspectives,

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and it is perhaps for this reason that journalists and linguists are increasingly working collaboratively to understand the (de)construction of news discourse. What we need are journalists who can think linguistically and critically about language, and linguists who understand how journalism works. List of Concepts Introduced

• Corpus linguistics; • Corpus/corpora; • Concordancer; • Word frequency lists; • Keywords; • Collocation; • Concordance lines; • Key word in context (KWIC); • Conceptual metaphors. References Anderson, W. and Corbett, J. (2009). Exploring English with On-line Corpora: An Introduction. Macmillan. Anthony, L. (2022a). AntConc (Version 4.0.10). Waseda University. Anthony, L. (2022b). “What Can Corpus Software Do?” In O’Keeffe, A. and McCarthy, M.J., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, 2nd ed., pp. 103–125. Routledge. Baker, P. (2006). Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. Continuum. Bednarek, M. and Carr, G. (2021). “Computer-Assisted Digital Text Analysis for Journalism and Communications Research: Introducing Corpus Linguistic Techniques That Do Not Require Programming”. Media International Australia, 18(1), pp. 131–151. Biber, D., Conrad, S. and Reppen, R. (1998). Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge University Press. Bokhove, C. and Downey, C. (2018). “Automated Generation of ‘Good Enough’ Transcripts as a First Step to Transcription of Audio-Recorded Data”. Methodological Innovations, 11(2), pp. 1–14. Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Palgrave. Charteris-Black, J. and Ennis, T. (2001). “A Comparative Study of Metaphor in English and Spanish Financial Reporting”. English for Specific Purposes, 20(3), pp. 249–266. Fernández-Cruz, J. and Moreno-Ortiz, A. (2020). “Building the Great Recession News Corpus (GRNC): A Contemporary Diachronic Corpus of Economy News in English”. Research in Corpus Linguistics, 8, pp. 28–45. Firth, J.R. (1957). Papers in Linguistics 1934–1951. University Press. Fowler, H. (1991). Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. Routledge. Glasgow Media Group (1980). More Bad News. Routledge and Keegan Paul.

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Grazia-Busa, M. (2013). Introducing the Language of News. A Student’s Guide. Routledge. Heuboeck, A., Holmes, J. and Nesi, H. (2010). The BAWE Corpus Manual. Available from: www.read​ing.ac.uk/inter​nal/appl​ing/bawe/BAWE.docume​ntat​ion.pdf [Accessed 03/05/2022]. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. Lexical Computing (2022). Sketch Engine. Lischinsky, A. (2011). “In Times of Crisis: A Corpus Approach to the Construction of the Global Financial Crisis in Annual Reports”. Critical Discourse Studies, 8(3), pp. 153–168. McCarthy, M.J., Mattiessen, C. and Slade, D. (2002). “Discourse Analysis”. In Schmitt, N., ed., An Introduction to Applied Linguistics, pp. 55–73. Arnold. O’Keeffe, A. and McCarthy, M.J. (2022). “‘Of What Is Past, or Passing, or to Come’: Corpus Linguistics, Changes and Challenges”. In O’Keeffe, A. and McCarthy, M.J., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, 2nd ed., pp. 1–9. Routledge. Richardson, J. (2008). “Language and Journalism: An Expanding Research Agenda”. Journalism Studies, 9(2), pp. 152–160. Scott, M. (2021). WordSmith Tools (Version 8.0). Lexical Analysis Software. Scott, M. and Tribble, C. (2006). Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Teacher Education. John Benjamins. Touri, M. and Koteyko, N. (2015). “Using Corpus Linguistic Software in the Extraction of News Frames: Towards a Dynamic Process of Frame Analysis in Journalistic Texts”. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(6), pp. 601–616. Vaughan, E. and Clancy, B. (2013). “Small Corpora and Pragmatics”. The Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, 1, pp. 53–73. Vaughan, E. and O’Keeffe, A. (2015). “Corpus Analysis”. In Tracy, K., ed., The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, pp. 252–268. John Wiley & Sons. Weisser, M. (2022). “What Corpora Are Available?” In O’Keeffe, A. and McCarthy, M.J., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, 2nd ed., pp. 89–102. Routledge.

9 BREAKING DOWN THE DISCOURSE, EXPOSING POWER IN ECONOMIC JOURNALISM Critical Discourse Analysis Maria Rieder and Hendrik Theine

Advance Organiser

This chapter will introduce you to critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA is a collection of theoretical and methodological strands that explore how individual texts play a role in social, political and economic actions, particularly through the formation of ideologies and hegemonies (see Chapter 4). CDA has been used to study political discourse, ideology, racism, economic discourse, advertising and promotional culture, media language, gender, institutional discourse, education and literacy (see Blommaert and Bulcaen 2000 for an overview). CDA is of particular and growing interest to the analysis of economic journalism: It casts a critical eye on the formulation and representation of business, economics and economic policy issues in news media, as well as on the potential effects of the common-sense framing of these issues on the readership. As such, its aim is to uncover how dominant discourses sustain various forms of inequalities, hierarchies, domination and oppression in society. The chapter will start by discussing central notions within CDA, such as: • Critical; • Discourse. This will help to clarify the principles and aims of CDA. Following this, we will present a comprehensive framework for economic news analysis. At every step, you will find activities that will guide you through your own research project as well as a specific case study that exemplifies the analytical process: an

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-11

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analysis of the reception of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014), with a particular focus on the representation of his economic policy proposals in international print media. 1.  CDA: Theories, Concepts and Methods

Critical discourse analysis has its roots in a number of traditions in the humanities and social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology and linguistics. The 1960s and 1970s saw a lot of changes across many of these traditions, with groups of scholars in linguistics in particular departing from what had been up to this point a predominantly structural approach to language. Scholars in newly forming research areas such as sociolinguistics, ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis, rhetoric, pragmatics and semiotics developed a range of new methods of language analysis, sharing an interest in naturally occurring language and in exploring language as action in real-world contexts. It was in this context that CDA emerged in the late 1980s as a programmatic development in European discourse studies and as a social theory of language. The start of CDA as a network was marked by the launch of Van Dijk’s journal Discourse and Society (1990). Following this publication, a 1991 symposium in Amsterdam brought together scholars including Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, Teun van Dijk, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen to discuss theories and methods of discourse analysis. The Critical Discourse Studies network that emerged from this resulted in several influential journals, books and publications. CDA has now become an established paradigm and is institutionalised across the globe in many departments and curricula (see Wodak and Meyer 2009 for a more detailed history of the network). It is important to stress that CDA is not one theory or methodology but rather an interdisciplinary programme that is open to the use of many different methodological approaches in order to reach a certain aim: CDA studies social phenomena and tries to raise awareness of inequalities, power imbalances and other forms of hierarchies and domination in society which it wants to expose in order to rectify them. Some areas where we might encounter such power imbalances in economic journalism might have already come to your mind. But before we look at specific issues and explore how analysts go about uncovering ideologically loaded reporting, let us define some of the central notions of CDA: critical and discourse.

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What Is Meant by Critical?

CDA is based on critical theory, which holds that there are no natural truths and that concepts such as gender, sex, race, class, etc., are socially constructed rather than naturally given. But what does it actually mean to be critical? Take a Moment • Think what the word “critical” means in everyday language. How might this differ from the use of the word in critical discourse studies? • Now take a look at this news item. In what way can it be considered a critical text (1) in everyday language and (2) in critical discourse studies terms? Inappropriate Language Diminishes Older People We are specialists (signed by more than 150 people) spanning fields of nursing, public health, health systems, medicine, health and social care professionals, social policy, advocacy and NGO organisations. We write to express our utmost concern over recent examples of the inappropriate use of language by some media outlets in their reporting of the current Covid-19 pandemic. We ask that those in a position to shape the narrative of older people’s experiences in our media do so carefully. Terms such as “elderly”, “seniors”, “pensioners”, “elders” and “OAPs” are considered stereotypical, ageist and disrespectful. One national newspaper used the term “nappies” to describe continence management whilst a journalist on RT news made reference to older people “dropping like flies” both which are particularly unacceptable and upsetting. The overuse of the phrase “underlying condition” diminishes the lives and deaths of people who die from Covid-19. It also contributes to a creeping narrative that some lives are more expendable than others. [Irish Examiner, 24 April 2020]

Take some time to think and discuss with your colleagues, then read on.

“Critical”, as Wodak explains, means not taking things for granted, opening up complexity, challenging reductionism, dogmatism and dichotomies, being selfreflective in research, and through these processes, making opaque structures of power relations and ideologies manifest. [Kendall 2007]

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The term critical therefore differs slightly from its everyday use of “being negative” or “being against something”; in CDA it means that a researcher is taking a sceptical stance and trying to uncover ways in which power, dominance, discrimination, control and inequality are constructed and maintained in society through the use of language and discourse that legitimate certain views and certain actions (Wodak 1996, p. 204). This brings us to the next concept that we need to define before looking closer at the principles of CDA. What is Discourse?

The term discourse has its origins in the Latin word discursus, which means “running across” or “running to and fro”. Similar to a painting that represents the subject matter in a particular way, with a particular style and set of colours and shapes, a specific discourse frames a certain topic from a particular perspective; it employs a certain style, makes reference to some things and not to others and uses a certain type of language. The perspective that shines through texts puts them into groups of distinctive discursive strands – or recognisable ways of speaking about a certain topic.

An example of different discourses in the area of economics would be the representations of industrial action in the media. Media texts may make reference to workers’ situations and rights by including interviews with employees or write from an employer perspective. Similarly, the way unions are viewed and represented has changed over time and differs across national contexts.

Take a Moment Do some research on trade unions in your national context. When did they first emerge, and what was the political context of their emergence? Have attitudes towards unions in your national context changed over time? What other examples of different discourses can you think of in the context of economic news?

Researching the representation of unions in your national context may have revealed changes in the kinds of attitudes societies hold towards them. You may also have found that these attitudes depended on the kind of political, economic and social contexts in which they occurred. In the same way as texts

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reflect a particular climate, they can also construct and influence social and political realities. Reading a (set of) text(s) with a particular viewpoint may sway a reader’s opinion, which again may alter his or her political actions, for instance in an election. Hence, discourses are socially constitutive – which means that we are all agents in the construction of reality through the discourses we consume and produce as well as our daily interactions – as much as they are constituted by social realities. Analysing Discourse Critically: The Aims of CDA

When we integrate these two notions of critical and discourse into a programme of analysis, we as researchers seek to point out issues in the discourses that surround us. We try to point out in what way texts, by which we mean any form of production such as written, spoken or image-based productions, may reflect existing inequalities and power issues, thereby sustaining and recreating them. One stand-alone text representing an adverse viewpoint may not cause issues in society on its own. However, recurring patterns in the way things are represented have the potential to sustain and change perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of the readership. Hence, CDA examines reoccurring patterns of language across texts and tries to point out the relationship between language and the existence of power in different social and cultural contexts. These patterns may fall into two categories: • Patterns in the way individuals or social groups are represented, or the lack of representation of individuals and social groups; • Patterns in the way events, policies, plans, actions, the past or the future are framed and constructed. In relation to news media, let’s look at Fowler’s explanation of how this plays out: News is a representation of the world in language … it imposes a structure of values, social and economic in origin, on whatever is represented. News is a representation in the sense of construction; it is not a value-free reflection of “fruits” … each particular form of linguistic expression in a text – wording, syntactic option, etc. – has its reason. There are always different ways of saying the same thing, and they are not random, accidental alternatives. Differences in expression carry ideological distinctions (and thus differences in representation). [Fowler 1991, p. 4] The choice of words, particularly adjectives and metaphors to describe people and actions or events, is an important indicator of the ideological stance

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of text and its author. Think, for example, how taxes are often described as a “burden” for or “punishment” of workers. The use and reuse of these metaphors can become “normal” over time and slowly manifest a perception of taxes as abuse by the state and infringing on the freedom of people and valuable entrepreneurs. Based on this ideologically neoliberal view of taxes in the media, many have now adopted this perspective as a common sense one, one that is taken for granted and unquestioned. The reader loses the sense that this is only one perspective on taxes, which is carried by a specific ideological viewpoint. A text that departs from the “common-sense” way of talking about things by adopting a different perspective (by employing different linguistic means) may then be seen as radical, revolutionary and unacceptable at first. Following up on the example of taxation: other viewpoints, for instance that taxes are a necessary means to finance the social welfare state or public infrastructure, seem outdated or unacceptable. The aim of CDA is to uncover the dominance and hegemony of certain discourses, i.e., the ways in which certain social and institutional structures and power are upheld by discourse patterns, relations and ways of thinking and the kind of consequences this has for (parts of) society. However, CDA scholars emphasise that it is not enough to just expose power abuse through language use. CDA researchers are committed to social action and to empowering the powerless, to giving a voice to the voiceless and to mobilising people, with the ultimate goal of making proposals for change and remedying social wrongs. In relation to our particular context, critical analysis of economic discourse has, in the last two decades, challenged orthodox, “commonsense” economic thinking, particularly the prevailing idea that markets and the market economy more generally are naturally given phenomena and most beneficial for all. For instance, critical analysts have highlighted how the use of metaphors in neoliberal economics discourse lead to the depersonalisation and objectification of market relations with the effect that actors and power relations tend to be hidden (Alejo 2010; Boers and Demecheleer 1997; Phelan 2007). Moreover, several scholars have shown how news discourses have – by drawing on neoliberal accounts of the economy – legitimised and justified income and wealth inequality and other types of inequalities. They show how economic news often privileges certain perspectives on, and causations of, economic processes, as well as certain historical interpretations of past economic processes. In doing this, it justifies certain social positions over others and, over time, leads to acceptance by the readership of certain economic activities from a broad set of possible activities, while at the same time disqualifying alternative activities (Thomas 2016; Schiffrin 2015; Mayher and McDonald 2007). Hence, the media exercise power over public opinion, and for this reason we as journalists and critical readers need to scrutinise the way specific policies and policy debates around wealth and income inequality are constructed for a broader audience.

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In order to relate certain discourses within media texts to social power, CDA employs a range of methods, and the next section will present a comprehensive framework for analysis. TO SUM UP CDA… • Addresses social problems; • Views power relations as discursive and is interested in language and discourse as an implicit form of power; • Views discourse as something that constitutes and is constituted by society and culture; it shapes and is shaped by social reality.

Hence… • It sees discourse as a form of social action; • It views discourse as historically grown and changeable; • It views discourse as ideological work: discourse can help produce and reproduce unequal power relations between social actors and groups of social actors.

It holds that all communication is accomplished through a set of linguistic resources, options and choices. Rather than a code, language is a set of resources, and which choice is made as well as how, and when, determines what consequences this has.

2.  The Analytical Process of CDA

Critical discourse analysis unites a range of methods, all of which share the endeavour to analyse the relationship between text and social issues: the role of a text in the production of power and inequalities. CDA posits that all discourses are historically situated and so must be studied in context. Therefore, in order to uncover the links between discourses in individual texts and power in society, we need to see texts not just in isolation but as embedded in a larger context. Apart from the language and other meaning-making devices used in the text (such as images, colour, style, print, etc.), we examine socio-economic factors that might have influenced text production, such as the circumstances of text production and

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distribution and the culture, history, political and economic contexts in which it was produced. You might already see the potential challenge of such an endeavour: taking into account all these different levels comprehensively in an analysis of a single issue is an impossible task. For example, if we think of cultural and historical contexts that might have influenced a text, we must take the following into account: • How do we determine what is important to include? Where do we start and where do we stop? • How do we eliminate bias and subjectivity in the selection and interpretation of context descriptions that we wish to include in an analysis? At this point it is important to say that we are all ideologically influenced; we all have our attitudes and beliefs, and no analysis is completely value-free. Also, there is no “correct” interpretation of any text, and we may analyse the same text differently at different points in our lives. It is therefore important to justify the choices we make and the contexts we include and to provide concrete textual evidence for our interpretations. A wealth of methods have grown out of CDA research since the start of the network, all of which are bound together by the aim of revealing the link between discourse and power/inequalities. Due to the adaptability of CDA to individual research goals and the range of topics it has been applied to, it is difficult to provide a comprehensive overview of methods. This section therefore presents a framework that contains a catalogue of opportunities of research from which most researchers pick and choose depending on their research purposes. This section talks about the What?, in terms of elements that can be analysed, but also the How?, particularly in the activity boxes and case study examples. Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Framework

Norman Fairclough is one of the founders of the CDA network, and his three-dimensional framework (2007) for conceiving and analysing discourse is probably the most comprehensive and widely used. It consists of the following three levels of analysis, which make it possible to link a text to societal issues: 1. Description and analysis of the text(s); 2. Description and analysis of the institutional context of discursive practice; 3. Description and analysis of the societal conditions of production and interpretation.

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As we said before, a text never appears in isolation but is embedded in and at the same time constitutes political, social and economic realities. Every text needs to be seen as having grown out of a certain time and geographical space. In addition, texts are often reactions to texts published before and/ or make reference to existing discourses. In theory, every text engages in discursive work in the way it shapes the way we talk and think about the social reality. It does so through repetition, by employing patterns of language that have been established in previous texts and that then turn into habitual language use and habits of thinking. One text is often only a link in a chain of texts and discourses. This implies that it is difficult to single out a particular text for an analysis that seeks to uncover how discourse influences society. However, CDA can partly overcome this problem by its focus on the construction of common sense. Common sense is not constructed in single individual texts but over a longer time period and in regular publications. What CDA actually wants is to show how topics are regularly and commonly talked about, to expose the kinds of discourses that appear so regularly in the media that, over time, they have come to be considered “common sense”. Hence, in order to prevent bias and subjectivity and identify texts that contain representative discourses, we need to look at a longer time period and start by building a corpus of texts that speak on our research topic. By corpus we mean a collection of texts that have been selected according to specific criteria and with a particular purpose in mind. Databases such as LexisNexis or Factiva allow us to search for and download articles containing keywords in the main news media. This corpus of texts can then be fed into qualitative discourse analysis software such as NVivo or MAXQDA, which helps with the reading, quantitative and qualitative coding and visualising of data for future readers of our research. Starting the analytical process with a corpus of texts is best done by applying Fairclough’s second level of analysis, discursive practice, which asks the researcher to keep track of essential information on the production, distribution and consumption of texts, as well as on the topics and discourses discussed within texts. Working on this level first will allow us to collect this mainly quantitative information and help with the identification of one or more texts that are representative and that we will choose for a fine-grained textual analysis. Hence, the methodological guidelines below will start with the level of discursive practice, move on to the analysis of text, and finally link the text to macro social practices. Using the example of a project on the reception of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) along with activities, we will guide you through the analytical process (for more information on the research this chapter is based on, see Rieder and

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Theine 2019 and Theine and Rieder 2019; for more information of the overall research project, see Grisold and Preston 2020). The Analytical Process of CDA 1. Choose your topic and research question; 2. Build your corpus; 3. Investigate discursive practice of production, consumption and discourses (CDA Level 2 analysis); 4. Investigate textual features (CDA Level 1 analysis); 5. Describe social conditions (CDA Level 3 analysis).

Let us start with some preparatory work. Prior to embarking on the actual analytical process, it is important that we clearly describe the topic we are interested in and think about the research purpose or the research question. See, as an example, this description of the project on Piketty’s policy proposals and its reception in the media:

Thomas Piketty is a well-known and respected economist whose academic work on long term developments of wealth and income inequality has both brought him major publicity and stirred up a lot of debate. His bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been hailed as “the publishing sensation of the year” (Financial Times, 23 May 2014). The book’s reception and popularity were certainly heavily influenced by the larger context of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the subsequent Eurozone crisis. This project is interested in the reception of Piketty’s challenges of capitalism in the print media in four different countries: Ireland, the UK, Germany and Austria. In particular, we are interested in the arguments for and against Piketty’s policy proposals and in identifying the language patterns with which the views on these proposals and economic processes are expressed. His main proposals encompass: • Top income taxes of 80 per cent starting from annual salaries of €500,000 and above; • Minimum wages; • A global capital tax of 1 per cent or 2 per cent; • A re-regulation of the financial system and an internationally united accounting framework and information system to reduce the massive use of offshore accounts in tax heavens.

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Take a Moment Similar to the above, note down some information about: • A topic and economic question or issue that you are interested in; • The main research interest and purpose of your analysis; • The kind of regional and organisational contexts in which you are going to research (e.g., country and print news).

Now that we have identified our research interest, we will move on to building our corpus of texts. Take a Moment Visit Lexis UK or another newspaper archive. Depending on the research topic you are interested in, type in one or two keywords on an economicsrelated issue. Use any available filters to narrow your search results down to a manageable number of articles. You may do this by: • Limiting your timeframe; • Selecting only one or two newspapers for comparison; • Selecting a certain section in a newspaper, e.g., the business section. Important: Make sure that the way you limit your results aligns with your identified research purpose or question. Check if you can justify the choices you make. Once you have between 20 and 50 texts, download them in a format that allows you to open them in a word processor. These texts will be your corpus for the following analytical exercises. See the box “The Piketty Corpus” for a description of the building of the Piketty corpus.

THE PIKETTY CORPUS For the research on the reception of Piketty’s policy proposals, we selected two leading national quality daily newspapers and one weekly broadsheet in a mix of small and big European countries (Austria, Ireland, Germany and the UK). The

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TABLE 9.1  Coding

Content of the book

n/a wealth inequality policy proposals r>G income inequality meritocracy social justice, social mobility inheritance

97 40 30 14 11 9 7 4

initial keyword used for the selection of articles was “Piketty”, and we chose all the articles appearing in the time period between March 2014 and March 2015, the year following the release of his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The total corpus comprised of 329 articles, which were initially coded for themes as well as agreement and disagreement with Piketty’s policy proposals. Focusing only on the articles that discussed Piketty’s proposals narrowed the corpus down to 73 articles, 41 of which were against and 32 in favour of Piketty’s proposals.

Discursive Practice

The level of discursive practice looks at texts in the context of the societal institutions from which they emerged – in our case, media organisations and producers of content. At this level, we intend to do a broad reading of our corpus of economics texts while simultaneously highlighting and coding essential discursive and institutional information of the production, consumption and discourses of the texts, which can then be used for quantitative analytical purposes. By doing this, we get an overview of the kinds of discourses, topics and main social actors in a particular time period. The following questions will allow you to see how your topic is commonly talked about and to then deliberately select a representative text for closer textual analysis at a later stage. Production

The level of production gets you to ask the following questions while reading through your corpus of texts: 1. Who produced the text? 2. What are the conditions under which the author produced the text?

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3. How has the text been produced: did the author carry out any kind of research for the text? 4. For what purpose has it been produced? Question 1 refers to essential data about the text, such as newspaper, section, author name, gender. A table such as the one in Figure 9.1 helps to keep track of this and other information about the texts. Take a Moment Use a similar format to the one in Figure 9.1 to note down key information about your texts. You can either load them into a qualitative analysis software and use the document variables tools or create a spreadsheet with headings as in the example. Think about questions 2–4 while noting down these details.

Consumption

Texts are produced with a certain audience in mind, and different newspapers attract certain types of readership. It is important to keep track of whom the articles you have identified are aimed at. This is especially important when your research interests lie in the area of consumer research and effects. 1. How is the text circulated (print, online)? 2. Who is the target audience? Who else might consume the text? 3. How is the text consumed?

Take a Moment Think about the particular group of readers of each of your articles or newspapers and add relevant columns to your spreadsheet.

Discourses

1. Which discourses can you identify in the text? 2. Does the text refer to other (previous) texts (intertextuality)? 3. Does the text refer to particular sources? 4. Does the text make reference to other discourses outside the text (interdiscursivity)? Do they oppose each other or support each other?

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quantitative information FIGURE 9.1 Key

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Take a Moment As you scan through the articles, identify and code them on broad topics and discourses. You can either highlight these in different colours in the word processor or use QDA software, which allows you to later select one of the codes for particular discourses and produce a list of text extracts for a finegrained analysis of the particular language used in these discourses. Can you identify categories of arguments as you read through the texts? See the box “Argument Categories” for reference.

ARGUMENT CATEGORIES A first reading of our identified 73 articles on the Piketty debate points to a reserved, but overall positive reception when it comes to the issue of inequality in general, yet rather hostile to even overtly dismissive reporting on his policy proposals. A lot of our articles contained one or more paragraphs that discussed Piketty’s policy proposal. Using a highlighter, we identified the arguments made, such as “a wealth tax is utopian and will not work”, “a wealth tax is unpopular” or “will kill entrepreneurialism”. After a while, we were able to group these arguments into different categories and marked these in the text accordingly: • Authorisation. These arguments refer to different institutional authorities and experts whose opinions are cited to support the author’s stance in relation to economic policies. • Rationalisation. These are economic, financial or market-ideological reasons provided to justify the author’s position for or against Piketty’s proposals. • Moralisation. These arguments try to appeal to the moral duty of society or the government to act in the common interest of the people. • Portrayal of victimhood. These paint different individuals or groups of social actors as victims of economic policy proposals. • Impossibility. This strategy presents a certain position as common sense or an action as inevitable without justifying it. [Theine and Rieder 2019]

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for topics and arguments FIGURE 9.2 Coding

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TABLE 9.2  Highlighting arguments and textual features

Guardian, 1 May 2014

Strategy

“if respect for acquisition and disposal of capital [nominalisation] is not entrenched [passive] within a regime [authorisation] of protections [nominalisation] for basic liberties [nominalisation], the state [aggressor] can redistribute [active] capital at will. And if reducing inequality is the prime concern, as Piketty makes it out to be, then the obvious [naturalisation] next step is to elucidate a high-tax policy menu [metaphor] endorsed [passive] in Capital in the 21st Century. Anyone [generalisation] concerned about the material prosperity [nominalisation] of all [universal] people, including [universal] the poor, should be reviled [emphasis] by such grand [emphasis] schemes to impoverish [emphasis, neg. verb] societies [generalisation]. This is because what greater tax burdens [metaphor] do is slow down [metaphor, neg. verb] the rate of economic growth, or in other words stymie [neg. verb] our increasing capacity to cooperate in creating value for other people whom we don’t know intimately. To express this somewhat differently, weakening [neg. verb] economic growth means lost opportunities to feed, clothe, house, transport, educate, heal, and entertain [rel., conversational] people.”

Portrayal of victimhood Moralisation Economic rationalisation Moralisation

Depending on your research interests and purpose you will now either be able to identify a representative text for closer inspection at the textual level or have a collection of fragments from different texts that all refer to the same topic. The Piketty example used the latter option, and we analysed all the text paragraphs in our corpus that discussed Piketty’s policy proposals. The next section will guide you through the text level and through the analysis of linguistic elements that support the argumentative strategies we have identified. Text

Besides the highlighted argumentative and legitimating strategies, Table 9.2 shows the textual and linguistic features, marked in bold and underlined, which help the author to give strength to the argument.

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These textual and linguistic features are at the centre of the text level analysis, which involves a detailed examination of the language and other meaning-making devices used in the text. Vocabulary and grammar are the two main areas of language, but cohesion and text structure are also important domains that help with the construction of arguments and ideas. Vocabulary and Grammar

On the text level, specifically the sentence level, start by analysing the vocabulary and grammar and ask: 1. How are different social actors, i.e., individual people, groups and institutions, as well as events, actions, economic policy tools and their effects, represented? Here, you will pay particular attention to descriptive lexical items, such as adjectives, nouns and metaphors. When looking at a text, you might find polarising, negative or positive adjectives or nouns to describe individual people, groups or events. For instance, it makes a big difference to the reader to see a group described as either “terrorists” or “freedom fighters”; or an individual as an “immigrant” or a “young woman”. Check if particular ways of describing people and things are repeated or reworded in a similar manner. Are euphemisms employed, for instance the description of civilians losing their lives as “collateral damage”? Is the text formal or rather colloquial? A good way of testing the effects of a description, i.e., the connotation of particular words, is to look for synonyms or alternative descriptions and see if they might have a different effect or would cause a different impression on a reader. For example, the word “confiscates” in “the state confiscates a lot of hard-earned money” is a quite aggressive way of describing state actions. If this were rephrased as “the rich’s contribution towards society in order to invest in …”, the effect on the reader would probably be much different. Metaphors are pervasive and central to the construction of arguments, as they bring abstract states of affairs closer to the experience of ordinary people by comparing complex issues to an experience in everyday life. They often enable common-sense rhetoric and appeal to the public morale and common knowledge of the people. Within our Piketty example, we very frequently found metaphors from a medicine or food domain, such as the state described as a “killer” and taxes as a “burden” that causes “pain”, “cripples growth” and “endangers” society, or the rich getting served a “dinner plate” of taxes. Metaphors such as these are powerful in perpetuating a discourse of victimhood of those who earn a good salary (see also Wehling 2016; Pühringer and Hirte 2015; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Coleman and Ritchie 2011 for an analysis of metaphors in economic discourse).

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Typically, different social actors, actions, policy tools and their effects are mentioned frequently in texts about the state and affairs of the economy. If this is the case, it is important to ask: 2. How are the relations between different social actors, actions, policy tools and their effects constructed? For instance, are different types of adjectives, metaphors and other lexical fields employed to describe different social groups? Is one group or person portrayed as more serious, professional, knowledgeable than another? Are individual people mentioned or does the text refer to collectives (e.g., “working class”, “the rich”)? A third important question to ask is: 3. Are any relevant social actors, events, actions, policy tools and potential effects left out of the text? Not mentioning important groups or actors equals silencing the voice of groups who are concerned by the text’s topic, which is a powerful way of promoting the interests of one particular group. And lastly: 4. Does the text use any means of persuasion or legitimation of a specific position? By legitimation, we mean arguments that are put forward in order to justify why something should be done or not done in a certain way. Apart from vocabulary, some grammatical devices are powerful aids in the legitimation of positions. For instance, the passive versus active voice can be used to variously conceal the actor, focus on the “doer” of an action or focus on the recipient of the action: “People were not given the information” versus “We did not inform people”. “The rich have to pay” => focuses on one group that carries the burden of taxes. “Taxes should be introduced” => no explicitly named agent, which makes nobody responsible. Similar to passive versus active constructions, word order in a sentence can generally change the way things are perceived by foregrounding and backgrounding different social actors. Often, the focus of a sentence is either the subject of the sentence or what comes last in the sentence.

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Abstract entities are sometimes portrayed as people with certain powers, which is also called personification: “The state punishes entrepreneurs” => the state is the personified aggressor; entrepreneurs are the victims of state action. The use of personal pronouns is often quite deliberate. Check if a “we” versus “they” can be detected in the way different groups are portrayed. Modal verbs are a way to express security or insecurity about future actions or outcomes in particular: an overuse of could, may, might or would followed by explicit actions or events gives the impression of probability of action, but often with no concrete evidence. Take a Moment 1. Start by listing the various social actors that figure in your text or identified text fragments. How are they portrayed? Guided by the above questions, highlight any recurring vocabulary or grammatical expressions that help to portray them in certain ways. Which important social actors are excluded? 2. In a second step, and depending on your topic and whether it refers to an event or an action, analyse how the event or action is being described: • Which past happenings does the author make responsible? How is the past being described? Is a causal relationship established between the past and the present? • How does the author project the future and any effects following the action or event? • Does the author refer to any tools or means that will help achieve a certain outcome? How are these described? • Which important effects or consequences are excluded? Identify any specific vocabulary or grammatical features that stand out. See the “Analysis” box for an example analysis.

ANALYSIS The research output below illustrates how the text fragments on Piketty’s policy proposals were analysed. The column on the far right summarises the

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author’s argument, economic beliefs and interpretation of Piketty’s proposals. For the textual level, the green column is the most interesting, as here we identify lexical and grammatical strategies that the author uses to make his/her argument. This kind of analysis involved noting anything significant in terms of tenses, modal verbs, the use of active versus passive voice, semantic patterns, metaphors, etc. Both dimensions – economic beliefs and linguistic resources – are inevitably linked (Halliday 1975/2014; Fairclough 2003); for instance, writers choose metaphors, tenses and modality markers to express their convictions of what will happen if a certain form of taxation is adopted. In the course of the analytical work, patterns started to arise in both the positive and negative argumentation in relation to Piketty’s work, and we could see recurring linguistic strategies being used in the discursive construction of economic ideas. We were able to map these strategies fairly closely to our identified five different legitimation strategies: authorisation, rationalisation, moralisation, portrayal of victimhood and impossibility.

Cohesion and Text Structure

Looking beyond this fine-grained detail of a text, we should also pay attention to cohesion and text structure: • How are the sentences linked together? • Is there a lot of repetition at the clause level? • Can you detect any rhetorical devices such as rhetorical questions and questions addressing the reader, sentences starting with the same word (anaphora), exclamations, declarations and imperatives? Moving on from here to the overall text, especially if your analysis concerns an entire article rather than individual text fragments, we might ask: • What is the architecture of the text? How is the text structured? What elements are combined in what ways and in what order to build a specific argument? At this point it is important to state again that, while the text level bears many insights into the subtle construction of arguments by the deliberate choice of lexical items and text building, the above are options that can be used if it is the endeavour of the researcher to show the fine-grained linguistic and rhetorical details of a text. Depending on the research aims, the analysis of the text level can vary in depth and in the choice of elements to be analysed.

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TABLE 9.3 Patterns of argumentation

legitimation/ proximation/etc. strategy

language internal representation of people/actors: use of active/passive (power and victims); outstanding vocabulary (adjectives, etc.)

Prof Piketty’s policy proposals to check and reverse the rise in inequality, which unless checked could – many people fear – lead to economic instability, include a global wealth tax. Ireland introduced a 1 per cent wealth tax in 1974, which raised little revenue and was later abolished. And Tasc, a centre-left think tank, last year estimated that such a tax could now raise EUR 150 million, levied at 0.6 per cent on net assets over EUR 1 million. Prof Piketty acknowledges that in the short term a global wealth tax is unlikely, but points to successful international pressure on Switzerland to change its secrecy laws as an illustration of what may be possible in future. Certainly, it has raised the matter for wider public debate – a subject Labour’s leadership contenders might well choose to address. Likewise, the French economist’s criticism of the form of property tax introduced by the Government, which is based purely on the value of the asset, without regard to the mortgage debt related to its purchase. In a house worth EUR 400,000 with an outstanding mortgage of EUR 390,000, the owner pays the same property tax as one who may have inherited his or her EUR 400,000 house or who has already paid off the mortgage. While Prof Piketty argues this is unfair, he also accepts that, in a country where property accounts for most wealth, it is also better than no property tax at all.

economic rationalisation, moralisation, authorisation? (Piketty as Prof, TASC), normalisation

People: Prof Piketty => building distance; “the owner” => no personalisation, also distance, very neutral; “many people fear” => undefined; “Ireland” and “the Government” as actor; Temporality: future: “could lead to economic instability” => unsure and unspecific as to what could happen, vague, distant; “what may be possible in future” => distancing, “Labour might well choose to address” => not a very strong suggestion, and why only Labour? mostly active phrases; Means: wealth tax past vs now: “estimated that… could raise” => not sure; acknowledges, but; property tax “based purely on… Without regard to the mortgage debt” => the only passive phrase; both paragraphs are reversed by saying that “Piketty acknowledges”, “Piketty accepts”; Grammatical relations: many modal verbs, mostly active sentences; no metaphors!

(Continued)

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Segment

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Segment

legitimation/ proximation/etc. strategy

language internal representation of people/actors: use of active/passive (power and victims); outstanding vocabulary (adjectives, etc.)

Another option would be for Ireland to re-introduce a third income tax band. For example, charging 48pc on that part of incomes over (EURO)100,000 per annum would raise (EURO)365m, according to Revenue figures, and would only affect the top 5pc of income earners. Ireland last had a 48pc rate in 1992.

economic rationalisation, responding to/ accepting the rich as victims

Some simple changes could make a world of difference. Change the property tax to consider the net value of people’s homes, add more bands to make it more progressive, maybe adjust it regionally to account for the cost of local services (to make that a credible link), maybe add in the multimillion euro pensions, and we replace one grossly unfair and disingenuous tax with a progressive, stable,

moralisation

People: “Ireland” as actor; invisible object of charges => staying vague. Means: “another option would be” => distancing; “charging … incomes” => avoiding to say that people will be charged, more impersonal, instead of saying “the richest”; all active verbs; wealth tax “affects” the top 5pc, framed as a punishment instead of a justified and necessary policy, almost apologising; still keeping with the “rich as victims” strategy. Temporality: “Ireland last had a 48pc tax…” => makes it more likely to be introduced now? or should be a justification (they have been spared for so many years now)? Grammatical relations: many modal verbs, active verbs; no metaphors! Actors: “we”, talking to readership as collective actors; “we replace”; “people’s homes” => collective benefits; Means: “simple changes” which “make a world of difference” => approximation, but stays on the surface on tax bands; approximation on adaptation to local services; “stable and progressive” vs “grossly unfair and disingenuous”; Grammatical relations: imperatives => strong call for actions;

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TABLE 9.3 (Continued)

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generally making it sound very easy and doable; Temporality: present tax: grossly unfair and disingenuous vs new “progressive and stable”; no metaphors. The USC brought thousands of low earners into the tax net, moralisation; people: ordinary workers, “we”, were “affected” personal tax credits were cut and other forms of tax relief that ideological “harshly”, credits “cut”, tax relief “taken away” benefited workers were taken away. Relative to their small rationalisation? from them => passive, victims; “they pay the incomes, these changes affected low earners more harshly Economic same tax for every euro earned as the richest than it did the better off. These emergency measures should rationalisation; the people”; the rich: are “reasonable” means: present be reversed now the crisis is over. But until another tax source ordinary worker as system “not sustainable” (but not explained why), is found, there is no scope to make things better. We need the victim (should progression is “too severe” for workers “to bear” more people in the tax system and that will only happen think about how vs “fairer” and “more progressive”; grammatical when the right jobs and pay bring them back. Meanwhile, we this goes together relations: passive sentences when talking about must live with the Local Property Tax – and water charges with moralisation) what happened to low earners; active when are on the way. … The system we have is not sustainable if talking about what they contribute; modal verbs essential services are to be restored and improved, as Ms “should be reversed, but …” “meanwhile we Burton intends. Workers in Ireland pay the top rate of tax on must live with” property tax; “same tax” for a modest income of (EURO)32,800 a year. Above that, they “every euro” as the richest people => emphasis; pay the same tax for every euro earned as the richest people question: how can you motivate … => rhetorical in the country. This might make sense for investments, but question, “No wonder …”; temporality: tax it discourages work and hinders productivity. How can you bands “as they were before” => past was better, motivate staff when more than half of what they earn goes in justification, things are going to get worse if we tax? And employers are charged PRSI for their staff too. don’t return to this

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No wonder there’s nothing left for pensions. In spite of this, most people choose to work, just for their own self-esteem. Others, on welfare, see no reason to return to work when they are better off where they are. There are two rates of income tax (20 per cent and 41 per cent) but with charges such as PRSI and the USC, the marginal rate can be 52 per cent and 55 per cent for the self-employed. The progression from one rate to the other is too severe for some workers to bear. We can expect to have a third, if not a fourth rate of tax as the Government tries to balance the books. It would help make the system fairer and more progressive too. The rates could be 20 per cent, 35 per cent, 48 per cent and 65 per cent – as they were before. Capital gains tax is 33 per cent, but the marginal rate of income tax could apply instead, then gains would be taxed at up to 41 per cent, or even 55 per cent. It was 40 per cent not too long ago. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Ms Burton is not opposed to taxing wealth, but we don’t know how successful that will be. Capital taxes never yielded much and even when they did, it wasn’t a tax on wealth. Last year the Revenue Commissioners got (EURO)317m from capital gains tax, compared with (EURO)15.7bn from income tax. It raised (EURO)1.3bn from stamp duty, but nearly half a billion came from the controversial pension levy. Stamp duty and capital

legitimation/ proximation/etc. strategy

language internal representation of people/actors: use of active/passive (power and victims); outstanding vocabulary (adjectives, etc.)

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TABLE 9.3 (Continued)

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gains tax combined yielded (EURO)6.731bn in 2006, which was more than companies paid that year. The only real wealth tax is CAT (Capital Acquisitions Tax) which is paid on gifts and inheritances. I don’t think it ever exceeded (EURO)400m in a year and even that was unusual. Much of it was created by the property boom and ordinary people paid it. A little tax planning and some special tax relief usually takes care of the rest. The French economist Thomas Piketty identified anomalies in the system that prevent real wealth being taxed. It’s mobile and the Revenue doesn’t always know where to find it, or how much it is. The wealthy are not all unreasonable about paying tax, but if the system lets them reduce what they pay, they do. Wouldn’t you do the same? Corporate taxpayers have yet to be asked to contribute to our recession fund and the rich could be asked to pay more too. The rest bailed them out and now it’s time they gave something back. Two world wars wiped out many personal fortunes in the last century, but that didn’t happen this time. The system that made it hard for everyone else saved the fortunes of the rich. … If Joan Burton wins the Labour leadership, it seems she will be willing to take the hard line many others won’t. She’s for spending more on education to close the gap between rich and poor that others only bridge. The wealthy have stayed put, it’s the workforce that are moving away. There’ll be nothing left if we don’ t change tack, and soon. It’s not just here that things are changing. Joan Burton quoted the Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth

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Warren, who pointed out that no one grew rich in America without the public services that are paid for by the rest of society. Adam Smith, the 18th-century economist, could see the same. He said the rich could pay more and they should. Like Elizabeth Warren, Joan Burton wants to build a better society for all. Economists once thought that wealth was limited to the finite amount of property that there is, but technology has shown it can be limitless. Maybe Joan can show it’s not exclusive.

legitimation/ proximation/etc. strategy

language internal representation of people/actors: use of active/passive (power and victims); outstanding vocabulary (adjectives, etc.)

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TABLE 9.3 (Continued)

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Social Practice

Ideologies, with their various connected norms, values, categories and labels, have a history and a context, and CDA differs from other text analysis approaches in that it looks beyond the text, situating it in the wider political and social context. This final level of social practice examines the ideological and hegemonic processes in which the text and the author is set. In order to do this, we need the information and patterns gathered in the previous section to identify the ideological beliefs that the author implicitly expresses with his/her arguments. Legitimation strategies are textual and speech strategies by which opinions and ideologies are justified. Pragmatically, legitimation is related to the speech act of defending oneself by providing good reasons, grounds or acceptable motivations in response to a certain past or present action, event or situation. These “good reasons” are indicators of ideological beliefs, norms and values that the author has and on which his/her arguments are based. The concept of legitimation is important, as it is a social and political act that uses, expresses, carries and perpetuates the ideologies of a certain class. A situation where strong rhetorical devices are used to legitimise or justify certain interpretations, events or actions is mostly a situation where ideas about values, goals and access to resources clash or conflict between different groups and ideologies. In order to legitimise group action, the argumentation strategy needs to be such that basic principles are argued as being just and fair for all, within the “natural” moral order and “common sense” (= normalisation of discourse, persuasion, manipulation), and thus that the other group is wrong, i.e., is delegitimised. Delegitimation may concern the right to certain action and the evaluation of “the others’ ” goals, “their” norms and values or “their” access to resources, etc. (see Van Dijk 2000, p. 5). The following questions might help you identify underlying ideological positions in your text or text fragments: 1. What political, economic and social contexts does the text and the genre evoke? 2. What is the aim of the discourses present in the text(s) (you identified these in the section “Discursive Practice”)? 3. What contexts does the text hide or background? 4. What are the ideological positions mentioned in the discourse (e.g., promoting a market economy)? 5. What effects might the text have in terms of the perpetuation of ideologies and the sustaining of power relations?

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Text and Context(s)

Identifying relevant contexts and ideological positions for the analysis of social practice as in Questions 1 and 3 can be problematic, as they bear the danger of subjective and biased interpretation. It is important that the relevance of the contexts needed or called up for the analysis of a text be empirically justified and ethnographically established by situating them in the social process in question (Heller and Pujolar 2009, p. 182). We can, of course, use our text(s) as the basis for making decisions on which contexts to include or exclude. However, the linguistic/textual and discursive categories identified in levels 1 and 2 do not directly link or immediately produce ideological effects and power relations. Rather, the link between textual categories and ideological effects arises over time and is perceived differently by different social actors (Widdowson 1998; 2000). For this reason, it was so important to look at texts in a broader period of time for our analysis of level 1, discursive practice. Individual texts are only offshoots and traces of social practices, just one link in the chain of social activity that takes place and produces contexts and social activity. Context is not just “out there” to be linked to texts – texts are the context. Our context, our social world and our social activities are constructed by the production texts, be it news texts, speeches, meeting minutes, etc. Our task is therefore to find out what texts do in the contexts in which they are produced and consumed and what role they have in the constitution of social processes, including their situated and historical developments and following actions. Having identified arguments and discourses in the section “Discursive Practice”, these will aid in the identification of central ideologies that are underlying the author’s arguments. Examine your text(s) with the help of the following: 1. Search your text(s) for references to political events or economic actions that are reasons for the text. Some of these contexts may be implicit. 2. What might the author’s intentions be with the text? 3. What does the text contribute to the ongoing discussion of the conversation it is embedded in? 4. Can you identify the political or economic beliefs that underlie the author’s arguments? 5. Does the text leave out important groups, events or contexts? 6. How does the text link to other, previously published texts? Changing Discourses and Ideologies

A text as a link in the chain of a conversation means that this conversation is dynamic and evolves over time; hence, it bears the possibility of changing

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discourses, hegemonies and ideologies over a certain period of time. The way in which, for instance, an economic policy tool such as wealth tax is being represented, respoken or rewritten sheds light on the emergence of new orders of discourse, struggles over normativity, attempts at control and resistance against regimes of power. The discursive and ideological change that may follow is very slow, though, and requires a longitudinal study of one political or economic issue, which is often difficult to achieve. In Theine and Rieder (2019) we show how and why resistance against dominant economic beliefs is so difficult: We are all caught in an ideological system that we have grown up in, and it is very difficult to break with existing discursive patterns in order to achieve change in the belief system of the readership. The consequence is often that opposing views use similar rhetorical means to argue for the opposite, with only very limited success. Hence, the final questions refer to changes in discourse and ideologies: 1. Is there evidence of your text going against common-sense beliefs? 2. What kind of linguistic and rhetorical strategies does the text use to do this? We recommend reading Theine and Rieder (2019) for a detailed analysis of discursive patterns and of the link between social practice and the textual level. The analysis illustrates how linguistic elements such as vocabulary and grammatical structures are used to support and legitimise the views of a text’s author. You will also see how most of these language-related items seem to be quite normal, and we would not notice them when reading news unless we paid particular attention to them. This is a sign that the way we talk about things has become normal and taken for granted. We do not think of them anymore as ideologically influenced. This is why we need to question them, as they are powerful tools to legitimate certain actions over others that may be more beneficial to society. 3. Conclusion

This chapter sought to guide you through and exemplify the process involved in carrying out a critical discourse analysis of one or several texts within an ongoing discursive conversation. It showed how various levels of analysis – discursive, textual and social practice – interact for the purpose of promoting or challenging dominant discourses that legitimate social, political and economic action. As mentioned before, CDA seeks to go beyond uncovering harmful dominant discourses and pointing out findings. As CDA researchers, we want to raise awareness in society of the power of discourse and how it can structure

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and dominate our lives. Having exposed harmful discursive patterns, we are now in a position to propose alternative ways of thinking and talking about societal issues, as well as to call for change. Commenting on the austerity discourse, George Lakoff (2013, p. 53) noted, “If conservative language is dominating public discourse, you need to create language for your own values and use it non-stop. Repetition is crucial. Brains will not change without repetition, as conservatives are well aware.” Often, as individual researchers, our hands are bound and our influence in changing discourses may seem very limited. A first step towards making a change is raising awareness, which starts by thinking of ways to make your research public. A second and very important step is becoming mindful of how we write and speak about issues ourselves as economic journalists. List of Concepts Introduced

• Critical discourse analysis; • Critical; • Discourse; • Hegemony; • Critical theory; • Text; • Researcher bias; • Corpus; • Legitimation. Further Practical Reading for CDA Articles on the Press and News CDA and News Discourse

• Wodak and Meyer’s (2009) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis offers a comprehensive overview of different frameworks of CDA. • Teun A. van Dijk has done a lot of work on news and the press that shows evidence of the fact that discourse in the media cannot be separated from the concept of power and access. His News as Discourse (1988b) and News Analysis (1988a) present a theory of news in the press; other (newer) work by him is free to access at www.dis​cour​ses.org. Economic Crises/Inequality

• Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) lay out a clear programme for the analysis of political discourse and, most interestingly for our case, of economic crisis discourse, building their approach on argumentation theory and developing their conception of “practical reasoning”.

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• Recent publications on the critical analysis of economic discourse include, for example, Harkins and Lugo-Ocando 2016; Szabo 2016; Maeße 2013. • See Grisold and Theine 2017 for a review on the media’s role in shaping public opinion on economic inequality and taxation issues. General Further Reading Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Edited by M. Holquist. Translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. University of Texas Press. Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse. Cambridge University Press. Cameron, D. (2001). Working with Spoken Discourse. SAGE. Coleman, C.-L. and Ritchie, D.L. (2011). “Examining Metaphors in Biopolitical Discourse”. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 7(1), pp. 29–59. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for social Research. Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2007). “Critical Discourse Analysis as a Method in Social Scientific Research”. In Wodak, R. and Meyer, M., eds., Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 121–138. SAGE. Fairclough, N. and Fairclough I. (2011). “Practical Reasoning in Political Discourse: The UK Government’s Response to the Economic Crisis in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report”. Discourse & Society, 22(3), pp. 243–268. Fairclough, N. and Fairclough I. (2012). Political Discourse Analysis. A Method for Advanced Students. Routledge. Fitzgerald, J.K. and O’Rourke, B.K. (2016). “Legitimising Expertise: Analysing the Legitimation Strategies Used by Economics Experts in Broadcast Interviews”. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 11(3), pp. 269–282. Foucault, M. (1976/1979). The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. Allen Lane. Grisold, A. and Theine, H. (2017). “How Come We Know? The Media Coverage of Economic Inequality”. International Journal of Communication, 11, pp. 4265–4284. Halliday, M.A.K. (1975/2014). “Language as Social Semiotic”. In Angermüller, J. et al., eds., The Discourse Studies Reader, pp. 264–271. John Benjamins. Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). Introduction to Functional Grammar. Arnold. Jäger, S. and Florentine M. (2009). “Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis”. In Wodak, R., ed., Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 34–61. SAGE. Lakoff, J. (2013). “How British Progressives Let Conservatives Succeed in Promoting Austerity”. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics, 4(1), pp. 51–53. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. Maesse, J. (2015). “Economic Experts: A Discursive Political Economy of Economics”. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 10(3), pp. 279–305. Maeße, J., ed. (2013). Ökonomie, Diskurs, Regierung: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven. Springer. McKenna, B. (2004). “Critical Discourse Studies: Where to from Here?” Critical Discourse Studies, 1, pp. 9–39. Meyer, M. (2007). “Between Theory Method and Politics”. In Wodak, R. and Meyer, M., eds., Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 14–31. SAGE.

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Pühringer, S. and Hirte, K. (2015). “The Financial Crisis as a Heart Attack: Discourse Profiles of Economists in the Financial Crisis”. Journal of Language and Politics, 14(4), pp. 599–625. Rieder, M. and Theine, H. (2019). “‘Piketty is a Genius, but…’: An Analysis of Journalistic Delegitimation of Thomas Piketty’s Economic Policy Proposals”. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(3), pp. 248–263. Scollon, R. (2007). “Action and Text: Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Place of Text in Social (Interaction), Mediated Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Social Action”. In Wodak, R. and Meyer, M., eds., Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 139–183. SAGE. Theine, H. and Rieder, M. (2019). “‘The Billionaires’ Boot Boys Start Screaming’ – A Critical Analysis of Economic Policy Discourses in Reaction to Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. In Montessori, N., Farrelly, M.J. and Mulderrig, Jane., eds., Discourse, Hegemony and Policy in the Era of Neoliberalism, pp. 169– 192. Edward Elgar. Thomas, W. (2000). “The Cider House Rules Review”. Empire, 1 January. Available from: www.empir​eonl​ine.com/mov​ies/revi​ews/cider-house-rules-rev​iew/. Titscher, S., Meyer, M., Wodak, R. and Vetter, E. (2000). Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. SAGE. Vaara, E. (2014). “Struggles over Legitimacy in the Eurozone Crisis: Discursive Legitimation Strategies and Their Ideological Underpinnings”. Discourse & Society, 25(4), pp. 500–518. Van Dijk, T. (1998). “Opinions and Ideologies in the Press”. In Bell, A., and Garrett, P., eds, Approaches to Media Discourse, pp. 21–63. Blackwell. Van Dijk, T. (2000). Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. SAGE. Van Dijk, T. (2004). From Text Grammar to Critical Discourse Analysis. University of Amsterdam: Program of Discourse Studies. Van Leeuwen, T. (2007). “Legitimation in Discourse and Communication”. Discourse & Communication, 1(1), pp. 91–112. Wehling, E. (2016). Politisches Framing: wie eine Nation sich ihr Denken ein- redet und daraus Politik macht. Herbert von Halem Verlag. Wodak, R. (2007). “What is CDA All About?” In Wodak, R. and Meyer, M., eds., Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 1–13. SAGE.

References Alejo, R. (2010). “Where Does the Money Go? An Analysis of the Container Metaphor in Economics: The Market and the Economy”. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(4), pp. 1137–1150. Bloommaert, J. and Bulcaen, C. (2000). “Critical Discourse and Analysis”. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, pp. 447–466. Boers, F. and Demecheleer, M. (1997). “A Few Metaphorical Models in (Western) Economic Discourse”. In Liebert, W.A., Redeker, G. and Waugh, L., eds., Discourse and Perspective in Cognitive Linguistics, pp. 115–129. John Benjamins. Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. Routledge. Grisold, A. and Preston, P. (2020). Economic Inequality and News Media: Discourse, Power, and Redistribution. Oxford University Press.

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Harkins, S. and Lugo-Ocando, J. (2016). “How Malthusian Ideology Crept into the Newsroom: British Tabloids and the Coverage of the ‘Underclass’ ”. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(1), pp. 78–93. Heller, M. and Pujolar J. (2009). “The Political Economy of Texts: A Case Study in the Structuration of Tourism”. Sociolinguistic Studies, 3(2), pp. 177–201. Kendall, G. (2007). “What is Critical Discourse Analysis. Ruth Wodak in Conversation with Gavin Kendall”. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(2), Art. 29. Available from: http://nbn-resolv​ing.de/urn:nbn:de:0114fqs​0702​297. Mayher, A. and McDonald, D.A. (2007). “The Print Media in South Africa: Paving the Way for ‘Privatisation’ ”. Review of African Political Economy, 34(113), pp. 443–460. Phelan, S. (2007). “The Discourses of Neoliberal Hegemony: The Case of the Irish Republic”. Critical Discourse Studies, 4(1), pp. 29–48. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by A. Goldhammer. Harvard University Press. Schiffrin, A. (2015). “The Press and the Financial Crisis: A Review of the Literature”. Sociology Compass, 9(8), pp. 639–653. Szabo, A. (2016). “Organizing the (Sociomaterial) Economy: Ritual, Agency, and Economic Models”. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(1), pp. 118–136. Thomas, R. (2016). “‘I Think It’s Absolutely Exorbitant!’: How UK Television News Reported the Shareholder Vote on Executive Remuneration at Barclays in 2012”. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(1), pp. 94–117. Van Dijk, T. (1998a). News Analysis. Longman. Van Dijk, T. (1998b). News as Discourse. Lawrence Erlbaum. Widdowson, H. (1998). “The Theory and Practice of Critical Discourse Analysis”. Applied Linguistics, 19(1), pp. 136–151. Widdowson, H. (2000). “On the Limitations of Linguistics Applied”. Applied Linguistics, 21(1), pp. 3–25. Wodak, R. (1996). Disorders of Discourse. Longman. Wodak, R., ed. (2009). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. SAGE. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M., eds. (2009). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. SAGE.

10 DECONSTRUCTING ECONOMIC DISCOURSES ON BROADCAST NEWS Ciara Graham and Brendan O’Rourke

Advance Organiser

This chapter offers some context for the development of CDA and how it draws on related disciplines of linguistics, such as conversation analysis. It gives an overview of the related broadcast and radio genres and what we can learn from their analysis to further our understanding of discourses of the economy. We then focus on some of the salient features of radio in particular, and we emphasise how voice-based media are suitable for CDA work. We then offer a step-by-step research process to help prospective CDA researchers to understand and apply its principles to their own research. 1.  Media Research and CDA

Students of media have a variety of research options available to them to help them to understand the role and relevance of broadcast media. CDA can be used to deconstruct and decipher the meaning of such communication in mediated constructs on a range of issues, from class to race to gender. CDA offers a critical perspective to appraise the messages we receive from mass media by its focus on the way social power is used and abused and how dominance and equality are enacted, reproduced and resisted through talk and text in socio-political and economic contexts (Van Dijk 2001, p. 352). Through practices of sourcing, frame selection, metaphorical description and assuming and deciphering tonalities, media can construct particular economic “realities” that constrain political debate and choice. While there is a significant literature on CDA and the contexts in which these types of analyses are useful (Fairclough 2010; Van Dijk 2001; Wodak DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-12

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and Meyer 2009; see Chapter 9 for a more detailed overview), there is less guidance about its application as a research methodology. New methodologies can be daunting for researchers, in particular ensuring robust adherence to the correct principles and rigorous standards of data gathering and analysis. This chapter aims to make clear the processes and procedures used in CDA to analyse audio-based media and the order in which we should consider them. 2.  Broadcast Interviewing

We focus here on the spoken word and what is heard, via conversation, by listening audiences. Drawing from extensive research using radio and voice broadcasts, we also focus on the aural aspect of broadcast media. Our particular emphasis is on economic discourses, which are well suited to the broadcast and radio genre. Generally, the interactive and live nature of spoken language, both radio and televisual, typifies this genre and provides rich data for analysis. Also, broadcast media has the capacity to speak directly into the audience’s listening space, often forming the direct basis for social and familial discussion. Media discourse is manufactured – both literally and ideologically (O’Keeffe 2006). O’Keefe describes it as a “public, manufactured, on-record form of interaction” (2011, p. 441), which “knowingly takes place in front of rather than beside an audience” (O’Keeffe 2006, p. 3) and whose performative element requires us to consider its composition from both a practical and ideological perspective (O’Keeffe 2006). While earlier iterations of broadcast media involved a degree of transience or ephemerality (O’Keefe 2006), technological advances have meant that more broadcast media are now often captured and digitally recorded and archived. While broadcast interviews, as discussed above, are very much a manufactured and planned event, their interactive nature makes a greater degree of spontaneity possible compared to other mediums. This contrasts, for example, with printed articles, which are written, subedited and usually edited again prior to their inclusion in a publication. Being live has an impact on the nature of the exchange. Oftentimes, the discussion is franker, livelier and more candid, and participants can come across as earnest and open. While such characteristics can be feigned, the nature of live spoken speech increases the likelihood of authenticity from speakers. Scannell’s extensive work on the broadcast genre points out that radio talk is produced in an institutional discursive space, the studio, and so is intentionally and overtly communicative. While typically classified as oneway talk, with a passive audience, broadcasting follows the principles of double articulation, which means that, while the conversation takes place between participants in a studio, it is also intended to communicate with absent audiences (Scannell 1991). Horton and Wohl (1986) suggest that

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this gap created by absent listeners can be bridged somewhat by simulating co-presence with audiences and note that the genre has increasingly moved away from monologue towards dialogue-style delivery (Scannell and Cardiff 1991; Whitehead 1989). The power of broadcasting lies in its ability to define the terms of social interaction within its domain by pre-allocating social roles and statuses and by controlling the content, style and duration of these events (Scannell 1991). In particular, the political interview – a specific subset of broadcast journalism – is tightly controlled, with broadcasters predetermining what the talk should be about, how it should start and end and the various parts to be played by each participant (Heritage and Greatbatch 1989). Hutchby (2013) calls this a collaborative construction. Well-regarded programmes can confer an authority and influence on the journalist it employs as they speak directly to audiences (Fairclough 1985). Delivery, when measured and emphatic, can convey a seriousness to the audience, who, in their receptive capacity, are waiting, listening and wanting to be told (Fairclough 1985). 3.  CDA: Learning from Radio

Ideology is embedded in discourse and does not always reveal itself easily (Fairclough 1985; Graham and O’Rourke 2020). CDA scrutinises language use in order to identify the sometimes subtle techniques used in speech that reveal what a speaker is actually saying. Analysis of broadcast media allows us to incorporate phonological and glossic properties when deciphering the more latent meanings of talk and text. Broadcast media, whether radio or television, offers a good sample for discursive analysis: the conversation affords a specific insight into how people turn their thoughts into words and enables us to deconstruct how agenda-driven talk affects the public conversation and contributes to how the corporate narratives become common-sense assumptions (Graham and O’Rourke 2019). Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of CDA (2013, see Chapter 9) draws particular attention to the importance of discourse practice and the relevance that intertextual elements (Hasan 1978) bring to discourse production. His approach takes into consideration the genre-specific features of discourse and the processes of media production and interpretation that make up radio and broadcast interviewing – for example, an emphasis on politeness or tight time slots. It also looks at the institutional and industrial practices of media production, which, for example, sees many of the same journalists, broadcasters and political correspondents appear again and again and may manifest in a familiarity that impacts on the nature of the exchange (Graham and O’Rourke 2020).

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Critical discourse analysis is key to understanding how high-level political and economic decisions can become manifest in the everyday discourse. Programmes such as the BBC’s Today Programme in the UK, RTÉ’s Morning Ireland and US Public Service Broadcasting’s and NPR’s Morning Edition in the US, given their timing at the start of the daily news cycle, facilitate the dissemination of opinion and help to shape the news agenda. Audiences for these programmes are exposed to views of powerful individuals and organisations and their perspectives are given primacy in the broadcast conversation. In addition to the public service element of news broadcasting, audiences listen to radio and watch television for entertainment purposes, so the ways in which media organisations structure these broadcasts reflect the need to optimise engagement. Part of the draw of radio is its intimacy; it can be a very personal medium. Listeners tend to listen alone, often in their cars while commuting, and the level of intrusion, or noise, from other media or distractions is minimise, so listeners tend to be very attentive. Both morning and evening “drivetime” slots are hugely popular for commuters, and the morning interviews can often help to shape news discourse, as they are referenced and featured throughout the day. 4.  CDA and the Qualitative Research Process

This section looks at how CDA actually works in practice and the steps that researchers can adhere to in carrying it out. CDA can incorporate quantitative approaches and, increasingly, corpus linguistics methods are used, particularly where large datasets are available (see Chapters 9 and 10 and studies such as Nartey and Mwinlaaru 2019; MacDonald et al. 2021; McEnery and Hardie 2011; Mautner 2019). Our approach to CDA here is primarily qualitative, and although there are many versions of the ideal research process, here we will adhere to the generally recognised steps in a generally recognised order.

THE CDA RESEARCH PROCESS 1. Identifying general topic and problem area; 2. Reviewing literature; 3. Refining problem definition, devising research objectives and questions; 4. Data selection and collection; 5. Data analysis; 6. Reporting; 7. Discussion.

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Identifying General Topic and Problem Area

A general area and topic can arise from a variety of sources. Particular disciplines or even particular topics within particular academic areas may fire the curiosity of the researcher. The arrival of a new phenomenon – be it a technology, an economic crisis, an infectious virus or a scientific discovery – may prompt questions. “Problematisation” – referring to the research issue as a problem – may suggest negativity. However, it is really just about developing a critical orientation towards an issue you wish to examine. CDA urges the researcher to look for a research problem where there is likely to be an important discursive component to the way in which power operates that results in oppression. Reviewing Literature

Reviewing the literature helps to deepen your understanding of the general study area and clarifies and refines your research problem: it helps to identify any specific gaps that exist in the knowledge in and around the subject. A good review of the literature on your topic is essential, enabling you to summarise the state of knowledge on your subject area. Presuming that no earlier study has resolved your particular research problem, the literature review will help you to “situate your proposed project in relation to existing knowledge” (Knopf 2006, p. 127). A key part of the literature review process in CDA studies involves looking at how CDA studies approach the issue. For example, Keller (2012) offers a multimodal perspective on discourse research, suggesting that several modes or genres of media be investigated in order to improve our understanding of the context of the topic. This works very well when analysing economic issues using broadcast media, as the researcher can look at both TV and radio genres and at different types of radio broadcasts, from straight news reports to political interviews to talk radio. Refining Problem Definition, Devising Research Objectives and Questions

One of the key tasks of any research study is to correctly set research objectives and questions. Properly defining the research problem at hand helps to refine the overall research task and avoids problems around invalidity and unreliability. Very few projects have limitless time and other constraints, and this is one of the key reasons why a telling, but often concise, piece of obtainable data should be sought. The key principle here is to set research objectives that are manageable and meaningful in terms of their contribution to knowledge in the field. Lengthy or short periods of enquiry are possible. Two particular approaches may be useful for longitudinal studies investigating discourse patterns over

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time: Wodak (1999) suggests the discourse historical approach (DHA), which considers the historical sources and backgrounds of political and social discourse presenting and charts how it changes over time (2015); Carvalho (2008) proposes the historical diachronic analysis (HDA) approach, which recognises how texts build on other texts, what Fairclough refers to as ‘intertextuality’, but expands the concept further to take account of the specific moments of the production and consumption of text. For our essentially practical purposes here, we can say that these historical approaches to discourse analysis offer the researcher the means to look at a relatively sizeable time period. For example, a study examining the mediated radio discourse surrounding labour relations in Europe during the 1970s, would, as expected, require the analyst to set their parameters around the entire decade. Further research would likely tell them that there are many potential programmes that would need to be examined. If they were to obtain a census, that would result in a colossal amount of data that would be beyond the scope of any project’s timeframe. The researcher may then decide on the type of radio shows that discussed these events, by means of whittling down the sample. And, crucially, the availability of archived data should be considered: has the material of interest been recorded and is it currently available? Data Selection and Collection

As discussed in the previous section, we must identify a sample of data that is both representative of the census and, at the same time, meaningful. Essentially, we need to identify either a manageable time period, within which we will look at as much data as necessary to be indicative, or a critical discourse moment (Carvalho 2008; Fairclough 2013). In attempting to determine a timeline of discursive events surrounding our topic of interest, the likelihood is that we will do both: establish a period of interest and identify potential critical discourse moments that have the capacity to challenge the discursive positions that are established. A critical question that we must ask ourselves is whether we have access to the data we seek. This can be a particular problem with broadcast data. Availability is often patchy: some media organisations routinely record and store their productions in an archive that is readily accessible through their own websites; others do not. The BBC, for example, can be notoriously difficult to obtain archive data from (Graham and O’Rourke 2020). The educational database Box of Broadcasts (available at: https://learn​ingo​nscr​ een.ac.uk/bob/) does offer access to an archive of over 2.2 million radio and TV broadcasts from over 75 free-to-air channels, but it is restricted to subscribing universities within the UK only. In practice, these systems can present challenges for the researcher to develop a useful archive. In addition, some broadcasters may maintain archives behind a paywall, and the costs of

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back catalogues of material can be prohibitively expensive. Recording the data live, and making local copies of the data they need when available, can help researchers evade some of the challenges presented by recording from copyrighted archives. For example, one might decide early in the project to record all the live broadcasts of programmes by a particular radio station over the course of a month in order to review at a later stage the content of those programmes. This avoids the problem of inaccessibility to or incomplete archives, giving the researcher their own archive from which to build a corpus of data. This approach also avoids the potential for determinism, which can come with selecting programmes for examination retrospectively. Or, indeed, the sampling error that may stem from using data sources because they are the only ones archived and therefore the only ones available. Critical discourse moments are a useful way of refining and focusing on a key point of interest relating to your research question. Critical discourse moments constitute “events” that are worthy of investigation, “periods that involve special happenings which may lead to a challenge to the established discursive positions” (Carvalho 2000). Essentially, these moments potentially change the discourse on a subject; they contest the conventional discursive constructions on a topic, while “the combination of comprehensive (exhaustive) analysis in selected periods with analysis of critical discourse moments works well” (Carvalho 2000, p. 4). It is important to note that most studies, whether guided predominantly by a historical approach or a critical discourse moment, will have to take into consideration both the broader historical context of the discourse and its development as well as the key points during which the discourse manifests, develops and diverges. Sampling Method

Informed by the previous stages of the process, the researcher must consider the “universe of interest” of their study. The universe of interest is the total of datasets, if we were to think of them as a potentially complete set of information. Few studies, however, have the resources to examine such large census-style datasets; so, guided by the constraints of their project, from general time and cost constrictions to more specific issues relating to the breadth of topics within the study itself, they opt to use a sample of data. The central issue is to determine the data needed to satisfy the research objectives of the study, and a key limitation to apply to the study is often the time period chosen. The discursive construction of issues can change considerably over time, so selecting the correct time period is critical. Generally speaking, lengthier studies can involve multiple phases of analysis within a time period, sometimes selected from within a broader linguistic corpus of data and cognisant of the potential discursive shifts that may take place over time. Selecting the discourse moment(s) is key, and whether it involves one or more

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datasets, the researcher needs to think carefully about how the discourse evolves during this time. Sample Frame

Once the time period of interest has been selected, the researcher must consider how much data they need to form an accurate and reliable sample. Extending the timeframe generally means extending the sample data frame. Because CDA involves detailed qualitative analysis and close reading, it can be a lengthy and extensive process, potentially made considerably longer by including additional datasets. Therefore, the researcher must be realistic about the amount of data they can reasonably handle within the time constraints applied by their study. An analytical rigour is afforded by being able to focus on sound only and by the useful time pressure the radio news genre puts on communication that necessitates less ambivalent statements rather than longer former written articles when discussing economic issues (Fitzgerald and O’Rourke 2016). Sometimes, the selection of broadcast interviews is part of a wider study, perhaps using corpus linguistics or other quantitative methods suited to the study. Particular interviews from within the broader corpus are chosen for close reading. It would not be possible to perform such a detailed, fine-grained analyses of all these broadcasts, so a representative sample is chosen. Building a Corpus

The previous section addressed the potential difficulties presented by the inaccessibility of archived broadcast data. Therefore, it may be helpful to the researcher to plan ahead and capture the broadcasts live by selecting a future event, such as an election or a strike, and gather the data as it happens, creating their own archive, which they can then access as much as required for analysis. Data Analysis

Broadcast analysis using CDA relies on an array of practices from sourcing (see Chapter 7) and framing (see below and Chapter 6) to metaphorical description and rhetorical and linguistic analysis at the word and sentence level. Of particular interest to broadcast data involving the spoken word are the voice properties and tonalities that add considerably to the datasets available. With CDA, as with other forms of content analysis, transcription and analysis go hand in hand: they are part of a dual, iterative process and are difficult to separate. While some radio broadcasts are regularly transcribed, it is important, in terms of quality, to obtain access to the original recording of the broadcast, as much of the essence of the conversation comes from

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the exchange itself, from its tone and other glossic features, such as accent and tempo. Transcription

While standard transcripts may be available in written text format, it is hugely preferable to obtain original recordings of the data. If both are available, then the researcher should take the time to listen to the original broadcast and mark up or annotate the written transcript document to ensure that it reflects the reality of the spoken word and does not overlook the rich nature of the voice recording. While the availability of pre-texted interviews seems like an advantage that will help to save you the time of lengthy transcription, the reality is that many of these ready-transcribed interviews are done using computerised text prediction programs and therefore may miss the nuance of the text. Without the original broadcast, it can be difficult to ascertain the running order and the context of the interview (i.e., what was covered on each side of the interview, how and by whom it was introduced, etc.). Tone and Voice

Without a pre-texted transcript, it falls on the researcher to draw this up. While this may sometimes seem like a lengthy step, it is in fact quintessential to understanding the core of the text and forms a central role in the preliminary analysis of the data. Written text, in pre-texted format, can be flat; if the researcher doesn’t hear it directly, they risk missing the more subtle essence of the exchange. The value of the voice recording cannot be understated. Original recordings give the analyst the opportunity to hear the conversation and gauge, at first-hand, the tone of the conversation: is the use of language, grammar and syntax formal or laidback, and does this offer any insight into the nature of the exchange or perhaps the relationship between the actors. Hearing the conversation as it is spoken between the participants allows us to gain a sense of the discussion – whether it is intimate or terse, how each actor interjects, how they construct the issues. The examples of text in the next couple of sections highlight this in action, especially that of Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose use of tone, voice techniques and accent serve to underscore the points he makes. Framing Analysis

Framing analysis forms a significant part of CDA analysis. Identifying and categorising the content of texts is a fundamental task in discourse analysis, and Robert Entman classifies four tasks of framing: defining problems, diagnosing causes, making moral evaluations and suggesting remedies (Entman 1993,

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p. 394) Further detail on framing analysis is presented in Chapter 6, but it is useful to see an example of framing in radio speech. In the following excerpt, Minister Richard Bruton, is creating a strong correlation between Ireland’s tax position and jobs. Arguing against the European Commission’s 2016 ruling on Apple’s tax arrangements with Ireland, the minister uses this ideological construct to help listeners “join the dots” between low corporate tax and jobs in Ireland. Although a well-worn trope across Irish media, it is nevertheless interesting to see it laid out so clearly to audiences.

What has happened here is that the European Commission, in my view, has made an absolutely staggering decision. It is saying that there are companies who have invested over 350,000 jobs equivalent – they’ve created those jobs. They’re, eh, they’ve have done so on the basis of the reputation of the Irish Revenue Commissioners giving clear rulings on what Irish tax law [is]. The Commission has now come along and said that Ireland should be the tax collector, not just for Ireland but for the US, for France, for Germany – not only be the tax collector for them, and they had, we had no legal basis for doing it at the time, but furthermore they’re saying that we should collect it retrospectively from companies who have invested for years here, in good faith on the basis of our [provision?]. It’s a staggering ruling and it’s absolutely right that the government appeal it, and should such an approach stand it would be devastating. [RTÉ Morning Ireland interview: Keelin Shanley and Minister Richard Bruton 2016, as transcribed from RTÉ audio available from RTE.ir (2017); bold text indicates speaker emphasis]

Rhetorical Devices

Here is another insightful example that highlights both framing and fundamental rhetorical devices, this time from BBC Economics Editor Kamal Ahmed speaking on the issue of corporate tax avoidance in the UK. We can also see how he makes use of basic rhetorical devices. He makes very forthright statements about the tax, indicating how negatively it’s perceived by the public and even causing trust in business to collapse. The language is very frank, evidenced in the use of repetitive present tense “is” – the editor does not mince his words. He also repeatedly uses the word “very” and “real” as superlative adjectives to give emphasis to the points he’s making. This short but strident interjection gives insight into the negativity that controversial corporate tax practices connote in British media.

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There is a real lack of transparency. It is very unclear how HMRC has accounted for how Google operates … It is a very opaque area … The G20 has been trying to bring some coherence to it. Public trust in business is collapsing. It has been a very toxic issue. [Kamal Ahmed, BBC Economics Editor, in conversation with John McDonald MP, from Graham & O’Rourke 2019; bold text indicates speaker emphasis]

Argumentation Strategies

If we’re analysing a transcript for ideological or other content, it is important to be familiar with the nature of the exchange and the rhetorical strategies used in argumentation. Drawing on Aristotle’s “The Art of Rhetoric” (1926, p. xiii), we can scrutinise the text for evidence of persuasive strategies: these are ethos (appeal based on speaker’s credibility), logos (appeal to rationality), pathos (appeals to emotion to garner sympathy) and kairos (understanding the timeliness of the argument). Using these argumentation strategies as a guide, it becomes possible to hear how ideological positions are introduced and developed and how, or rather if, they are challenged. We can identify whether the actors are attempting to execute discursive strategies (see Table 10.1) and “shape” the discourse. Tone and accent are two key aspects of spoken interviews, and without hearing them first-hand, the effect that they TABLE 10.1 RTÉ Radio interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook

Turn

Speaker

Speech

44

PS

45

TC

46

PS

47

TC

The stakes are incredibly high here, 13bn euro, and I don’t wish to be flippant but are you a gambling man? Haahahahah! You know in this business, we have to make bold bets, bets on products, bets on technologies, so you have to be a bit of a gambler to be in this role. So how would you rate your chances of overturning this decision, overturning it in full? You know my view here, I ha I have faith in humanity, I have faith that eventually what is just and right will occur. I don’t believe the journey to get there will be all roses, there will be ebbs and flows of it but I do have faith (gasps) that the right outcome will occur. And so I’m, I’m very confident that this ruling, this unjust ruling will be overturned.

Source: Graham and O’Rourke 2019

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have on the nature of the exchange between the speakers can be overlooked. The excerpts in Table 10.1, taken from an RTÉ Radio interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook in the wake of the European Commission’s 2016 ruling on Apple’s tax arrangements, affords an insight into these aspects. In this interview, control appears to reside asymmetrically with Tim Cook (Hutchby 2013), who, as a master rhetorician and powerful corporate actor, uses his gentle interview style to establish and shape the media discourse with his company’s view on and reaction to the ruling (Graham and O’Rourke 2019). Cook draws on Aristotle’s argumentation strategy (Aristotle 1926), particularly with his use of both ethos and pathos in describing Apple as “always doing the right thing, never the easy thing”. In the excerpt, his affectation of faith coupled with his southern accent lend his rhetorical style a moralistic yet folksy appeal that can be beguiling for audiences, while his slow and deliberate speech timing affords him a command of the interview that keeps audiences hanging on his every word. Reporting

As is typical of qualitative research, a CDA approach involves much analytical work, including extensive notes and often lots of potentially important insights that will not make it into the final paper or thesis. This is a necessary part of the analysis, but it is important that the researcher selects some key sample data for inclusion in the final report presentation. To this end, it is useful to highlight key text excerpts throughout the analysis process that epitomise the content generally and demonstrate easily to readers the nature of the material. CDA research should aim to be as transparent as possible about the whole process of analysis, remembering that a good test of a CDA analysis is the ability to trace any claims made all the way from raw data to their presentation as an interpretation worthy of note. Discussion

The discussion stage represents reconnecting with a wider conversation the more narrow and focused work that the researcher has been engaged with since their particular research problem was clarified. When making claims about the interpretations of the data highlighted by the CDA, researchers must situate their findings, and their interpretations of those findings, in a wider discussion within their research community. A key objective here is for the researcher to synthesise their research with the literature they have identified and reviewed to understand where their contribution sits alongside existing knowledge.

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5. Conclusion

This chapter has hopefully served as an appetising taster of CDA research into broadcast media on the economy. It is hoped that the step-by-step guide has offered useful assistance to the qualitative researcher interested in trying discourse analysis. It is also useful for the discourse analyst interested in CDA and seeking clarity on some of the processes involved in it. While there is a vast array of writing on the discipline, our intention here is to help to simplify the CDA research process so that prospective researchers may see the value and potential application of discourse analysis techniques in their research and to understand how CDA might fit with their overall research plan. List of Concepts Introduced

• Broadcast interviews; • CDA; • Transcription; • Framing; • Tone and voice; • Rhetorical devices; • Argumentation strategies; • Critical discourse moments. Further Practical Reading on Broadcast Analysis Broadcast TV

• Cushion’s (2011) and Thomas’ (2016) work are particularly useful examples of broadcast TV analysis, drawing on visual and aural evidence in their investigations. Similarly, Ekström and Patrona’s (2011) edited collection offers valuable CDA insights into TV broadcasting. • Scannell, P., ed. (1991). Broadcast Talk (Vol. 5). SAGE. • O’Keeffe, A. (2011). Media and Discourse Analysis. Routledge. Political Interviewing

• Hutchby, I. (2013). Confrontation Talk: Arguments, Asymmetries, and Power on Talk Radio. Routledge. • Ekström, M. and Patrona, M., eds. (2011). Talking Politics in Broadcast Media: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Political Interviewing, Journalism and Accountability (Vol. 42). John Benjamins Publishing.

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Useful Broadcast Resources

• Box of Broadcasts: Database of over 2.2 million radio and TV broadcasts from over 75 free-to-air channels; available to UK universities (available at: https://learn​ingo​nscr​een.ac.uk/bob/). References Aristotle, F. (1926). The Art of Rhetoric (Vol. 2). Harvard University Press. Carvalho, A. (2000). “Discourse Analysis and Media Texts: A Critical Reading of Analytical Tools”. RC33 Fifth International Conference on Logic and Methodology, 3–6 October, Cologne. Available from: http://repos​itor​ium.sdum. umi​n ho.pt/bitstr​eam/1822/3137/3/acarv​a lho​_ Kol​npap​er_2​0 00.pdf. Carvalho, A. (2008). “Media(ted) Discourse and Society: Rethinking the Framework of Critical Discourse Analysis”. Journalism Studies, 9(2), pp. 161–177. Cushion, S. (2011). Television Journalism. Sage. Ekström, M. and Patrona, M., eds. (2011). Talking Politics in Broadcast Media: CrossCultural Perspectives on Political Interviewing, Journalism and Accountability (Vol. 42). John Benjamins Publishing. Entman, R.M. (1993). “Framing: Towards Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm”. In McQuail, D., ed., McQuail’s Reader in Mass Communication Theory, pp. 390– 397. SAGE. Fairclough, N. (1985). “Critical and Descriptive Goals in Discourse Analysis”. Journal of Pragmatics, 9(6), 739–763. Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis. Routledge. Fitzgerald, J.K. and O’Rourke, B.K. (2016). “Legitimising Expertise: Analysing the Legitimation Strategies Used by Economics Experts in Broadcast Interviews”. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 11(3), pp. 269–282. Graham, C. and O’Rourke, B.K. (2019). “Cooking a Corporation Tax Controversy: Apple, Ireland and the EU”. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(3), pp. 298–311. Graham, C. and O’Rourke, B.K. (2020). “Ideological Presuppositions in Media Coverage of Corporation Tax Policy in the UK and Ireland: A Critical Discourse Analysis”. Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Annual Conference, 18–20 July, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Available from: https://arrow.tudub​l in.ie/busc​hmar​con/186/. Hasan, R. (1978). “Text in the Systemic-Functional Model”. Current Trends in Text Linguistics, 2, pp. 229–245. Heritage, J. and Greatbatch, D. (1989) “On the Institutional Character of Institutional Talk: The Case of News Interviews”. In Forstorp, P.A., ed., Discourse in Professional and Everyday Culture, pp. 47–98. Department of Communication Studies, University of Linköping. Horton, D. and Wohl, R.R. (1986) “Mass Communication & Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance”. In Gumpert G. and Cathcart, R., eds., Inter/Media. Oxford University Press.

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Hutchby, I. (2013). Confrontation Talk: Arguments, Asymmetries, and Power On Talk Radio. Routledge. Joint National Listenership Research (JNLR) (2020). “Morning Ireland Tops JNLRs Again” RTÉ, Available at: https://www.rte.ie/news/irel​a nd/2020/1105/1176​ 193-audie​nce-figu​res/ Accessed: May 5th, 2021 Keller, R. (2012). Doing Discourse Research: An Introduction for Social Scientists. Sage. Knopf, J.W. (2006). “Doing a Literature Review”. PS: Political Science & Politics, 39(1), pp. 127–132. MacDonald, E., O’Rourke, B.K. and Hogan, J. (2021). “Imagining the Future in Irish Budgets 1970–2015: A Mixed-Methods Discourse Analysis”. Review of Social Economy, 0(0), pp. 1–24. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/00346​ 764.2021.1912​381. Mautner, G. (2019). “A Research Note on Corpora and Discourse: Points to Ponder in Research Design”. Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies, 2(0), pp. 2–13. Available from: https://doi.org/10.18573/jcads.32. McEnery, T. and Hardie, A. (2011). Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press. Nartey, M. and Mwinlaaru, I.N. (2019). “Towards a Decade of Synergising Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: A Meta-Analysis”. Corpora, 14(2), pp. 203–235. Available from: https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2019.0169. O’Keeffe, A. (2006). Investigating Media Discourse. Routledge. O’Keeffe, A. (2011). Media and Discourse Analysis. Routledge. O’Rourke, B. K. (2009). An Overview of Discourse Analytical Approaches to Research. In J. Hogan, P. Dolan, & P. Donnelly (Eds.), Approaches to Qualitative Research: Theory and Its Practical Application (pp. 209–228). Oak Tree Press. O’Rourke, B. K. (2021) Media discourses on the economy in Ireland: Framing the policy possibilities: Chapter in Mary Murphy & John Hogan’s Policy Analysis in Ireland available at https://pol​icy.bri​stol​u niv​ersi​t ypr​ess.co.uk/pol​icy-analy​sis-inirel​a nd Scannell, P., ed. (1991). Broadcast Talk (Vol. 5). SAGE. Scannell, P. and Cardiff, D. (1991). A Social History of British Broadcasting: 1922– 1939: Serving the Nation. Basil Blackwell. Thomas, R. (2016). “‘I Think It’s Absolutely Exorbitant!’: How UK Television News Reported the Shareholder Vote on Executive Remuneration at Barclays in 2012”. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(1), pp. 94–117. Van Dijk, T.A. (2001). “Multidisciplinary CDA: A Plea for Diversity”. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 1, pp. 95–120. Whitehead, J. (1989). “How Do We Improve Research-Based Professionalism in Education? – A Question Which Includes Action Research, Educational Theory and the Politics of Educational Knowledge”. British Educational Research Journal, 15(1), pp. 3–17. Wodak. R. (1999) “Critical Discourse Analysis at the End of the 20th Century”. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32(1-2), pp. 185–193. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M., eds. (2009). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. SAGE.

11 DECONSTRUCTING DISCOURSE Applying Interview Research in the Economic Newsroom Sophie Knowles and Nadine Strauß

Advance Organiser

This chapter will provide a discussion on applying interview research in the economic newsroom. It puts the current research on economic news into context and outlines the benefits and practicalities of conducting interviews, using two tangible case studies – the reporting of the global financial crisis and sustainable finance – to demonstrate both the value of choosing the interview method and how the method works in practice. It introduces some key concepts, tips and practical approaches to this method and presents a guided activity. 1. Introduction

The global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 indicated the degree to which economies are interrelated and the fates of the general public and investors rest on financial markets. It also highlighted the important role journalists play holding those in political and economic power to account, and the effect of their failure to do so. In the immediate wake of the GFC, journalists received criticisms, ranging from their promotion of nefarious financial products, the blinkered groupthink in newsrooms that failed to spot an unsustainable asset bubble and their overly close and uncritical engagement with a narrow range of sources (Adnan et al. 2019; Berry 2019, 2014; Kantola 2007). The aftermath, then, offered an opportunity for closer examination and prompted much needed and overdue research into financial and economic journalism, but this mainly used content analysis as a method (see Chapter 6).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-13

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Consequently, there are few interview-based studies with economic journalists to refer to. This method offers the opportunity to understand journalist’s modus operandi, day-to-day journalistic practices and changing newsroom dynamics, all of which subsequently impact the quality of economic news. A qualitative approach to interviews with financial and economic journalists provides a degree of flexibility and reflexivity when discussing topics with participants. In our experience, this approach also tends to accord well with practitioners who have years of experience to reflect on and a tendency to elaborate, as they are usually seasoned interviewers themselves. After outlining the institutional, ideological and cultural factors that impact economic news quality and discourse and the interview-based studies that others have conducted, we move to our own experience of interviewing economic journalists and focus on the following two case studies: 1. The reporting of the GFC; 2. The reporting of sustainable finance. We chose the latter because the environmental crisis presents another critical juncture for economic journalists, and it could play a decisive role in informing the public about existing inequalities and holding businesses and the financial sector to account as they adopt more environmental policies. This, we hope, is just the start of a discussion within a volume that will lay the epistemological foundation for understanding the articulation and reproduction of economic news values. 2.  Why Content Analyses and Surveys Aren’t Always Enough

If one is to embark on in-depth interviews with expert journalists, it is important to understand the context and conditions they work in. Journalists play an important role as purveyors, mediators and commentators on economic developments and policy. Recent research has shown the degree to which journalists have informed and shaped the debate around austerity policies and cuts to the welfare state in the decade since the GFC (Basu et al. 2018; Harjuniemi 2021). While the degree to which journalists can impact public opinion is debatable (Christians et al. 2010), there is some agreement that journalists covering the economy both contribute to agenda-setting (Carroll and McCombs 2003; Strauß 2021) and “establish a community of economic discourse” (Goddard et al. 1998; Parsons 1989, p. 10). This community of economic discourse is more important than ever with the mainstreaming of economics, the increasingly global reach and power of financial institutions and the degree to which the public relies on news media for information (Arrese and Vara 2015; Boukes and Vliegenthart 2020; Van Dalen et al. 2021).

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For the past few decades, however, journalists have not had the capacity that many of them desire to be able to hold economic power to account. Journalists now work with less time and less resources, and there is greater emphasis on clickbait over quality (Jacobsson 2018; Knowles 2020a; Parsons 1989; Strauß 2019). Many of the post-GFC criticisms have been exacerbated by the increasingly liquid modern media system that journalists now operate within, with economic journalists accused of, for instance, being more like lapdogs than watchdogs (Knowles 2020a; Starkman 2014); being too cosy with the players on the financial markets (Mair and Keeble 2009); being too narrow in their explanations and sources used for information (Berry 2014, 2019; Manning 2013); and lacking the foresight and training that is needed to forewarn a general public about economic developments and impending downturns (Knowles 2020a; Starkman 2014; Strauß 2019). For the past few decades, as these developments in journalism have taken place, analysis of economic news has relied heavily on content analysis and survey research and much less on the interview (Merrill 2019). Content analysis is effective at mapping the contours of the debate and analysing aspects of the news such as framing, salience and priming, while surveys can offer some exploratory power, but the revelations can be binary and brief. For example, when we harness qualitative and quantitative data on the views of economic journalists and the public, they tend to coalesce. Journalists want to play a watchdog role and engage a wider audience, while the public think they do not write with them in mind (Knowles and Schifferes 2020). Therefore, while content analyses and surveys are useful in indicating the type of discourse being produced, they cannot explain the rationale behind these news decisions or the production realities and values that have contributed to the creation of such content. To truly understand the discourse, and particularly how it could be improved to include more diverse viewpoints, we must speak to more of the agenda setters, power brokers, editors and journalists that play important roles in the creation of the economic discourse. We demonstrate through our case studies the important insights that qualitative interviews with journalists can provide. 3.  Interviews with Economic Journalists

While the ideal role for a journalist may be that of a watchdog, investigating corporate and political malfeasance, the role of the journalist is not a one-sizefits-all (Deuze 2005), and the roles that journalists perceive for themselves can vary by political and economic context (Hanitzsch at al. 2016). Interviews with journalists demonstrate that perceptions can vary from country to country (Ahva et al. 2017; Hanusch and Hanitzsch 2017) and within different types of media. It is unsurprising, then, that interviews with economic journalists

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indicate a mixed view of whether they think they should act as watchdogs of finance and business for the public. One of the earliest studies to conduct in-depth interviews with economic and financial journalists occurred just after the dot-com boom and bust. Doyle (2006) examined whether economic and financial journalists are systematically duped by corporate spin or whether they bring to bear a critical expertise that helps contribute to an informed citizenry. Interviews carried out demonstrate the differences in the quality of economic reporting in specialist publications such as the FT, which have the resources required to fund investigations and specialist training to stay ahead of the curve, compared to the mainstream publications that do not – a fact that is compounded by a lack of public understanding about financial and economic topics among citizens. Other interviews, conducted by Tambini in the UK (2010) and Usher in the US (2013), have shown that a large number of financial journalists view their roles as passive mirrors that reflect what is happening in the markets. Meanwhile, interviews conducted more recently (Damstra and De Swert 2020; Knowles 2018) show a strong desire among financial journalists in the Netherlands, UK, US and Australia to investigate malfeasance and to write for a wide audience. The modus operandi of the economic and financial journalist tends to land somewhere on a continuum between those who still believe in the importance of acting as a watchdog holding economic power to account (Knowles 2018; Strauß 2019) and those who view their work as purveyors of market views (Usher 2013). Again, the role perceptions seem to be strongly related to the resources available to the financial journalists at the respective news outlets (Strauß 2021). These interview studies also indicate the very real danger that public relations now poses to ethical and frank journalism. There is a common theme that journalists are out of their depth, with few resources and a lack of training to be able to hold economic power to account (Kitchener 1999; Nielsen 2016). In particular, Tambini’s (2010) interviews highlight a lack of commitment to standards of “accuracy” and “verification and sourcing” and show that few outlets are willing to commit to “two named sources for each story”. On the other hand, some of the journalists he interviewed maintained that they would engage in “higher verification standards if the story was likely to have an immediate market impact” (ibid., p. 170). The interview-based studies that focus on economic journalists, therefore, tend to confirm the academic critique, and they add depth and insight that other methods cannot. There is a lack of interview research from developing countries and the Global South and a lack of differentiation between economic and financial journalists. Moreover, there is a common theme that often highlights economic journalists’ commitment to playing a watchdog

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role for the general public, as they often place the work they do firmly within a normative paradigm and ideals about the media as a fourth estate. We move now to the two case studies, which outline the ways in which interviews with economic journalists have worked in practice and highlight some of the very real challenges that journalists faced on the ground when reporting the GFC and continue to face when they report on sustainable finance. 4.  Case Study 1: The Global Financial Crisis

Interviews conducted by Knowles at al. (2017) aimed to investigate some of the criticisms journalists received in the wake of the GFC from a practical, measured and industry-facing perspective, drawing on in-depth interviews with leading economic journalists in the UK, Australia and the US. Before designing the questions and approaching journalists, a content analysis was conducted to be able to contextualise the issues and provide something tangible to discuss with participants. By providing evidence from content, a researcher can limit any self-reflexive and romanticised tendencies that a journalist may have (see Vandevoordt 2017 for how this theory works in a different context). The interviews took place mostly in 2013–2014 and were purposive, targeting 20 experienced and eminent journalists from the US, UK and Australia who could speak to these longitudinal trends and changes in workplace culture. In many cases, there was an attempt to track down the authors of notable articles from the period. Some additional interviews were conducted in the years after the GFC to discuss lessons learned

SAMPLING APPROACH 1. This research began with a content analysis. If you do not begin with a content analysis, make sure you are well rehearsed and understand the issue you will be interviewing your subjects about. 2. We targeted specific journalists in the US, UK and Australia who had years of experience they could draw from. This approach is known as purposive sampling. It relies on the researcher’s knowledge and is often strategic and selective. Other approaches include random sampling, known as probability sampling, which aims to represent a population more accurately to be able to generalise from findings. 3. When you begin the interview research design process, ask yourself some key questions about the sample you need:

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o Do you want a sample of journalists that represent the general population in a country or a particular media outlet or subject? o Does your sample know enough about the issue at hand? Can they help you to answer your research question? o Have you focused too narrowly on a particular demographic with a homogenous view? 4. Tip: When you send invitations for interviews, be polite, draw from a journalist’s work where you can and highlight the value they will add. Journalists are pressed for time, so always indicate how long the interview will take.

The content analysis produced the following insights. Decade on decade there were fewer and fewer warnings about an impending economic crisis, indicating a more reactive press. There was a narrowing of the sources of information, with less diversity and more reliance on business sources, spokespersons and PR. During the 1990s, there was a frequent critique about deregulation, but this decreased by the time of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. Similar narratives were adopted, and there was more groupthink in all three countries by the time of the GFC, with less perceptible national differentiation. This was not the case in the previous decades, where the journalists and publications would report more clearly on the situation from their own national perspective and country-specific politics (Knowles et al. 2017; 2020a).

FORMULATING INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 1. The questions were semi-structured and based on several predetermined themes. This approach is a blend between being structured and unstructured. It allows some flexibility to ask additional questions as they arise, as well as changing the order. 2. This approach is also known as qualitative because it does not rely on numbers but rather on in-depth research about opinions and perspectives. It is indicative and will not provide a statistical weighting – as quantitative methods tend to. 3. An alternative approach is a structured interview, which does not allow any flexibility and usually consists of a set of closed questions.

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The insights produced by the content analysis concurred with much of the academic critique and provided the basis for the interview questions. Using examples from the content analysis sample also proved useful and served as evidence when some journalists expressed scepticism about the findings. The interviews were semi-structured to allow some comparison between them and some space for the journalists to elaborate. The transcripts were analysed using the software NVivo by looking for commonalities and teasing out the quotes that illustrated the journalists’ points most clearly. Analysis can be described as deductive because there existed already a conceptual basis for the research. It was also structured, with codes based around the themes that content analysis had revealed. The themes were then grouped around the broader umbrella themes, which formed the basis of subheadings, all dealing with challenges for economic journalism. Overall, the numerous criticisms received after the GFC were confirmed by the interviews. There was some reflection on the shift in policy towards Thatcher-style deregulation in the 1980s and the lack of critique – and this was explained mainly through politicians with big personalities and by some as inevitable without an alternative. For instance, a previous editor of the Australian Financial Review, Colleen Ryan, argued there is no other alternative economic system to write about, with the only likely alternative being “socialism”. While journalists were “swept along” in the 1990s, she thinks the alternative view is not an attractive one: “If you suggest that we go back to socialist planning, I don’t think there’d be too many financial editors that would think that would be a great story” (Knowles 2020, p. 27). Overall, the consensus view from the journalists is that the job of a journalist is to report and reflect a political culture that has few left-wing critics of the status quo. This is particularly the case when the economy is being directed and shaped by influential personalities in politics. For instance, while Elliott argues that the Guardian and he are driving forces behind the critique of capitalism, he adds: Under Tony Blair it [capitalism] became a much more pro-business force, Clinton accepted far more of the new order that had been established by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s, which makes it inevitable that is how politics and the economy is reported – [that] the market is the way forward and the more free market the better. [Knowles 2020, p. 27] In general, the journalists interviewed confirmed that the criticisms they faced were warranted and explained why they had not acted as effective watchdogs.

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Results from the Interview Analysis

1. Political, economic and organisational pressures: Financialisation, cultural pressures, sources that frame the news – confirmed source capture, that the general audience is ghettoised until after a crisis, and groupthink. 2. Industry related: Commercial pressures, pressures from the public relations industry in particular. 3. Suggestions to ensure quality: These focused on training for journalists, time and support from editors. 4. The journalists use a narrow variety of sources for information. 5. They were caught up in market euphoria – particularly during the dot-com boom and bust of the 2000s. 6. Reporting has been shaped by dominant political narratives and the prevailing neoliberal paradigm, particularly during the 1990s period of financial deregulation. In this case study, it is clear that content analysis was useful, but it provided a context that warranted further investigation. This one method alone could not build the whole picture. To be able to understand the way discourse had been produced leading up to and during the GFC, it was necessary to interview the journalists who played an important role in reporting the event and framing the stories. PRACTICAL TIPS WHEN INTERVIEWING • Make sure you have made all the ethical and practical considerations. Do you need to ask your participant to sign a consent form? Do they consent to you using their name and recording the interview, or do they want to stay anonymous or referred to by a pseudonym? Do they know and feel comfortable about withdrawing their consent? • With recording, make sure you have a well-charged device with plenty of batteries if it is battery powered. Test it beforehand! • Are you in a place with lots of background noise? How could this be minimised? • If you are conducting and recording online, could you ask your interviewee to record on their end? • Good-quality audio will make transcription much easier. • Software through Zoom and Google services such as Pinpoint are free but not always accurate. Ensure the time and resources to have your interviews carefully transcribed. Your analysis depends on it!

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5.  Case Study 2: Sustainable Finance

This case study focuses on how financial journalists perceive their role when covering sustainable finance (SF), what the construction process of news about SF looks like, what challenges they face and how they deal with greenwashing in the financial sector. A series of financial and economic crises have prompted the financial sector to improve its corporate social responsibility image, and more recently there has been a significant drive to promote its activities to align investment strategies with the Paris Agreement. Under the umbrella term “sustainable finance”, financial institutions are now widely offering new investment products that are labelled as being green and sustainable or in line with environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria or the UN Sustainable Development Goals. However, various criticism from scholars, NGOs and whistleblowers have raised doubts about the sincerity of these “sustainable” activities (Armstrong 2021; Dupre and Roa 2020).

Guided Activity 1. Get a first impression of the news coverage of sustainable finance (SF) in finance and business news in your country of choice. Select two to three news outlets (e.g., legacy news, mainstream news, financial news) and search for recent articles on the topic. 2. Do some further internet research to get an overview of common criticism towards the financial sector regarding SF; reports by NGOs (e.g., WWF, ShareAction, Finance Watch) are a good starting point. 3. Develop five interview questions (with one to two follow-up questions each) that you would like to ask when interviewing financial and business journalists about SF in your country of choice. 4. How will you develop your research design? See steps above. Think about (a) the sample of journalists you would like to interview and (b) whether your questions will be structured, semi-structured or unstructured.

The study design was planned in 2017, when SF was just at the brink of becoming a buzz word in the financial realm and financial journalism was just slowly starting to cover the topic in more detail. Yet, after the release of the first final report of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on sustainable finance in January 2018, the news media coverage about SF exploded, and more and more stakeholders became aware of the opportunities, challenges and pitfalls of the topic. During this dynamic time, as definitions and measurements were being widely debated, it became of

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particular relevance to speak to financial and business journalists and get more insights about their work on the topic. The study started in autumn 2019 by identifying 114 financial journalists that had been covering SF at legacy and financial news media outlets in six European countries (Austria, Brussels, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK). The selection of the countries was guided, on the one hand, by the political and economic relevance with regard to SF and, on the other, by the capacity of the researcher to speak with the journalists in their native languages. In contrast to a previous interview study (Strauß 2019), where the researcher contacted US journalists to investigate the relationships between the news media and the stock market, the response rate of journalists was surprisingly high (56 per cent). Thirty-three journalists were eager to talk about the topic and give their views on an emerging field that they, as mediators of financial news, had co-created. The interviews partly confirmed previous findings on financial journalism but also provided new insights about the news coverage of SF by journalists. On the one hand, the study showed that financial journalists hardly ascribed themselves the role of a watchdog and mainly identified themselves as an informant, chronicler or educator, reflecting new market trends on the financial markets such as SF. The interviews also confirmed previous research that shows there are limited resources for journalists to do investigative reporting, except for specialised news outlets or financial news outlets such as the FT. On the other hand, the analysis revealed that the coverage has become highly professionalised, as newspapers across the industry have started to monetise their reporting to gain an additional revenue stream and also to provide their elite audience with tailor-made and exclusive content. The study also showed that finance and economics are still perceived as niche topics that are only attractive to a limited audience, which is even more true for SF coverage. With regard to SF, some journalists saw the complexity of the topic, the “good news” angle and the dryness (e.g., regulation, measurement, etc.) as the main reasons why SF does not resonate with the broader news audience. The influence of financial PR was also a topic that journalists reflected on in interviews. Not only did they report that they are flooded with press releases and emails about SF news from the financial sector on a daily basis, but they also expressed the difficulty of “cutting through the wilderness” and spotting the real and relevant news about the topic. A journalist from a UK-based specialised financial news outlet stated: Sometimes we get information where somebody has launched a fund or has done something which on paper is actually correct, but we know that in the context of the bigger institution or whatever, it’s meaningless nonsense and it’s PR. There’s some discomfort around giving it platform. [Strauß 2022, p. 1205]

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Many journalists who have covered SF and related topics over a longer period strongly criticised the financial sector for seemingly offering “green” products but continuing with the same business path. Hence, there was some indication of financial journalists experiencing the need to become an advocate when reporting about finance and sustainability, although, at the same time, all journalists prioritised faithfulness to professional journalistic norms such as neutrality, fact-checking and balanced reporting. Another aspect that became apparent from the interviews was the fact that journalists from specialist and financial news outlets ascribed themselves a mediating role in influencing decision-making among the political and financial elite. Financial news outlets such as the FT are not only considering these decision-makers as their core audience, they are also citing elite sources and giving them voice through op-eds and commentaries. This research about the emerging topic of SF revealed that journalists are in the midst of co-creating the narrative about SF in the news media themselves and therefore very eager to talk about their work and to express their criticism. They see their role as fairly limited, and they focus on a rather elite audience, but they are also cautious and dwarfed by the amount of greenwashing material that is being produced by financial PR. Although the findings from the interview study were innovative and insightful, the selection of journalists from too many different countries and news outlets made it difficult to classify and contextualise the findings in political, economic and social contexts. Furthermore, when working with “trending” topics, one always runs the risk of providing results that quickly become outdated. 6.  Some Limitations and Further Considerations

Moreover, the methodological concerns of the qualitative interview cannot be divorced from the overarching debate and discord between quantitative and qualitative researchers. Quantitative researchers have long criticised qualitative methods for being “unreliable, impressionistic, and not objective” (Denzin 2000, p. 12). Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of “habitus” refers to the early socialisation that can colour a person’s perception, often unconsciously. Therefore, it is important that a number of factors are taken into account when assessing an individual journalist’s viewpoints, including socio-economic background and other socio-demographic variables such as gender and ethnicity. There are also some practical steps and ethical considerations that can be incorporated into the research design to limit bias and ensure greater transparency. In the case of economic journalism, this would include consideration of the challenges listed already: lack of support for alternative theories and proactive reporting, institutional weight of sources of information, groupthink in newsrooms. The following will help to limit bias in the research design.

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LIMITING BIAS IN YOUR RESEARCH DESIGN Carefully select the sample; Design open-ended, unloaded questions; Provide a scenario for the journalists to react to; Enable an open conversation for journalists to tell their stories; • Understand the potential for bias and for sampling bias in those selected for interviews; • Be aware of the difficulty for interviewees in recalling events from the past. • • • •

7.  Discussion and Conclusion

Economic crises have acted as catalysts both for academic researchers and for self-reflection on the part of journalists. Some of the challenges that journalists face are more obvious than others, such as commercial and resources-based challenges. Ideological and cultural challenges are less visible and less tangible and require qualitative research such as in-depth interviews to tease out these nuances. While certain methods such as content analyses are useful to gauge how issues and policies have been framed and represented, interviews with practitioners themselves can help answer the important question of why. We have shown some practical examples of how the interview method works in practice and also demonstrated, we hope, that while the news media can set an agenda, researchers can too. This is something we must all be conscious of when we develop our research designs, i.e., by thinking about our sample and limiting bias. Our case studies indicate that a lack of an alternative political narrative, and a resource-rich PR industry, limits economic discourse about economic crises and now the emerging and important field of sustainable finance. They also indicate that future studies should pay attention to inequalities in newsrooms, the lack of knowledge about sustainable finance on the financial markets and the ability of journalists to hold companies that are greenwashing to account. There is a clear rationale for more expert training for journalists, especially as the economic system continues to globalise and financialise, and the climate change crisis calls for specialist knowledge to be acquired. This chapter, therefore, ends on the suggestion that economic news has to re-orientate itself toward normative news values and diversify in terms of the newsroom and the content it creates if it is going to build the trust of its audience and engage with a wide section of society. This is something that individual journalists themselves are aware of, and it is something they need support with. This desire is something that our interviews have picked up,

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so we need more interview research to understand the views from a range of practitioners, in developing and developed economies alike, to provide a more comprehensive picture of why economic news discourse is developing the way it is and how we can steer it in an inclusive and sustainable direction. List of Concepts Introduced

• Framing; • Salience; • Priming; • Sampling; • Interview techniques; • Interview analysis; • Habitus; • Limiting bias. References Adnan, M., Ali, A. and Aslam, S. (2019). “Economic Issues and Ethical Journalism in Pakistan: Prospects and Challenges”. Global Social Sciences Review, 4(1), pp. 11–22. Ahva, L., Van Dalen, A., Hovden, J.F., Kolbeins, G.H., Löfgren Nilsson, M., Skovsgaard, M. and Väliverronen, J. (2017). “A Welfare State of Mind? Nordic Journalists’ Conception of Their Role and Autonomy in International Context”. Journalism Studies, 18(5), pp. 595–613. Armstrong, R. (2021). “The ESG Investing Industry is Dangerous”. Financial Times, 24 August. Available from: www.ft.com/cont​ent/ec02f​d5d-e8bd-45bd-b015-a5799​ ae82​0cf. Arrese, Á. and Vara, A. (2015). “Divergent Perspectives? Financial Newspapers and the General Interest Press”. In Picard, R.G., ed., The Euro Crisis in the Media: Journalistic Coverage of Economic Crisis and European Institutions, pp. 149–175. I. B. Tauris. Basu, L., Schifferes, S. and Knowles, S., eds. (2018). The Media and Austerity: Comparative Perspectives. Routledge. Berry, M. (2014). “Neoliberalism and the City: Or the Failure of Market Fundamentalism”. Housing, Theory and Society, 31(1), pp. 1–18. Berry, M. (2019). The Media, the Public and the Great Financial Crisis. Springer. Boukes, M. and Vliegenthart, R. (2020). “A General Pattern in the Construction of Economic Newsworthiness? Analyzing News Factors in Popular, Quality, Regional, and Financial Newspapers”. Journalism, 21(2), pp. 279–300. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Structures and the Habitus. Cambridge University Press. Carroll, C.E. and McCombs, M. (2003). “Agenda-Setting Effects of Business News on the Public’s Images and Opinions about Major Corporations”. Corporate Reputation Review, 6(1), pp. 36–46. Christians, C.G., Glasser, T., McQuail, D., Nordenstreng, K. and White, R.A. (2010). Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies. University of Illinois Press.

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Damstra, A. and De Swert, K. (2020). “The Making of Economic News: Dutch Economic Journalists Contextualizing Their Work”. Journalism, p. 1464884919897161. Denzin, N.K., 2000. “Aesthetics and the Practices of Qualitative Inquiry”. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(2), pp. 256–265. Deuze, M. (2005). “What is Journalism? Professional Identity and Ideology of Journalists Reconsidered”. Journalism, 6(4), pp. 442–464. Doyle, G. (2006). “Financial News Journalism: A Post-Enron Analysis of Approaches Towards Economic and Financial News Production in the UK”. Journalism, 7(4), pp. 433–452. Dupre, S. and Roa, P.F. (2020). “Impact Washing Gets a Free Ride. An Analysis of the Draft EU Ecolabel Criteria for Financial Products”. 2 Degrees Investing Initiative. Available from: https://2degr​ees-invest​ing.org/wp-cont​ent/uplo​ ads/2019/06/2019-Paper-Imp​act-wash​ing. Goddard, P., Corner, J., Gavin, N.T. and Richardson, K. (1998). “Economic News and the Dynamics of Understanding: The Liverpool Project”. In Gavin, N.T., ed., The Economy, Media and Public Knowledge, pp. 9–37. Leicester University Press. Hanitzsch, T., Hanusch, F. and Lauerer, C. (2016). “Setting the Agenda, Influencing Public Opinion, and Advocating for Social Change: Determinants of Journalistic Interventionism in 21 Countries”. Journalism Studies, 17(1), pp. 1–20. Hanusch, F. and Hanitzsch, T. (2017). “Comparing Journalistic Cultures across Nations: What We Can Learn from the Worlds of Journalism Study”. Journalism Studies, 18(5), pp. 525–535. Harjuniemi, T., 2021. “The Power of Primary Definers: How Journalists Assess the Pluralism of Economic Journalism”. Journalism, 14648849211035299. Jacobsson, D. (2018). “Business Elite Competition or a Common Concern? Journalistic Representations of Industrial Crises in Sweden”. Journalism Studies, 19(1), pp. 105–125. Kantola, A. (2007). “On the Dark Side of Democracy: The Global Imaginary of Financial Journalism”. In Cammaerts, B. and Carpentier, N. eds., Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights and Democratic Media Roles, pp. 192–216. Intellect Books. Kitchener, J. (1999). “Business Journalism in the 1980s”. In Curthoys, A. and Schultz, J., eds., Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, pp. 229–244. University of Queensland Press. Knowles, S. (2018). “Financial Journalists, the Financial Crisis and the ‘Crisis’ in Journalism”. In Basu, L., Schifferes, S. and Knowles, S., eds., The Media and Austerity, pp. 183–195. Routledge. Knowles, S. (2020). The Mediation of Financial Crises: Watchdogs, Lapdogs or Canaries in the Coal Mine? Peter Lang. Knowles, S., Phillips, G. and Lidberg, J. (2017). “Reporting the Global Financial Crisis: A Longitudinal Tri-Nation Study of Mainstream Financial Journalism”. Journalism Studies, 18(3), pp. 322–340. Knowles, S. and Schifferes, S. (2020). “Financial Capability, the Financial Crisis and Trust in News Media”. Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies, 9(1), pp. 61–83. Mair, J. and Keeble, R.L., eds. (2009). Playing Footsie with the FTSE?: The Great Crash of 2008 and the Crisis in Journalism. Abramis Academic. Manning, P. (2013). “Financial Journalism, News Sources and the Banking Crisis”. Journalism, 14(2), pp. 173–189.

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Merrill, G.J. (2019). Political Content of British Economic, Business and Financial Journalism. Springer International Publishing. Nielsen, R.K. (2016). “The Many Crises of Western Journalism: A Comparative Analysis of Economic Crises, Professional Crises, and Crises of Confidence”. In Alexander, J.C., Breese, E.B. and Luengo, M., eds., The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered, pp.77–97. Cambridge University Press. Parsons, W. (1989). The Power of the Financial Press. Edward Elgar Publishing. Starkman, D. (2014). “Willful Blindness: The Media’s Power Problem”. In Schifferes, S. and Roberts, R., eds., The Media and Financial Crises, pp. 31–43. Routledge. Strauß, N. (2019). “Financial Journalism in Today’s High-Frequency News and Information Era”. Journalism, 20(2), pp. 274–291. Strauß, N. (2021). “Devil’s Advocate or Agenda Setter? The Role of Journalists Covering Sustainable Finance in Europe”. Journalism Studies, 22(9), pp. 1200–1218. Strauß, N. (2022). “Covering Sustainable Finance: Roel Perceptions, Journalistic Practices and Moral Dilemmas”. Journalism, 23(6), pp. 1194–1212. Tambini, D. (2010). “What Are Financial Journalists For?” Journalism studies, 11(2), pp. 158–174. Usher, N. (2013). “Ignored, Uninterested, and the Blame Game: How The New York Times, Marketplace, and TheStreet Distanced Themselves from Preventing the 2007–2009 Financial Crisis”. Journalism, 14(2), pp. 190–207. Van Dalen, A., Skovsgaard, M., de Vreese, C. and Albæk, E. (2021). “Economic Beat Journalists: Which Audience Perceptions, What Conception of Democracy?”. Journalism Practice, 15(9), pp. 1272–1288. Vandevoordt, R. (2017). “Why Journalists Covered Syria the Way They Did: On the Role of Economic, Social and Cultural Capital”. Journalism, 18(5), pp. 609–625.

12 RESEARCHING AUDIENCES Understanding How Economic News Is Received Mike Berry

Advance Organiser

We first provide an introduction and overview to audience research as a means of analysing how audiences are influenced by the media in their understanding of economic issues. The chapter explores three key qualitative and quantitative methods: • Survey research; • Focus groups; • Triangulated research. These three methods are outlined with examples of research projects and the strengths and weaknesses of each. 1. Introduction

The period since the great financial crisis of 2008 has seen an increase in interest in how publics view economic life (e.g., Afoko and Vockins 2013; Berry 2018, 2019; Duffy et al. 2013; Killick 2020; Norrish 2018; Runge and Hudson 2020; Schifferes 2015). In part this may reflect concerns that a lack of financial knowledge may have contributed to the crisis. It may also reflect the fact that public knowledge and understanding of economic issues is crucial in an increasingly financialised economy (Martin 2002). The research that has been undertaken in this area has drawn on a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches, from surveys and experiments to focus groups and ethnography. A key concern of recent studies has been how the public DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-14

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understands the economy and how it is represented in public debate. One strand of this research has explored how the public understands the main economic indicators – such as GDP, debt and inflation – that dominate political and media debate (e.g., Runge and Hudson 2020). Another approach has involved “bottom-up” research that explores how the public conceptualises the economy. This body of research is primarily qualitative and taps into lay theories and understandings of how the economy functions (Afoko and Vockins 2013; Boyer and Petersen 2018; Killick 2020; Norrish 2018). However, a limited number of studies have gone beyond this and attempted to use audience research to try and understand how reporting may impact on public understanding of economic issues (e.g., Barnes and Hicks 2018; Berry 2019; Reeves and de Vries 2016). These studies typically combine the use of content studies – to identify dominant themes in reporting – with either surveys, focus groups, experiments or a combination of methods to examine audience responses. Some studies attempt to use experimental or quasiexperimental designs to determine pre-and post-test effects, while others use more qualitative approaches that explore the structures of audience belief and attempt to trace their origins in media accounts. This chapter will examine two commonly used audience methodologies – surveys and focus groups. It will look at the pros and cons of both methods and reflect on the kind of data that they generate. It will also consider key issues in research design such as sampling and data analysis. A case study relating to each will be presented to illustrate how they can be combined with content studies to explore media influence. I will also discuss how different audience methods can be combined in a process of triangulation. This will help illustrate how these methods produce complimentary forms of data that allow researchers to build up a rich and complex picture about how people think, reason and form beliefs It will also equip the reader with the crucial thinking skills necessary to interpret and evaluate audience studies they encounter in the research literature or mass media. 2.  Survey Research

Survey research has traditionally been the most widely used method for researching audiences and is used extensively by the private sector as well as academics. Surveys typically involve participants being asked a set of standardised questions in a set order. This data can be collected in a variety of ways. Traditionally, telephone surveys were extremely popular, particularly for market research and opinion polling, due to their speed, convenience and ability to cover a wide geographical area. However, in recent years they have fallen out of favour because of declining response, cooperation and completion rates (Marken 2018). Mail surveys were also a popular choice until recently, but they are slow and expensive and suffer from low response rates and high

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abandonment rates. As telephone and mail surveys have declined in popularity, internet surveys – which typically involve participants filling in an online questionnaire – have come to dominate. These are cheaper than telephone and mail surveys but are also quick and can reach widely dispersed audiences. They also allow researchers to save time because data collection, analysis and visualisation can all be automated. Finally, surveys can be conducted face to face, where the interviewer is physically present to ask the questions and assist the respondent. Face-to-face surveys have unique advantages over other approaches: it is easier to conduct longer surveys face to face; there is almost complete control of the research environment; completion rates are very high; and this method discriminates less against those with poor reading or writing skills. However, this has to be set against the fact that face-to-face surveys are slow, expensive, difficult to administer to geographically dispersed populations and more prone than other methods to interviewer bias. The key strength of survey-based research is that it can provide insights into how populations are thinking or behaving. A correctly conducted survey of around 1,000 people can allow researchers to make probabilistic statements (usually within a margin of error of +/- 3 per cent) about an entire population. The most widely reported example of this kind of survey work is political opinion polling, where voters are asked who they are likely to vote for or how they rate a party leader. Despite controversy over the failure of polling companies to correctly call the results of recent elections in the UK and US, a metanalysis of 31,000 polls covering 351 national elections in 45 countries between 1942 and 2017 found that polling has remained broadly accurate over past decades (Jennings and Wlezien 2018). However, surveys also suffer from a number of weaknesses in relation to other forms of audience research. Although they are very useful for providing a big picture overview of how a population thinks, the depth of understanding provided by survey research is often shallow. To put it another way, surveys may be effective at telling us what a population thinks or believes, but they are less able to tell us why. This means they are not as effective as more qualitative methods in allowing us to understand the structure of audience beliefs and attitudes and how these may be based on information gleaned from the mass or social media. For instance, between 2010 and 2015 YouGov (2015) ran a series of tracker polls on public attitudes to austerity. These showed that significant majorities of the population consistently thought cuts to public services to reduce the deficit were necessary and that the Labour Party was most to blame for the cuts. But the research couldn’t tell us what assumptions and beliefs underpinned those attitudes. To do this would require the use of qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, focus groups or ethnographic approaches. Surveys are also a relatively inflexible method, in that the requirement to ask a fixed set of identical questions makes it difficult to adapt when participants respond in unexpected ways.

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Before I go on to discuss key issues, here are some pointers for designing and conducting your own survey: CONDUCTING YOUR OWN SURVEY: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE 1. Identify your target population and sampling methodology. For large-scale research, your target population could be national or even multinational. Alternatively, it could be a subset of a national population such as an annual cohort of students or a specific ethnic group. You then need to select a type of either probability or non-probability sample. See Chapter 3 of Researching Communication (Deacon et al. 2021) for a discussion of different sampling options. 2. Decide on the type of survey you are going to use. The most widely used approaches are internet, phone and faceto-face surveys. 3. Design the survey questions. Care must be taken here to make sure the questions are easily understood, unambiguous and not vulnerable to socially desirable responses. 4. Pilot the survey. In this stage your survey is tested on a small sample of participants to assess whether all the questions are easily understood and whether any modifications to the research instrument need to be made. 5. Distribute the survey to your sample. As with any piece of human subject research, you must provide brief orientation to participants and ensure you obtain informed consent. 6. Analyse your results. Researchers usually enter their data into software such as SPSS, which can be used to run statistical tests on your data. 7. Write up your findings. Since you will be presenting quantitative data, think about using tables, graphs and infographics to bring your data to life.

Key Issues in Survey Research

This section will highlight some crucial considerations to keep in mind when constructing your own surveys or evaluating the quality of published research. Since surveys are usually intended to be representative so as to be able to generalise the findings to a broader population, sampling is a key issue. The most common form of sampling used to generate a representative sample

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is probability sampling. To conduct a probability sample, the researcher requires a sampling frame and a selection procedure. The selection frame is a list of the entire target population. Within the sampling frame, each unit must have a knowable and equal chance of being selected. There are many ways to probabilistically select from the population. One approach is simple random sampling, where a random number table or piece of software is used to generate a series of numbers that are then used to draw units from the population. Random digit dialling used in telephone surveys is a commonly used example of this approach. There are also more complex forms of probabilistic selection such as cluster or stratified sampling. Increasingly, researchers are also using non-probability sampling to attempt to construct representative samples. Typically, these involve the creation of online panels of participants who are weighted to reflect the characteristics of the target population. So the make-up of the sample – although non-randomly selected – should match the target population in relation to key demographics such as age, education level, ethnicity, social class or political orientation. However, whether nonprobability sampling can ever be as accurate as probability sampling in analysing populations is still open to dispute (Wiśniowski et al. 2020). Another key issue in survey research is questionnaire construction. For instance, should you employ open-ended or closed questions. These can often produce very different results. Furthermore, although open-ended questions may be seen as producing more authentic responses – because participants are able to respond in their own way – they are much more arduous to complete and discriminate against those with poorer writing skills. Care must also be exercised in how questions are constructed. Questionnaires should avoid the use of ambiguous – or leading –questions. Hypothetical questions should be used sparingly, if at all, since people tend to make poor predictions about their future attitudes or behaviours. Researchers must be especially careful with sensitive questions. These can be subject to social desirability dynamics, where people do not respond truthfully because they don’t want to project a negative image of themselves. For instance, questions on whether a participant has ever failed to declare a source of income to the tax office or regularly makes charitable contributions are vulnerable to socially desirable responses. Finally, researchers need to be aware that certain questions can have agendasetting effects, where people feel compelled to come up with an opinion because they don’t want to appear ignorant, despite never having considered the issue before. In this sense, the opinion is not organic or real but merely an artefact of the research environment. The danger of such responses can be especially high when participants are being questioned about attitudes to specialised economic concepts such as quantitative easing or land value taxation (Berry 2019). Having sketched some key things to consider when conducting survey research, let’s have a look at a study that used this methodology to explore how reporting may influence public attitudes to welfare claimants.

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CASE STUDY: MEDIA CONSUMPTION AND ATTITUDES TO WELFARE CLAIMANTS How might reporting impact on how members of the public view the deservingness of people who claim welfare? This was the subject of a study by Reeves and de Vries (2016), who explored how reporting of the 2011 London riots impacted on public perceptions of welfare claimants. First, Reeves and de Vries established that right-of-centre newspapers and left-of-centre newspapers discussed the link between welfare and the riots in very different ways. While most Guardian/Observer articles were supportive of welfare claimants – by, for instance, arguing against removing benefits from convicted rioters – most articles in the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday highlighted a negative association. These included, for example, blaming the riots on the welfare system and the values it was said to promulgate. The researchers then drew on data from the British Social Attitudes Survey to conduct a quasi-natural experiment where they compared attitudes towards welfare recipients among those interviewed before and after the riots occurred. To assess how people viewed the deservingness of welfare claimants, the researchers relied on three statements: 1. Many people who get social security don’t really deserve any help; 2. Around here, most unemployed people could find a job if they really wanted one; 3. Most people on the dole are fiddling in one way or another. The research found that, prior to the riots, there were no significant differences between newspaper readers and non-readers in attitudes to welfare claimants, but after the riots views diverged. Newspaper readers – of both left- and rightwing titles – became more likely than non-readers to believe that welfare recipients didn’t really deserve help, that the unemployed could find a job if they wanted and were being dishonest in claiming benefits. As Reeves and de Vries note, their results suggest that print media coverage increased negative attitudes towards welfare claimants. However, this effect occurred for readers of both right- and left-of-centre titles, which challenges their initial expectation that the effect would only be produced by right-wing newspapers. The researchers note that this may be a function of the small sample size for left-wing newspaper consumers or due to some general impact of newspaper readership that they are not able to explain. This illustrates the limitations of survey-based research, in that the addition of a qualitative element – for instance, semi-structured interviews with readers – might have helped to explain this unexpected finding.

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3.  Focus Groups

Focus groups are a qualitative methodology where a researcher brings together a selection of people to discuss their beliefs, knowledge or attitudes. The method originated in the 1940s as a technique used by market researchers to test reactions to radio soap operas. The first use of the method by academics is credited to the sociologist Robert Merton, who utilised the approach to test the responses of soldiers to World War Two propaganda films such as Frank Capra’s Why We Fight (Delli Carpini and Williams 1994). After the war, qualitative approaches to audience research fell out of favour in the social sciences – particularly in America, where surveys and other forms of quantitative research came to dominate. However, since the 1980s there has been a resurgence of interest in their use in disciplines such as sociology, psychology, political science and media/journalism studies (e.g., Gamson 1992; Philo and Berry 2004). They have also been used extensively in political campaigning to test public reactions to candidates, parties and policies. Focus groups are particularly useful when researchers are trying to understand differences in perspectives between groups or categories of people. For this reason, focus group researchers often recruit groups of people who share a common class position or occupational role (e.g., Philo and Berry 2004). They are also seen as a good option when researchers are looking for a range of ideas or feelings that people have about something and how these may emerge in the context of social interaction. However, the most attractive aspect of focus groups is that they allow researchers to observe how people learn, understand, make meaning and form opinions. This potentially offers an opportunity to unpack the various factors that influence opinions, behaviours and motivations. So, surveys might be able to tell you that a certain proportion of the population are “very worried” about the size of the budget deficit, but only qualitative approaches such as semi-structured interviews or focus groups can tease apart the beliefs, assumptions and values underpinning that opinion. The kind of data that is generated by focus groups is very different to that produced by survey research. Surveys or structured interviews aim for uniformity and neutrality in order to identify and crystallise (what are believed to be) identifiable and static opinions. But, listening to any focus group discussion, it is hard to isolate and freeze a set of attitudes. People can be inconsistent and self-contradictory, and discussions can be full of discontinuities and sometimes go off at a tangent. This can make it very difficult to isolate the individual from the stream of group debate. Yet, it is precisely these difficult aspects of focus groups that are their greatest strengths. Focus groups allow researchers to get beyond static ideas about “knowledge” or “attitudes” and explore how participants think, reason and form opinions.

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Advantages of Focus Groups in Conducting Audience Research

1. They are more naturalistic. Observing people discussing issues – especially if they are already known to each other – is far closer to how people behave and form opinion in real life than filling in an online questionnaire or being prompted by a researcher asking a standardised set of questions down a telephone line. 2. Focus groups can produce an unrivalled depth of understanding in relation to the formation of opinion and attitudes by revealing the underlying latent processes of meaning and sense making. As Delli Carpini and Williams (1994, p. 65) note, “Opinions are not simply fixed constructs that are stored and retrieved like data in a computer [but] … are continuously constructed through cognitive processes involving a myriad of complex schema”. These processes are not easily captured through quantitative methods.   Closed-ended survey items often reify opinions by forcing respondents to present them as self-contained and pre-existing objects. The crosssectional nature of most surveys adds to this static quality. Even panel studies and experimental designs encourage a mechanistic model, in which opinions are measured, new information is introduced and opinions are remeasured. Focus groups, on the other hand, can be “catalyst[s]‌for the individual expression of latent opinion … for free-associating to life” (Liebes and Katz 1990, p. 28). By essentially forcing people to “think out loud”, they become windows through which to observe the process of opinion-formation (Delli Carpini and Williams 1994, p. 65). 3. Focus groups can also allow researchers to watch opinions and attitudes shift in real time as new information is introduced into the research environment. For instance, in their research on public knowledge and beliefs about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, Philo and Berry (2004) observed how understanding of the conflict could be radically transformed by providing audiences with contextual information about the history of the conflict. 4. Focus groups offer more flexibility than surveys. During focus group sessions, it is always possible to probe or clarify something that a participant has said, and the focus of the research can be taken in a different direction based on how participants respond. 5. Focus groups often throw up unexpected findings that cannot be anticipated and are unlikely to be picked up by other methods. A good example of this is reported in the case study that follows, where participants attributed the rise in Britain’s deficit after the 2008 banking crisis to increased immigration. Although unanticipated – and not recognised in other research in this area – through discussion, the reasoning processes that underlay this belief could be discovered. Focus groups also have

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weaknesses in comparison to surveys. Their findings are not easily generalisable to broader populations. There is always the danger that opinions can be influenced by peer pressure or dominant individuals in a group. The quality of data is heavily dependent on the skills of the researcher and is less easily analysed than quantitative surveys. Interpretations are also more suspectable to the expectations and biases of the researcher, and the findings are less easy to replicate than with quantitative methods.

CONDUCTING YOUR OWN FOCUS GROUP: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE 1. Identify and recruit suitable research participants. Your decision making here should be guided by your research focus and questions. For instance, are you interested in differences between various demographic groups? You will also need to decide whether to use strangers or “naturally occurring” groups. 2. Select a suitable venue for the research. If you are using a naturally occurring group, it is often preferable to use the home of one of the participants, as this will likely put people at ease and allow the conversation to flow more easily. 3. Select your questions. Focus groups have much greater flexibility than surveys, which means that you are not tied into asking a fixed set of questions in a set order and are free to rephrase or clarify questions if the participants do not understand them. Nevertheless, researchers should always prepare a set of questions that relate to the study’s research focus. 4. Conduct the focus group session. As with survey research, you will need to provide your research participants with an initial briefing and obtain informed consent. You will also want to develop a rapport with your participants so that they feel relaxed enough to contribute and keep the conversations on track. Focus group sessions are normally recorded, so a much more complete record of conversations can be captured than if the researcher was attempting to make notes in real time. It is advisable to use two recording devices in case one fails.

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5. Analysing your results. One common approach is for researchers to listen to the recording and make notes on key themes and patterns that arise in the session. Alternatively, the recordings can be transcribed in their entirety and then either manually analysed by the researcher or entered into specialist software such as NVivo, which can automatically analyse qualitative data. 6. Write up your findings. Here you will want to summarise key patterns in group/individual responses and also use examples of direct quotes from your focus groups to add colour and illustrate how your participants see and understand issues.

Key Issues in Focus Group Design

Since focus groups are typically concerned with discovering structures of belief or processes of attitude formation – rather than producing findings which can be generalised to larger populations – sampling is less important than with surveys. Most focus group studies employ forms of convenience sampling, which are particularly suitable when the researcher is interested in the views of specific demographics. For instance, studies looking at how the public perceive the economy have selected groups based on age, gender and education/social class because these factors are known to impact knowledge and understanding in this area (Runge and Hudson 2020). Using relatively homogenous groups is also an advantage because it cuts down the possibility that some participants will feel uncomfortable expressing their opinions in front of people who are seen as being more educated, knowledgeable or of higher social status. A central issue in the recruitment of participants is whether to use strangers or groups of people who already know each other. In general, naturally occurring groups are seen as preferable because it is easier to create an instant rapport and get participants to open up if they are talking to people they know rather than complete strangers (Kitzinger 2005). Many studies have involved researchers questioning groups of friends or colleagues at the residence of one of the participants, which has the benefit of a familiar social setting that gives the research an ethnographic feel. The size of the focus groups must also be carefully considered. Most focus groups use between six and ten participants, though as few as four or as many as 12 is common. Larger groups should provide a wider spectrum of views but limit the amount that any single person can say. So there is a tradeoff between depth and breadth. Larger groups can also appear intimidating to some participants and may make them nervous about expressing opinions.

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In terms of how many focus groups to run, as with other qualitative forms of questioning it is advisable to continue until you reach a “saturation” point, where you are hearing the same views and opinions being repeated. Finally, when it comes to the analysis of focus group data, it is generally preferable to use an iterative approach, where the researcher identifies themes and patterns through listening, transcribing and re-listening to the focus group recordings (Braun and Clarke 2006). FOCUS GROUP CASE STUDY: MEDIA NARRATIVES AND PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEFICIT DEBATE The 2008 great financial crisis led to a sharp increase in worldwide sovereign debt as states sought to prevent a major depression becoming a slump. Berry (2019) examined how the debates over how to respond to this rise in government debt were covered in the British media and the impact that reporting had on public knowledge and attitudes. To do this, he combined a thematic content analysis of print and broadcast coverage with the findings of audience focus groups. The content analysis established that while broadcast media provided accurate accounts as to the reasons behind the rise in government deficit – the contraction in the tax base caused by an unusually steep recession – the right-wing media featured false claims that historical Labour overspending was to blame. Across both broadcasting and press, the rise in the deficit was presented as creating an economic crisis threatening interest rate rises, a currency devaluation – and even national bankruptcy. When it came to how to respond to the rise in the deficit, press and broadcast media were united in claiming that austerity measures consisting of regressive tax rises and sharp cuts to public spending were the only possible response. The focus groups revealed that participants saw the rise in deficit in line with press accounts as being due to Labour overspending. As one participant put it, the problem was “historical overspending as well, even before the crisis happened there has been overspending by government and increasing the debt and the problems trying to service that debt” (Low income group, Glasgow). When it came to which parts of public spending has contributed to the deficit, the media also appeared to play an important role. However, it wasn’t simply that respondents reproduced the explanations for the deficit that appeared at the time in media texts. Instead, respondents pointed to issues with long-term negative media visibility that had little or no impact on the deficit such as welfare payments, quangos, foreign aid and the EU. Unexpectedly, immigration was cited in nine out of the 16 focus groups, and it was particularly prominent as an explanation in groups of low income or older participants, where it was often the first factor that was identified. In one

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group, a participant spoke of immigrants “taking all the money and bleeding it dry” (Low income group, Glasgow). In another group, a participant spoke of how letting in more people meant that the “books are not going to balance”. A key reason for such beliefs were emotive reports in the press on benefit fraud or welfare payments made to immigrants. As one participant put it: Look at that one a month ago in the paper she had ten passports for claiming for ten people. It was all illegal immigrants and she was claiming that they had kids and all the rest of it. [Low income group, Glasgow] Three conclusions flow from these focus group findings: (1) public understanding of the contours of public spending is extremely limited, (2) the public falsely sees the economy as akin to a fixed container and (3) citizens will overestimate the contribution of issues that have high, sustained, negative visibility in the media, especially if media accounts focus on emotive and atypical cases whose existence is then taken to be widespread. This illustrates the need for journalists to routinely put statistics on state expenditure into context so the public is better informed about the relative sizes of different elements of the public spending “pie”. When it came to how to respond to the deficit, the measures that participants identified closely matched both in occurrence and frequency what appeared in broadcasting and the press. However, this didn’t necessarily mean that people accepted the legitimacy of these policies or were unable to go beyond them and suggest alternatives. For instance, in the focus groups there was widespread opposition to cuts to frontline services, despite such arguments being strongly made in press accounts. Nevertheless, press reporting appeared significant in building support for cuts to other areas. For instance, a number of respondents echoed the argument prominent in newspaper accounts that “gilt-edged” public sector pensions were being unfairly subsidised in comparison to those in the private sector and should be reduced. Questions of affordability were strongly linked by focus groups members with what was seen as the scale of the debt, and this reflected the threatening narratives that were common in the media. One participant, despite having voted Labour, described them as the “worst government in the last 100 years or whatever” who had “led the country into a disaster owe money all over the damn place, got this national debt that’s zooming up” (Middle class group, Warwickshire). Media accounts also appeared to influence the belief that waste in the public sector was so widespread that the deficit could be reduced primarily through efficiency savings. A common complaint was too many non-jobs or

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administrators. As one respondent put it, “You go into any hospital there are nearly as many administrators as there are doctors or nurses, they could [do] away with them, they didn’t have them years ago” (Senior citizens, Glasgow). Finally, the study examined whether the alternatives to austerity – such as the instruction of a land value tax or financial transaction tax – being pushed by the trade unions and the fringes of the Labour left would be familiar to audiences. However, virtually nobody had heard of these alternatives, reflecting their invisibility in mainstream media accounts.

4. Triangulation

In many ways, survey and focus groups provide complementary types of information about audiences, so it is not surprising that many studies combine the two approaches in order to build up a more comprehensive picture of how people think.

For instance, Runge and Hudson (2020) used 12 focus groups and a nationally representative online YouGov survey of adults to explore how British people view six economic concepts: inflation, unemployment, GDP, interest rates, trade, and deficit and debt. The survey tested their knowledge of these indicators and how much they were trusted. This revealed that indicators closer to people’s everyday lives, such as inflation, tended to be better understood than more remote concepts such as GDP. The survey also revealed that knowledge in this area was highly stratified, with socio-economic status, education levels, age and gender all impacting how knowledgeable, confident and interested people were in these economic statistics. The focus groups broadened this knowledge base by exploring how people conceptualised these indicators. A key finding that emerged was that most people could only see the economic indicators through their own personal lens and struggled to understand how they related to the economy as a whole. So although most people understood that raising interest rates would make their mortgages more expensive, few could understand why the Bank of England would raise rates or what impact it would have on the aggregate economy.

Surveys or focus groups can also be combined with other forms of audience research. Barnes and Hicks (2018) utilised survey data from the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS), a form of automated content analysis called structural topic modelling and an experimental survey to explore how media narratives impacted public attitudes towards fiscal policy. The structural topic modelling

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revealed that right-of-centre newspapers were more pro-austerity than left-ofcentre titles, and the data from the BSAS showed that pro-austerity attitudes correlated with the readership of right-of-centre newspapers – even after controlling for political affiliation and a host of other demographic factors. The experimental survey, which involved exposing participants to messages that either emphasised or downplayed the dangers of large deficits (similar to arguments in the Guardian and Telegraph), found that exposure to Guardian messages made people less deficit averse but viewing Telegraph messages had no impact. The authors explain this finding by speculating that negative deficit messages were so common in the media in preceding years that exposure to one additional message would have been unlikely to have had an additional impact on participants. 5. Conclusion

This chapter set out to examine different methodological approaches to studying audiences and how, when combined with content studies, they can be used to draw conclusions about media influence. As has been demonstrated, surveys and focus groups produce very different data about audiences. Surveys are useful for the big picture overview of how populations think about a subject but provide a relatively shallow account of public opinion. In contrast, focus groups are useful for unpacking the structure of audience beliefs. So focus groups can tell you how people form opinions as well as the beliefs and knowledge that underpin them. They also allow researchers to trace the source of opinions and explore the conditions under which audiences accept or reject messages they encounter in the media. However, to build up the most complete picture of how audiences see the world and are susceptible to media influence, it is best to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in a process of triangulation. List of Concepts Introduced

• Surveys; • Focus groups; • Triangulation. Key Readings on Audience Research

• Berry, M. (2019). The Media, the Public and the Great Financial Crisis. Routledge. • Deacon, D., Pickering, M., Golding, P. and Murdock, G. (2021). Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Methods in Media and Cultural Analysis. Bloomsbury.

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• Killick, A. (2020). Rigged: Understanding “the Economy” in Brexit Britain. Manchester University Press. • Kitzinger, J. (2005). “Focus Group Research: Using Group Dynamics to Explore Perceptions, Experiences and Understandings”. In Holloway, I., ed., Qualitative Research in Health Care, pp. 56–70. Open University Press. • Runge, J. and Hudson, N. (2020). “Public Understanding of Economics and Economic Statistics”. ESCoE Occasional Paper 03. Available from: https:// escoe-webs​ite.s3.amazon​aws.com/wp-cont​ent/uplo​ads/2020/11/26140​ 838/ESCoE-OP03-Pub​l ic-Unders​tand​ing-of-Econom​ics-and-Econo​m icSta​t ist​ics-V1.pdf. References Afoko, C. and Vockins, D. (2013). “Framing the Economy: The Austerity Story”. New Economics Foundation. Available from: https://newec​onom​ics.org/uplo​ ads/files/a1241​6779​f 2dd​4153​c _2h​m6ix​r yj.pdf [Accessed 14 March 2022]. Barnes, L. and Hicks, T. (2018). “Making Austerity Popular: The Media and Mass Attitudes toward Fiscal Policy”. American Journal of Political Science, 62(2), pp. 340–354. Berry, M. (2018). “Austerity, Media and the UK Public”. In Schifferes, S., Knowles, S. and Basu, L., eds., The Media and Austerity: Comparative Perspectives, pp. 43–62. Routledge. Berry, M. (2019). The Media, the Public and the Great Financial Crisis. Routledge. Boyer, P. and Petersen, M. (2018). “Folk-Economic Beliefs: An Evolutionary Model”. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 41, pp. 1–65. Braun, V., and Clarke, V. (2006). “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology”. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101. Deacon, D., Pickering, M., Golding, P. and Murdock, G. (2021). Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Methods in Media and Cultural Analysis. Bloomsbury. Delli Carpini, M.X. and Williams, B. (1994). “The Method is the Message: Focus Groups as a method of Social, Psychological, and Political Inquiry”. In Delli Carpini, M.X., Huddy, L. and Shapiro, R., eds., Research in Micropolitics: New Directions in Political Psychology, pp. 57–85. JAI Press. Duffy, B., Hall, S., O’Leary, D. and Pope, S. (2013). “Generation Strains: A Demos and Ipsos MORI Report on Changing Attitudes to Welfare”. Demos. Available from: www.demos.co.uk/files/Demos_I​psos​_Gen​erat​ion_​Stra​ins_​web.pdf?137​ 8677​272 [Accessed 14 March 2022]. Gamson, W. (1992). Talking Politics. Cambridge University Press. Jennings, W. and Wlezien, C. (2018). “Election Polling Errors across Time and Space”. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, pp. 276–283. Killick, A. (2020). Rigged: Understanding “the Economy” in Brexit Britain. Manchester University Press. Kitzinger, J. (2005). “Focus Group Research: Using Group Dynamics to Explore Perceptions, Experiences and Understandings”. In Holloway, I., ed., Qualitative Research in Health Care, pp. 56–70. Open University Press. Liebes, T. and Katz, E. (1990). The Export of Meaning. Oxford University Press.

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Marken, S. (2018). “Still Listening: The State of Telephone Surveys.” Gallup Methodology Blog. Available from: https://news.gal​lup.com/opin​ion/meth​odol​ ogy/225​143/listen​ing-state-teleph​one-surv​eys.aspx [Accessed 14 March 2022]. Martin, R. (2002). Financialization of Daily Life. Temple University Press. Norrish, A. (2018). “What’s the Economy? Exploring How People Feel about Economics and Why We Need to Improve It”. Economy. Available from: www. ecnmy.org/wp-cont​ent/uplo​ads/2017/11/Explor​i ng-How-Peo​ple-Feel-AboutEconom​ics-Resea​rch-Rep​ort-2017-ecnmy.org_.pdf [Accessed 14 March 2022]. Philo, G. and Berry, M. (2004). Bad News from Israel. Pluto Press. Reeves, A. and de Vries, R. (2016). “Does Media Coverage Influence Public Attitudes towards Welfare Recipients? The Impact of the 2011 English Riots”. British Journal of Sociology, 67(2), pp. 281–306. Runge, J. and Hudson, N. (2020). “Public Understanding of Economics and Economic Statistics”. ESCoE Occasional Paper No. 03. Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Schifferes, S.A. (2015). “Why the Public Doesn’t Trust the Financial Press”. In Schifferes, S. and Roberts, R., eds., The Media and Financial Crises: Comparative and Historical Perspectives, pp. 153–168. Routledge. Wiśniowski, A., Sakshaug, J.W., Perez Ruiz, D.A. and Blom, A.G. (2020). “Integrating Probability and Nonprobability Samples for Survey Inference”. Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 8(1), pp. 120–147. YouGov (2015). “Government Cuts”. Available from: https://d25​d 250​6sfb​94s.clo​ udfr​ont.net/cumu​lus_​uplo​ads/docum​ent/umk​a ry6​0am/YG-Archi​ves-Pol-Track​ ers-Gov​ernm​ent%20C​uts-040​515.pdf [Accessed 14 March 2022].

PART III

News Production: Best Practices for Investigating Economic and Business Stories Chapter 13: Making Sense of Economic Data Chapter 14: Economic News Approaches: Journalism Practitioners’ Experience of News Production Chapter 15: Where Theory Meets Practice: Practitioner Tips for Better Economic Journalism

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-15

13 MAKING SENSE OF ECONOMIC DATA Donal Palcic and Darragh Flannery

Advanced Organiser

This chapter provides an overview to making sense of economic data and economic research that are commonly utilised within the media. We begin by explaining why this topic warrants attention. Given its strong bearing on people’s lives, we underline how important it is to understand and interpret economic news and research accurately. We next focus on three specific areas of economic data that are routinely reported on but often misunderstood. These are: • Gross domestic product; • Unemployment; • Inflation. Detailed explanations on how these measures are constructed are provided to enable a better understanding of what they show and what they do not show. We then examine concepts to help make sense of economic data published by government agencies/departments or research carried out across different disciplines that may have economic/social implications. We explore these topics in detail to help better interpret and communicate this type of data and research to the public. We do this through the lens of understanding causation, correlation and data manipulation. Within this, we focus on two key issues, namely: • Cause and effect; • Data visualisation: Identifying misleading information. DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-16

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Examples pertaining to economic media specifically will be provided throughout from a range of textual and graphic media analyses. Selected material for use in aiding student understanding is provided. 1.  An Introduction to Interpreting Economic Data and Analyses: Background and Context

Economics pervades many aspects of our lives. Choices made by governments around important issues such as taxation, by individuals relating to spending or by firms on whether to invest in new areas are all influenced by the economics of such decisions. Therefore, in order to describe and analyse the thinking behind such decisions properly, it is important to understand some of the key economic concepts and data that are commonly reported in the media. Recent research carried out by Runge and Hudson (2020) in the UK indicated that the public communication of economic issues and statistics needs to improve. They found that, while there seems to be a reasonable level of public understanding of particular issues such as interest rates due to their impact on mortgages, public understanding of broader economic concepts was, in general, very weak. Furthermore, the authors found that much of the public do desire a better understanding of key economic concepts. Interestingly, one of the recommendations of this report is for better engagement by researchers, public bodies and policymakers with those involved in the communication of economics and economic statistics to the public, such as journalists. As well as this, an understanding of such concepts can be viewed in the context of issues such as fake news and disinformation. For example, a recent report by the House of Commons highlighted the role of better education and specifically notes that “in a democracy, we need to experience a plurality of voices and, critically, to have the skills, experience and knowledge to gauge the veracity of those voices” (House of Commons 2019, p. 6). The role of journalism in combatting such an important issue is underlined in a recent UNESCO report highlighting that journalists must “go beyond ‘he said, she said’ journalism, and to investigate the veracity of claims made by those being covered” (UNESCO 2019, p. 11). In this context, this chapter has two overarching aims. The first is to provide students with an understanding of important economic concepts that are commonly reported in the media but can often be misinterpreted. For instance, statistics such as gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment rates and inflation are routinely referred to in the media as measures of economic activity. However, these indicators may mask some important trends within an economy and may not be the best barometer of how it is performing or affects people’s daily lives. For example, GDP is a common measure of the monetary value of the output/production of goods and services in a country in a given year. It is seen as a key metric for understanding the health of an

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economy, and GDP growth figures are regularly commented on in the media. However, the way in which GDP is calculated means that these fluctuations may have very little impact on the day-to-day lives of the public. Similarly, the reporting of price rises through the use of average inflation figures such as those released by central banks is potentially a poor way in which to explain how economic forces may affect people’s standard of living. We delve into some of the alternative ways that the “real” economy can be measured in Section 2. The second aim of this chapter is to highlight some common pitfalls in relation to how quantitative research and data are reported, which we will cover in detail later in Section 3. A cornerstone of research within economics is to examine how the decisions made by people or governments are affected by different forces or interventions. For example, such research may examine whether increasing social welfare benefits makes people less likely to look for work or if introducing a tax on sugary drinks encourages people to make healthier consumption choices. To help understand and report such research more accurately, it is essential to understand the difference between whether two things are simply related to each other by coincidence (correlated) or whether one things causes the other to change (causation). The presentation or visualisation of data is also increasingly important in communicating complex issues to the public. It is therefore important to understand how to best present economic data and how this data may be manipulated to present a certain narrative. For example, narrowing or extending the range of the vertical axis on a graph can significantly alter the way in which the trend data is interpreted and thus frame a story in a particular way, while cherry-picking data over short timeframes rather than over longer timeframes can again frame data in a positive or negative light. Section 3 of this chapter covers these issues in more detail. The next section will present and explain three core macro-economic indicators that feature prominently in the public domain but can often be misinterpreted – namely GDP, unemployment and inflation. We then move on to examining common pitfalls in the presentation of data and economic research in more detail in Section 3 of the chapter. In examining all these topics, we use relevant examples from the media to aid your understanding. 2.  Interpreting Different Measures of Economic Activity Overall Economic Activity

When measuring overall economic activity in a country, the most common and widely reported measure used is gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is defined as the market value of the final goods and services produced within a country over a specific period of time (generally either a year or a quarter).

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It’s important to note that only the value of final goods and services is included in GDP, with the value of inputs used in the production process excluded in order to avoid double counting. In addition, GDP is a measure of production and not sales. In other words, the production of a good in a given quarter or year is counted in GDP for that time period even if it is held in inventory and not sold until a later date. How Is GDP Measured?

There are three main methods for calculating the value of goods and services produced: (1) a production or value added approach, (2) an expenditure approach or (3) an income approach. Theoretically, the value of GDP estimated using each approach should be equal. However, in reality, obtaining the detailed data required to estimate GDP accurately is highly problematic. In practice, most national statistical agencies use a combination of all three approaches to estimate GDP for their economies, with flash estimates of GDP growth often based on the expenditure approach until other data becomes available. While GDP is a useful measure of economic activity for any country, and GDP per capita measures are often used to compare relative standards of living across countries, it is important to understand (1) some of the main issues with measuring GDP and (2) what GDP does not measure (see the box “When GDP Goes Wild – Leprechaun Economics in Ireland!”). One of the biggest problems with the reporting of GDP figures in the media is that GDP growth is often framed as good news for the overall economy, even though the distribution of the gains from growth can often be very unequal. An economy can experience strong GDP growth, but if this results in gains in income for the top 1 per cent only and those in the bottom 99 per cent see no change in income, then the overall standard of living and well-being of most people in the economy is not improving. News coverage that fixates on GDP growth and other headline indicators will therefore miss how changes in economic growth impact most households. As with most economic data, looking “under the bonnet” and examining other important indicators of economic activity is key. In most countries, statistics on growth in median household earnings and disposable income are produced on a quarterly or annual basis. Many countries also produce statistics on how income is distributed across the income scale, as well as measures of inequality such as poverty or deprivation rates. In addition, to address the limitations of GDP growth as a measure of changes in the standard of living, some countries have developed alternative measures of well-being that are reported alongside economic growth figures. Such measures analyse changes in factors such as health, education and skills, relationships, the environment and personal finances. A good example is the OECD’s Better Life Index,

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which allows for a comparison of well-being across countries based on 11 different topics that the OECD identified as essential in terms of living conditions and quality of life.1

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman (12 July 2016 via Twitter) “Leprechaun economics: Ireland reports 26 percent growth! But it doesn’t make sense. Why are these in GDP?”

When GDP Goes Wild – Leprechaun Economics in Ireland!

In the summer of 2016, Ireland’s national statistics office reported that Ireland’s GDP had increased by a staggering 26 per cent in Krugman’s Tweet quotes an Irish 2015 (this figure was subsequently Central Statistics report from 2016, revised upwards). The Nobel which states: laureate Paul Krugman coined the phrase “Leprechaun economics” “A handful of companies in the tech when he tweeted about the growth sector relocated their IP assets of reported at the time. While the patents here last year amid the global growth figures reported were clampdown on tax avoidance by estimated accurately, what was multinationals. This had the effect really happening was that a number of transferring billions in capital of large multinational companies assets to Ireland Inc and boosting moved some of their intellectual the measured level of investment. property (IP), patents and assets These companies are also involved such as leased aircraft to Ireland, in contract manufacturing, whereby which increased the estimated level they engage third party companies of investment. Ireland has since had abroad to manufacture products on to create its own unique measure of their behalf. economic activity (modified gross However, the exports which never national income) that strips out the touch down here are reflected in our effect of these activities that have trade balance. Hence the 102 per little or no interaction with the cent growth in net exports last year” domestic Irish economy. https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/ status/752841032870551552

Labour Market Activity

Outside of GDP growth, changes in unemployment rates are one of the most reported measures of economic activity. However, it is often weakly understood how this indicator is estimated and what other measures of labour market activity should be examined when interpreting trends in unemployment. There are two main measures of unemployment used in most countries. The first simply measures the number of people claiming unemployment

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benefit (in some countries this is called unemployment insurance, while in others it is called jobseekers benefit or allowance). The criteria for eligibility to claim unemployment benefit can vary substantially by country and it is therefore not a great measure for comparing trends internationally. The second and most common measure used is to calculate a harmonised rate of unemployment using the same methodology that can be compared across countries. This method relies on estimating the size of the labour force, which includes the economically active (employed and unemployed) proportion of the working age population. Importantly, to be considered unemployed but included in the labour force, a person needs to be actively seeking work but unable to find employment. Since it would be impossible to survey every individual in the country to determine whether they are economically active, national statistical agencies use surveys of a smaller representative number of people to extrapolate an estimate of the labour force and unemployment rate for the entire economy. For those not in employment to be included in the labour force, they need to indicate that they have been actively seeking work in the four weeks prior to the survey or that they are waiting to take up a job that they have been offered. Anyone who indicates that they have not been seeking employment in the previous four weeks is excluded from the estimate of the labour force and does not appear in unemployment statistics. It is therefore always useful to examine statistics on the labour force participation rate as well as the employment rate when examining trends in the labour market over time. How key indicators are calculated: Labour force participation rate =

Unemployment rate =

Employment rate =

Number of people in labour force Total working age population

Number of (economically active) unemployed people Number of people in the labour force

Number of employed people Total working age population

Because a person only needs to have been working for at least one hour to be counted as “employed” in labour force statistics, it is also useful to examine other important indicators of labour market slack such as underemployment, which measures the number of people working part-time (and therefore deemed economically active and included in the labour force) but who would prefer full-time hours if they were available. There are also groups of people outside the labour force who are considered more “attached” and are referred to as the “potential additional labour force”. These groups include

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(1) people seeking work but not immediately available and (2) people available for work but not seeking work. When combined with headline measures of unemployment, these additional indicators give a more accurate overview of labour market slack in an economy, but they are often overlooked in the reporting of labour market statistics in mainstream media. Price Levels

There are many different measures of inflation (the rate of growth of prices in the economy). However, the most commonly reported indicator in the media is based on changes in the overall consumer price index (CPI). The CPI measures changes in the price of a representative basket of thousands of different goods and services typically consumed by households every month. The prices of different categories of goods and services are weighted so that each takes its relevant share within household budgets. For example, given that most people typically spend far more on energy than on cereal, a 5 per cent increase in the price of electricity or gas will have a far greater impact on the overall rate of inflation than a 5 per cent increase in the price of cereal. The weights applied to each category of good and service are determined by surveys of the expenditure patterns of a representative sample of households in a country and are typically updated every five years. In simple terms, whenever prices increase in an economy, consumers and firms suffer from a loss of purchasing power – for a given amount of money, you can afford to buy less than you could previously. From society’s point of view, whether inflation is a good or a bad thing and who wins or loses are difficult questions to answer. As with a lot of economic issues, there are a number of nuances that mean any answer to these questions has to start with “it depends”. Determining whether inflation is “bad” very much depends on the circumstances. Periods of excessively high inflation, known as “hyperinflation” (when monthly inflation rates exceed 50 per cent), can severely destabilise an economy. However, episodes of hyperinflation are rare and only one case has arisen to date in the twenty-first century (Zimbabwe in 2008–2009). In countries where increases in inflation are more moderate and sustained, borrowers benefit, whereas savers lose out. For example, if I deposit €1,000 in a savings account today that earns an interest rate of 2 per cent, I will have €1,020 in my savings account after one year. However, if inflation during the year was 5 per cent, the “real” purchasing power of my money will have fallen, since what I could have purchased for €1,000 one year ago will now cost me €1,050. For borrowers, this runs in the opposite direction. For those in employment, whether they suffer from a period of inflation or not will depend on what happens to their wages over the same timeframe. If their wages increase at a faster rate than inflation, then they will be better off in real terms, whereas if wage growth is lower than inflation, then the

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purchasing power of their income is eroded. For this reason, sustained periods of inflation can be particularly painful for those on fixed incomes such as pensioners. Unfortunately, the cohorts of society that suffer the most from inflation are those on the lowest incomes. This is particularly the case when overall inflation is largely driven by price increases in necessity goods such as energy, food and housing. Whereas middle or upper income cohorts may simply save less or have to cut back on non-essential expenditure (holidays, hospitality, etc.) during periods of inflation, those on lower incomes are often forced to cut back on necessities such as food or heating. One final and important point to make is that, while statistics on the rate of growth in the headline overall consumer price index are a very useful measure of the average rate of inflation, everyone has their own rate of personal inflation that depends on their individual expenditure patterns. For example, if a large proportion of people in a country rent accommodation, paying closer attention to movements in the amount of rent paid by tenants within the overall CPI figure will show how renters are impacted compared to those who own their place of residence or pay a mortgage on it. When interpreting inflation statistics and reporting on them, paying attention to the factors driving any increases in prices by looking at which categories of goods and services are seeing the biggest price rises is therefore very important. A deeper dive into the factors underlying any increase in the overall consumer price index can help distinguish between how the average household is affected and how poorer households are impacted. Take a Moment When reading about or reporting on any headline macro-economic indicator, always be aware of what the indicator is actually measuring (and what it doesn’t measure). • Take the time to look a little deeper and see what underlying factors are causing any change; • Think about how different cohorts of society are impacted by any change; • Are there alternative indicators that you can also examine to get a better picture of what is happening?

3.  Causation, Correlation and Data Manipulation

In making sense of economic data published by government agencies/ departments or research carried out across different disciplines that may have

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economic/social implications, there are a number of important things to keep in mind. For the former, taking the time to understand how data is being framed and presented to you is useful. For the latter, understanding the difference between correlation and causation is important. Here, we explore these topics in detail to help you better interpret and communicate this type of data and research to the public. Cause and Effect

The path from cause to effect is not a simple one. While many studies may infer causal effects from their analysis, it is important to understand why this may not necessarily be the case. Firstly, we define what we mean by correlation and causation. ⇨Correlation: When two variables or points of data change at the same time; ⇨Causation: When one thing directly affects another. Disentangling whether two (or more) factors are randomly correlated with each other or have some type of causal relationship is an extremely difficult undertaking in fields such as business or economics. In fields such as medical science, the most common method used to determine cause and effect is to run an experiment, typically implemented through a randomised control trial. For example, in simple terms, if you want to know whether a new vaccine helps people avoid a certain illness, you would get a sample of people (let’s say 10,000) and randomly provide half of them (5,000) with the new vaccine, while the other half (5,000) are not provided with the vaccine. After a certain period, the impact of this vaccine can then be measured by observing the outcomes of both groups. If the group that received the new vaccine sees obvious and significant health benefits (such as not getting ill) compared to the other group, this is good evidence that the vaccine causes a positive health effect. However, conducting such experiments to examine economic and social outcomes is extremely problematic due to ethical concerns. For example, if I wanted to examine the impact participating in higher education might have on people’s earnings, I could decide to conduct an experiment whereby I take a group of young people and randomly allow half of them to go to college but deny the other half the same opportunity. I could then follow up with both groups in ten years to see the differences in outcomes between the two groups. The negative ethical (and legal) considerations are obvious. Experimental evidence does exist within economics – see the box “Example of an Experimental Study in Economics: The Basic Income Experiment in Finland” for an example.

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EXAMPLE OF AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY IN ECONOMICS: THE BASIC INCOME EXPERIMENT IN FINLAND In 2017 and 2018, the Finnish government provided €560 per month to 2,000 unemployed people. The money was tax exempt and paid regardless of any other income they may have had or whether they were actively looking for work. In economics, this type of payment is known as providing a basic income. To evaluate the impact of introducing such a scheme, the 2,000 recipients were selected through random sampling among those who in November 2016 received an unemployment benefit in Finland. The “control” group consisted of those who in November 2016 received an unemployment benefit but were not selected for the experiment. The Finnish basic income experiment was the world’s first basic income experiment that was nationwide, statutory and based on a randomised field experiment. It provides a really useful example of using experiments to conduct research that has economic and social outcomes as its measure of success. See the articles below for examples of how the results of this experiment were reported. www.theg​uard​ian.com/soci​ety/2020/may/07/finn​ish-basic-inc​ome-pilotimpro​ved-wellbe​ing-study-finds-coro​navi​rus www.dw.com/en/does-finl​and-show-the-way-to-univer​sal-basic-inc​ome/a53595​886

Real-world experimental evidence for most economic policy interventions is very limited, and we must therefore typically rely on other ways of trying to disentangle the pathway of cause and effect. To help navigate this area, here are some key terms to be aware of: ⇨ Observational data: When it is not possible to run an experiment to examine an outcome of interest, researchers in economics typically rely on what is known as observational data. This is data that collects information on individuals, firm or states in a retrospective manner and not in an experimental way. For example, given the amount of public resources spent on funding schemes such as the Erasmus exchange programme, a researcher may want to better understand the impact of spending some time abroad while studying at college. To this end, they could create a survey with questions around graduates’ labour market outcomes (employment status, wages, etc.). They could administer the survey to a group of college graduates, some of whom spent some time abroad studying while in college and others who did not. The data collected would be observational, as it is simply “observing” the students’ responses and not introducing some manner of experimental aspect to the analysis.

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⇨ Sample selection: A common issue when gathering data for research purposes is getting a sample of people that is representative of your target population. For example, let us assume that, in the example provided above, the researcher who conducts the survey only gets 40 graduates to complete the survey, 38 of whom are female, come from high-income families and studied engineering while in college. It is obvious that this sample of individuals is not going to be reflective of the wider population of graduates. In reporting the results of any research, it is vital to understand that having a large, diverse sample to draw from is very important to be of relevance to the wider population. This is more commonly known as the law of large numbers. ⇨ Ceteris paribus: This Latin phrase means “all other things being equal”. In order to effectively interpret research within economics and other subject areas, it is vital to be aware of this concept, since when we wish to quantify the impact of a certain policy change or the impact of an existing policy on important economic or social outcomes, we need to compare like with like. To unpack these kinds of issues further, let’s work through an example from the media in the box “Single-Sex over Co-Ed Schools” that focuses on an important topic within education policy and an area of policy that is of interest to economists given the relationship between higher levels of education and economic performance.

Single-Sex over Co-Ed Schools: Girls Do Better in “Nearly All Academic Measures” – Report www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/single-sexover-co-ed-schools-girls-do-better-in-nearly-all-academic-measures-report/ IFU4DDE5BXZU7TZGL6OJCEBYGY/ Ceteris paribus in the media. The message of this headline in relation to the impact of single-sex schools on academic outcomes gives the impression that this type of schooling is superior to co-educational types. However, readingthe article more closely gives a more rounded picture of what this is based on and some potential issues with such a conclusion. For example, we see that the report in question has been commissioned by the Alliance of Girls’ Schools, Australasia. The article also

Source: Photo by Yogendra Singh: https://unsplash.com/@yogendras31

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notes that previous research in the area “points out that there may be other factors that affect the outcomes of students at co-ed and single-sex schools that weren’t captured here”. Furthermore, they refer to “a 1999 longitudinal study based on data collected from students over 18 years, which found much of the differences in outcomes could be explained by differences in prior student achievement or socioeconomic background”. In other words, these are alluding to the principle of “ceteris paribus”. To provide an even better picture to the reader around this analysis, the author could also have included information on the sample of data used and the type of analysis utilised in the report referenced.

Take a Moment Think about a report or research you have just read. • Does it suggest that a certain policy or intervention caused some behavioural change in people or some other outcome to increase or decrease? • How was the research study designed? • Did it account for or discuss other factors that might have affected the outcome of interest that are not related to the policy/intervention itself? • Is the sample used in the analysis representative of the population it is speaking about or may it have a problem with sample selection?

4.  Data Visualisation: Identifying Misleading Information

The visualisation of economic data is increasingly common across a range of media formats. This can be highly effective in communicating complex issues to the public but can also provide an opportunity to present a certain false narrative if desired. Here we outline some useful tips to look out for when interpreting visualised information. Manipulating the Y-Axis

The two graphs in Figure 13.1 and Figure 13.2 present the exact same data: the number of 15–24-year-olds unemployed in Ireland across four points in time. However, the graphs are presented differently, in that the range of the y-axis is different. In the graph in Figure 13.1, the values range from 0–300,000. In the graph in Figure 13.2, the values range from 0–50,000. In trying to

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FIGURE 13.1 Graph

with broader range in the y-axis

Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 2022.

FIGURE 13.2 Graph

with narrower range in the y-axis

Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 2022.

understand the trend in our variable of interest (young people out of work), these graphs present very different interpretations. From looking at the graph on the left, there does not seem to be much change in the data. However, when we change the scale of the y-axis to be more proportionate and realistic to the data at hand, we see evidence of an increase in youth unemployment numbers across this time period.

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Changing the Baseline

Sticking with the number of 15–24-year-olds unemployed in Ireland, we can also highlight the impact of changing the baseline on interpreting the same information. The baseline (where the vertical axis begins) normally starts at zero. This is the case with the bar chart in Figure 13.4, which shows a small but steady increase in unemployment numbers across time. However, with the bar chart in Figure 13.3, we have changed the baseline to begin at 32,000,

FIGURE 13.3 Bar

chart with baseline starting at 32,000

Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 2022.

FIGURE 13.4 Bar

chart with baseline starting at zero

Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 2022.

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which gives the impression that the change in unemployment is far more significant. Cherry-Picking Data

The two graphs in Figure 13.5 and Figure 13.6 again present the number of 15–24-year-olds unemployed in Ireland across four points in time, and both use relatively recent data. In the graph in Figure 13.5, we have chosen our statistic of interest over four different months in 2021, namely June–September. This shows a relatively positive light on the labour market conditions for this age group, with the numbers unemployed falling slightly. In the graph in Figure 13.6, we extend the dates examined to include annual

FIGURE 13.5 Graph

with narrower date range

Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 2022.

FIGURE 13.6 Graph

with wider date range

Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 2022.

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data from January 2019 to January 2022. This shows a very different trend, with the number of young people unemployed rising steadily. By cherrypicking the same statistic, i.e., picking certain months, we can present a completely different picture of what is happening in the labour market. Take a Moment Think about a graph of economic data you have just seen and ask yourself the following questions: • What value does the y-axis begin at? • What time period does the data refer to? • What scale is used in the y-axis?

5. Conclusion

This chapter first provided a deeper understanding of concepts within economics that are commonly reported in the media but can often be misinterpreted. It then drew attention to topics that help make sense of economic data or research that may have economic/social implications. Having a better sense of these issues allows us to interpret and communicate this type of information to the public more effectively. While the terms explored and examples utilised within this chapter are not exhaustive, they can help guide you to think about reporting economic data or research in a certain way and be watchful for attempts at manipulation. List of Concepts Introduced

• Interpretation of economic data; • Interpretation of economic research; • Communication of economics and economic statistics; • Gross domestic product; • Unemployment; • Inflation; • Employment rate; • Correlation; • Causation; • Observational study; • Sample selection; • Ceteris paribus.

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Further Practical Reading Key Studies in How the Media Covers the Economy

• Goidel, K., Procopio, S., Terrell, D. and Wu, D. (2010). “Sources of Economic News and Economic Expectations”. American Politics Research, 38(4), pp. 759–777. • Damstra, A., Boukes, M. and Vliegenthart, R. (2018). “The Economy. How Do the Media Cover It and What Are the Effects? A Literature Review”. Sociology Compass, 12(5), e12579. Studies Exploring the Use of Statistics and Data in Journalism

• Nguyen, A. and Lugo-Ocando, J. (2016). “The State of Data and Statistics in Journalism and Journalism Education: Issues and Debates”. Journalism, 17(1), pp. 3–17. • Leyblon, D. (2020). “Bad Data Visualization in the Time of COVID-19”. Medium. Available from: https://med​ium.com/nigh​t ing​a le/bad-datavisual​izat​ion-in-the-time-of-covid-19-5a9f8​198c​e3e. Note 1 See www.oecd​bett​erli​fein​dex.org/

References House of Commons (2019). Disinformation and “Fake News”: Final Report. Eighth Report of Session 2017–19. House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Runge, J. and Hudson, N. (2020) “Public Understanding of Economics and Economic Statistics”. ESCoE Occasional Paper No. 03. Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, National Institute of Economic and Social Research. UNESCO (2019). Journalism, Fake News & Disinformation: Handbook for Journalism Education and Training. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

14 ECONOMIC NEWS APPROACHES Journalism Practitioners’ Experience of News Production Audrey Galvin and Brian Hurley

Advance Organiser

Up to now, this book has mainly focused on the broad context of what economic journalism engages with, as well as the political and ideological underpinning of how this is conceptualised. From there, we outlined several useful methodological approaches to economic media analysis as a means of better understanding material outcomes that result from the economic newsmaking process. This chapter focuses on the production process itself from the perspective of those who produce economic news content – business and economic journalists. It is a collection of first-hand accounts, gathered via interviews with some key practitioners in the fields of economic and financial news journalism. It is organised thematically in terms of responses, with each section being preceded by some brief context as per the importance of the topic or line of questioning: • What is the role of the economic journalist? • How do stories get into a newspaper? • What are some of the difficulties or obstacles that you face in terms of doing economic journalism? • What is the effect of the professional communications or public relations industry in terms of news output? • How do financial journalists attain and manage “good” sources? • Who are your audience and to what extent does that audience define what you focus on in your stories? • What advice would you have for aspiring economic journalists? DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-17

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The chapter will give students the opportunity to learn from practitioners on how they approach financial journalism and some advice for navigating the field, the institutions and sources. There is also the opportunity for students to read first-hand the issues that are facing financial journalists. 1. Introduction

The primary intention of this chapter is to give an overview of how economic news practitioners see themselves – for example, what do they regard as being their most important skills and what are the issues that they face while covering finance and economic stories? The interviews focus on the approaches and understandings of topics such as signifiers of newsworthiness, story sourcing, means of achieving clarity for their audience and their advice for aspiring journalists in the field. Interviews took place online due to Covid19 restrictions. All quoted material is taken directly from the responses given. Interviewees Overview

The interviews represent a purposive sample of high-profile economic journalists in the UK and Ireland. It must be underlined that it is a limited sample of practitioners and intended only as a starting point for discussion among journalism students and practitioners. We do not critically engage with or interpret responses from journalists here, and they are intended to speak for themselves. List of Interviewees Name/Outlet

Biographical overview

Tom Lyons, Chief Executive of The Currency

Before his current role with The Currency, he worked with the Sunday Business Post as deputy editor and then as executive editor, having worked with the Irish Times, Sunday Independent, Sunday Times and Irish Independent. Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a lecturer who teaches on global media, innovation and human rights. She writes on journalism and development and investigative reporting in the Global South, and she has published extensively over the last decade on the media in Africa. She is the editor of Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms and Governments Control the News (Columbia University Press 2021). (Continued)

Anya Schiffrin, Director of the International Media, Advocacy and Communications (IMAC) Specialisation, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York

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Name/Outlet

Biographical overview

Chris Giles, Economics Editor at the Financial Times

Chris Giles is the economics editor at the Financial Times. He reports on international and UK economics. He has been the Financial Times’ economics editor since 2004 and the lead writer on UK economics. He worked for a year at the communications regulator Ofcom, reported for the BBC, and served for seven years as an economist with the Institute for Fiscal Studies. David Murphy has worked as a journalist for over 20 years. He is the political coverage editor of Raidió Teilifís Éireann, (RTÉ), Ireland’s national public broadcaster, and is RTÉ’s former business editor. Prior to joining RTÉ, he worked as a journalist with the Irish Independent. Simon Carswell is currently the public affairs editor at the Irish Times and was formerly the newspaper’s Washington correspondent. He was the finance correspondent from 2007 to 2012, reporting on the Irish financial crash and economic crisis. He previously worked at the Sunday Business Post from 1999 to 2007, where he was the news reporter and news editor. Will Goodbody is the business editor at Ireland’s national broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). He was RTÉ’s science and technology correspondent from 2013–2018. He previously worked for TV3 News and as markets reporter for the Sunday Business Post. Laura Noonan is the financial regulation editor at the Financial Times. She covers financial regulation, conduct and related topics across the world’s banks, insurers, asset managers, cryptocurrency companies and financial services companies. Previously, she served as an investment banking correspondent, US banking editor and acting Ireland correspondent at the FT. She also served as European banking correspondent at Thomson Reuters. Noonan also worked as a business reporter at both the Irish Independent and Sunday Business Post. Killian Woods is a senior reporter at the Business Post newspaper. He has been a reporter for the past seven years, working for the radio station Newstalk and online news website The Journal before joining the Business Post in 2019.

David Murphy, Political Coverage Editor at RTÉ

Simon Carswell, Public Affairs Editor at the Irish Times

Will Goodbody, Business Editor at RTÉ

Laura Noonan, Financial Regulation Editor at the Financial Times

Killian Woods, The Sunday Business Post

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2. Discussions What is the Role of a Financial or Economic Journalist?

We used this topic to gauge what the interviewees saw as their role or function in society. Do they see themselves as fulfilling a “watchdog” role? Are they definers of complex systems? Notwithstanding the pressures of operating within a pressurised newsroom and the power structures at play within a newsroom environment, essentially what do our exemplars see as their role or position in society? Anya Schiffrin: The role of the economic journalist to me is pretty clear. There’s this tension that I’ve written about between, I think, what we’d like, which is that journalists covering economics should be sort of explaining it to society. The reality is that very often they’re working for these specialised fields, and so they end up there. Tom Lyons: There are different types of financial journalists ranging from stock market reporters, business analysts, feature writers, personal finance experts, investigative reporters and so on. In general, their role is to report, explain, investigate and question what is going on in business and examine how that relates to society, politics and the future. Killian Woods: It’s important to report what’s in front of you and what is in the news, what’s the markets, what’s happening on those markets; you also need to be going one step further and interrogating that news or interrogating the framing of it and how its portrayed. We need to not take that at face value. Chris Giles: There’s an explanatory function … to explain what’s happening in the economy and what it means, why it matters, all of these things, whether it’s just on the cyclical performance or the underlying structural strength or weakness of an economy. Just doing that accurately and getting that right. Another function is to hold the authorities to account, question the people who are in positions of power and authority over the public because you have a privileged position to be able to question them. And you can’t just use that to try to be friends with them, you need to genuinely hold them to account for the decisions they’re making on behalf of the public. David Murphy: One of the key things is clarity. Business journalism is cluttered with language that is impenetrable to people who aren’t so familiar with it. Financial journalism, more than any other piece of journalism, is the art of making the complex simple. Will Goodbody: It also requires breaking complex topics down and making them comprehensible and digestible for viewers, listeners and readers. Rigorously stripping out misinformation, spin and inaccuracies and presenting the truth to the audience.

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How Do Stories “Get Into” a Newspaper?

Here, we wanted to get a sense of the process by which editors are engaged and stories pitched in such a way that they fit into mainstream news values and are made relatable to a wide audience. Will Goodbody: The process for deciding the contents of the report is generally collaborative between the journalist and the news and programme editors, and we often challenge one another’s thinking to make sure we are making correct decisions and covering all angles. Tom Lyons: It gets in the paper if it is thought to be interesting to the reader. If it involves large amounts of money, large numbers of consumers, high-profile investors or is in a hot area like, say, electric cars, space travel, renewable energy, it is more likely to get in. Chris Giles: What we do is we try and determine how important they [the stories] are. So I guess a big function … is a filtering function. There’s no point … in writing everything that happens. Readers don’t want it. They want you actually to be able to filter what matters and what doesn’t matter. Ultimately, it’s a judgement, and this is your news judgement, and this is one of the hardest things in the written report – to get your news judgement right. It’s a collective judgement of the news organisation and creates quite a lot of arguments internally that some are saying, “This is very important”, and I might say, “No, I think it’s really not important”, and through a process of arguing about things, we did tend to come to a view. It’s a subjective assessment and a judgement call. Readers don’t see it because they’ll see the outcome, they will see it on comment pages! So, you know, we are happy to disagree with each other there. What Are Some of the Difficulties or Obstacles That You Face in Terms of Doing Economic Journalism?

Financial journalism internationally was criticised extensively in the aftermath of the 2008 great financial crisis (see Chapter 1). We wanted to get a sense of what journalists’ response to this was and whether they felt conflicted about reporting on issues such as the construction and property sector during this period. This was a starting point for broader questions relating to obstacles and pressures that journalists face in terms of doing their job effectively and the degree to which standards are upheld. Simon Carswell: Was I uncomfortable about some of the things that were being written about the property market or the lack of a critical eye? Yeah, but I don’t think that that’s an issue for financial journalism but rather a lack of a critical approach to the property coverage. Certainly there were contacts made with the editor at the time in 2008 just for us to be cautious about

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our reporting when it comes to a run on the banks. But you never pull your punches on a story. Around the time when banks were under huge pressure in the summer of 2008, I was extremely careful about how I wrote stories, definitely financial stories. There is no better way to undermine the confidence of something than to write negatively about it in a newspaper. You just be a little bit more careful about how you report on it. David Murphy: There was an issue there, certainly with Irish Nationwide (building society), where they were lending to a lot of journalists. And I think that did, that certainly did create a problem. I think the fundamental point is that the stockbrokers, the rating agencies, and the banks themselves had convinced themselves for a long number of years that everything was going to be okay. The extent of the problem was always much worse than they predicted. It literally took years and years until the Irish state [and European bodies] could actually fully get to the bottom of how deep the losses were going to be in the Irish banks. Killian Woods: I published a story in the summer about the (Irish) state investing in two funds, and the Department of Finance got onto not me but my editor to say that, essentially, he’s acting like a bit of a Marxist. And I find that worrying that they feel okay to ring up my editor … trying to plant a seed in their (the editor’s) brain that there’s something that’s skewed or it’s imbalanced or it’s not quite right. Tom Lyons: In Ireland, business journalism doesn’t have the same resources as overseas, as it is a smaller market, but its standards are high in general. There is definitely more pressure in some publications to cover every story – first for online and then in print – which can make maintaining standards harder. There is a difference in the resources put into business journalism between Ireland and internationally. The standard of business journalism in Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times is probably better than it ever was. On the one hand, this is because journalists have access to far more information than they might have had before, but also there is a greater awareness of the need for strong writing and good storytelling. On the other hand, the price of accessing this content is expensive, so many people have to find stories about business journalism elsewhere. The standards of business journalism by, say, a poster on Reddit can vary wildly, from informative to being completely untrue. David Murphy: I think, perhaps, the problem is, where do you get the accurate information from? And that was the central issue I kept on coming across during the crash, because if a bank says that it’s got enough money, it doesn’t need additional capital, how do you prove otherwise? And the only way you can really prove it is to wait two years and find out how big the losses are going to be. Because predicting those losses is absolutely impossible. One of the sources of accurate information, and one of the sources to have an independent view to a certain extent of what’s going on with the banks,

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were the rating agencies. And they were hopelessly wrong, stockbrokers were hopelessly wrong, too. So where do you get that information? Will Goodbody: I think the constant demands of the internet and social media as a publishing and broadcasting platform, and the pressure to file rapidly, mean that financial journalism isn’t always as in-depth and considered as it might once have been across most media outlets. But the flip side of this is that the internet allows us as financial journalists to reach our audience much quicker than before and potentially to get our stories to a much larger audience. It also allows us to cover more stories, albeit in less depth. Resources clearly have an impact on standards in every media organisation. The more journalists, editors and technical staff you have, the more time you can spend on delivering the highest standards of journalism. What is the Effect of the Professional Communications or Public Relations Industry in Terms of News Output?

This question is in response to Davis (2003) pointing out how the use of more formalised PR channels has distorted the flow of contextual information, influencing news values within newsrooms and contributing to a fragmented and often lopsided approach to reporting. Chris Giles: We get bombarded with press releases from organisations, which are sometimes newsworthy and sometimes basically advertising for that organisation. I get bombarded with comments on, let’s say, a piece of data that’s come out from economists and investment banks and they’ll send them emails. And I find those useful generally, that they’re being done anyway for their clients. So this is not done for news. It’s a by-product of any publicity you get and you get it. But you also get PR comments asking if you’ve seen, I don’t know, the GDP figures today. Here’s a comment from so-and-so in some outfit I’ve never heard of. And frankly, they won’t get in. I won’t run them because I don’t have a good idea of the quality of a source. Another element that can work is if they’ve come up with a story. So again, the hurdle is quite high … If I feel that this is essentially just advertising, then no chance. There is a third form of PR, which is just, you know, he does often get in touch and say, “Have you met so-and-so? Would you like to meet so-and-so?” Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it can be very helpful because they can put you in touch with someone who might be a useful source. More often than not, it’s not very helpful because you tend to know who the good people are, and you go out and find them yourself. I mean, the worse thing is you’ve literally just written something and they say, “Oh, because you’ve just written about this, have you ever thought about meeting so-and-so, my client”. There’s a big industry out there now … you sort of know that [PR practitioners’] aim is to set up a meeting because that’s when they feel they’ve

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done their job. And I will agree to it, only rarely, if I think the person might be useful, and I’ve often had bad experiences where it’s not nearly been as useful as I had initially thought. Tom Lyons: They can be too close. Press releases do impact news flow. If they contain good stories, then they will be published. The secret to succeeding in business journalism and producing engaging content is, however, to get away from them. Exclusive content is what drives readership. Don’t look down on public relations people, but remember they’re not your friends either – they’re professionals paid to try and influence you. Simon Carswell: I had one PR person apologise to me after the fact for lying to me. I’d heard about a significant resignation at a bank, and I checked with the source and I checked with the public relations company, and the public relations executive said that’s not true. It’s not accurate. That person isn’t resigning. And the person resigned the next day. And the public relations executive basically apologised for lying at a later date. I’d say the ratio of corporate public relations firms to journalists has rocketed in the PR world’s favour, unfortunately. Time and resources are a challenge, and if you have fewer journalists, then stories are missed or not developed properly because of time. Certainly, during the financial crisis in Ireland, there was a five-year period where we missed out on employing financial journalists because of hiring freezes. Laura Noonan: Close relationships with sources are a problem; people in some positions were pretty close with their sources. Anglo was a lender with journalists, people had personal relationships with Sean Fitzpatrick, people had personal relationships with the banks, that was more of a problem. People became friends with their sources; it wasn’t a deliberate thing, but there was a groupthink all round. Killian Woods: There’s a few stories that will come to me from pure business deals, where they will say, “Look, we’d like to discuss or write about our company being acquired”. Do I need to do an interview with them? But now I do try not to deal with PRs as much as I can. How Do Financial Journalists Attain and Manage “Good” Sources?

Financial journalism mirrors other forms of journalism in their dependence on “expert” sources. The dominance of information from analysts, finance brokers and forecasters can be reflected in the representation or framing of an issue in the published media text (Bjerke and Fonn 2015). Here, we wanted to establish where journalists get their sources from, how they establish a rapport, and if they think there is a dependence on sources who are embedded in the financial sector. David Murphy: You need to talk to everybody before you can get a really clear view regarding what’s happening, and everybody has a different axe to grind.

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Simon Carswell: I used to always try and develop one or two new contacts every week. I kind of go out of my way to try and meet people for cups of coffee like people in business, some of the professional firms like accountants and bank analysts, or bankers themselves. Killian Woods: I found a bunch of sources that would generate stories for me that were just public sources that I could mine for stories. And those were the likes of the planning register … and absolutely harvesting that for stories; learning how and where the important information is. And that is, still, to this day, probably my main source of stories. It’s getting easier to be a financial journalist, [with] the access to resources that you have. But there’s so much happening out there that’s just not covered. And they’re not always the biggest massive story in the world, but they’re original views and original stuff that you can dig up without having to rely on someone else coming to tell you what their company, their clients, [are] doing. It’s broadly positive that we’re seeing more and more access to data, that journalists can hone [and] refine into news stories, the best place to steal ideas is foreign journalist awards, or some of the stuff that’s been done like in the UK [or] the US from a data journalist point of view. Laura Noonan: Some stories are technical in nature, so I will try and talk to people who are experts in that area. We might talk to people who are primarily in the industry related to the story that we are writing about. David Murphy: I think that you need to be talking to your own sources. You need to read the press releases; you need to read the annual reports. You need to talk to, for example, the regulators, the bankers, the politicians, talk to people involved in the property sector, so as wide a range of people as you possibly can, and to read as wide a range [of] information as you can possibly get. So you can’t just rely on one area. In terms of business journalism, you need to cast the net and listen to everybody and cast the net as wide as you possibly can. And the other thing, I think, is that some people may have a firm view regarding what is going to happen, and that firm view can be completely erroneous. And obviously, it depends from one story to the next. Some of them may be in some stories, some of them may be no use on other stories. Killian Woods: I try and make sure I get the full perspective, not just chatting to people who would maybe even fall into my own way of thinking. Reporting on these companies without needing a voice necessarily in them, that puts you [in a] much stronger position to report better stories. I think that’s a nice position to be in as a journalist, where you’re saying, “Would you like to comment?” I think that’s where I see some business students in financial journalism, those stories that are landing on their lap, they’re not [getting] the full picture. They’re part of a narrative that suits the source that they are using. I see it much more with business and financial journalists, who get wrapped up in working closely with high-net-worth individuals and being a bit in awe of them. These people are very impressive, like what they’ve done,

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their lives, what they’ve built, and how they’ve done it. It’s much harder for them to report on them, because they start to build a relationship with them which is more an acquaintance relationship. They’re not pushing themselves and pushing their story right out to where it could be because I think they are too close to their source. You’d have to question if someone’s coming to you with a story that they say is fully packaged. Anya Schiffirin: (A) lack of training contributes [to a] dependence on sources, and the dependence on sources means that you absorb your sources’ world view as you do the reporting, and this is a well-known problem in business journalism. Who Are Your Audience and to What Extent Does That Audience Define What You Focus on in Your Stories?

Judgements among financial reporters about newsworthiness are very strongly governed by audience interest and engagement (Goddard et al. 1998). One of the principal news values governing whether a story will be published is if a lay audience will recognise the actors involved. The scale of the event and whether it is likely to hold the interest of an audience are other factors. We asked our interviewees how they perceived the relationship between what they write and who they write it for. Anya Schiffrin: Audiences often end up being people working in finance, so realistically, what ends up happening is that economics journalists are often writing for narrow audiences that have a particular perspective towards economics, that are concentrated in the worlds of finance or, as we say in the US, Wall Street, not Main Street. That’s what I think is the key question. So if you’re at the Financial Times, you’re thinking about your very specialised audience – it’s in finance and business. And if you’re at the BBC or USA TODAY, you’re thinking of, you know, the man on the street and how they’re going to be, or the woman on the street and how they’re going to be affected. So I think audiences really, this is really key. Tom Lyons: The most engaged audience for business journalism tends to have an interest in some way in money, whether that’s as a corporate advisor, accountant, lawyer, banker, company owner or regulator. The audience isn’t always an elite audience, however. The best business journalism is written in an accessible way, and the biggest stories are of interest to most people. Business journalism is about finding great stories that people can relate to. Laura Noonan: Depends on the type of story you are writing about. If I am writing a story on Ireland, I might just add a few lines to provide more of a context for an international audience, but otherwise the audience is generally the same. With online you can see what people are engaging with and what they want to read as well. For the most part you want to be writing stuff that the audience is interested in.

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What Advice Would You Have for Aspiring Journalists in the Field?

David Murphy: The first piece of advice, and perhaps one of the most important piece[s]‌of advice, is to read widely. Second piece of advice is to remove jargon by understanding what it is you’re reporting on. And third piece of advice is, there’s no such thing as a stupid question. So if you’re interviewing someone and they say something that isn’t crystal clear to you, get them to explain it. Simon Carswell: Read as much as you possibly can, start building up your contacts book now, and make yourself more financially literate. Every time you read something in the paper that you don’t understand, go and look it up and take a note of it and come up with your own shorthand of financial phrases that might explain that financial phrase to a general audience. Nobody is the finished article when it comes to writing. Get better at telling your financial stories. Will Goodbody: Learn to read and interpret accounts, company filings and annual reports – always read them all the way through, as the most interesting material is often well hidden. Never assume your audience will know the background to a story or have a knowledge of business and financial procedures or technicalities. Present your stories through the prism of the consumer or investor because that’s who most of your audience will likely be. Tom Lyons: Be true to yourself and your values. Don’t ever look down at business failure – respect entrepreneurs for having the bravery to give it a go. Be conscious that business is to some extent still overly run by men over the age of 40 – so try to report on other voices too. Killian Woods: Try and work in a business or financial news desk because the skills you learn there translate to just about any other reporting you’re looking to do. I think even if you’re looking to go into sport, ultimately being able to do financial journalism work or work in the finance desk or business desk will add a whole new dynamic to your reporting, whether it be in sports or environmental journalism. Laura Noonan: Start with trade publications and go for a specialised area – pensions, savings, bonds – then build up your creditability there and you can build up your cadence and fluency in writing. Have a sector knowledge, as it gives you an added value. List of Concepts Introduced

• Role of economic and financial journalists; • Effect of public relations; • Managing sources; • Audiences.

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References Bjerke, P. and Fonn, B.K. (2015). “A Hidden Theory in Financial Crisis Journalism? The Case of Norway”. Nordicom Review, 36(2), pp. 113–127. Davis, A. (2003). “Public Relations Democracy: Public Relations, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain”. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 8(4), pp. 278–278. Goddard, P., Corner, J., Gavin, N.T. and Richardson, K. (1998). “Economic News and the Dynamics of Understanding: The Liverpool Project”. In Gavin, N.T., ed., The Economy, Media and Public Knowledge, pp. 9–37. Leicester University Press.

15 WHERE THEORY MEETS PRACTICE Practitioner Tips for Better Economic Journalism Fergal Quinn, Maria Rieder and Henry Silke

Advance Organiser

This book takes a critical approach to economics journalism output in general. It has aimed, firstly, to try and build awareness of how economic news is constructed and, secondly, to give students and practitioners tools for interpreting, understanding and analysing existing news discourses as they currently exist. This chapter aims to link this more detached academic perspective on what has already been done in terms of news output with what is yet to be written in terms of representing the world of economics and how it impacts on the day-to-day existence of news consumers. Using a questionand-answer/discursive-oriented framework, the chapter summarises the core points made in this book into a simple, practical framework that can be drawn on when approaching an economics story. • Section 1 outlines what good economics journalism practice should be and is broadly aimed at trainee journalists who would like general advice on best practice. It should also serve as a reminder and useful point of reference for those already active in the field as a revision of core principles. This section will revisit some of the topics covered earlier in the book around how to interpret and present key datasets, as well as approaches to journalism work in response to specific observations by exemplars in the field. • Section 2 attempts to bring in some key themes in the economic theory literature, as well as ideas around ideology and economic journalism, and considers how they can inform day-to-day approaches to doing journalism. This section also considers how methodological approaches for the analysis DOI: 10.4324/9781003154747-18

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of economic journalism output can be utilised for actual journalism practice. For example, can elements of political economic discourse, sourcing, audiences and content analysis that are generally applied in-depth for the academic analysis of output be used when planning or constructing your stories? 1.  Best Practice for Economic/Business or Financial Journalism

The role of the financial, business and economic journalist is multifaceted and requires a generalised understanding of what is a broad field containing large tracts of specialised knowledge. While this understanding builds over time with the gain in experience, the following should help journalists at all levels fulfil their core journalistic obligations. CHECK YOUR WORK Can you answer the following questions in the affirmative? • Are your numbers accurate and in context? • Do you fully understand every aspect of the story? • Do you have a broad-based and comprehensive range of sources and perspectives on what you are reporting on? • Have you given due weight to the human impact of the figures and data you are reporting on? • Have you differentiated between speculative commentary and verifiable fact? • Is every aspect of your story accurate and have you checked the numbers/details separately from the source reporting of them?

Use Numbers Accurately, Sparingly and in Context

Economic reporters must avoid the assumption that simply adding more numbers makes your story more credible and accurate. Alaqil and LugoOcando’s (2021) study of business journalism practices highlights how journalists, while they generally used valid and verifiable statistics, tended to “tick the box” of professionalism in their engagement without exercising a necessary critical scrutiny of the data. Lawson (2021) found similarly that, while journalists relied on numbers in their reporting, they seldom verify them independently “due to perceiving their role to be limited to the assessment of trustworthy sources rather than the direct interrogation of the number itself”

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(p. 14). When assessing your own work, consider whether you have fallen into these traps. Good business and economic reporting should use figures sparingly, with discernment, and they must always be put in the correct context. For example, when reporting that the stock market is down 10 points, you need to give a sense of what the broader trend is with that figure compared to previous months or years and compared to other countries. Is this a levelling off after a previous upswing? Is this another drop in a series of drops? How does this drop compare with historical drops in similar periods? Dig deeper into the methodology by which that number was calculated. Maintain a healthy scepticism about the numbers that you are using. The numbers can contain critical knowledge, but alertness while using them is key. Remember, the process of how you have tried to make sense of the numbers can often be a useful part of the story in itself. Do not feign certainty on specific numbers if it does not exist. Truly confident work allows for a full and frank acknowledgement of what is unknown, unsure or unclear. Beyond interrogating the numbers, take appropriate steps when writing up to help the audience digest them. Use numbers as a tool to back up your main points, but don’t use more than three figures per paragraph or several successive paragraphs in which numbers predominate. Allow your audience breathing room to understand the significance of what you are presenting without becoming overwhelmed. This is particularly important for TV and radio journalism, where audiences often only have one opportunity to understand the information. Use simple infographics to make number trends easier to understand, but be sure that these are clear and representative. Think Straight and You Can Write Straight

Much as numbers without context can give a veneer of credibility to a story that does not hold up to scrutiny, so the use of economic or business jargon can obscure the core meaning behind an economic development or business story. Don’t be afraid to ask the “stupid” questions about terminology, phrases or acronyms that are unclear to you. Reporters who have a weak or incomplete understanding of what they are writing about are easily manipulated into swallowing a particular line or perspective. Until you have a true understanding of the issue at hand, you will not be able to write about it in a way that is meaningful and accessible and accurately represents the reality of what is happening. Taking the time and space to improve your own core understanding will help avoid the type of “common sense” but poorly understood blindspots that have had a hugely detrimental effect on economic reporting in the past. As we have seen in the literature, most economic analysts overly reliant on one economic paradigm missed

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or played down the possibility of an economic crash or crisis in the lead up to 2008. Vary Your Sources – for Information, Interpretation and General Expertise

Before signing off on your work, check if you have consulted with as broad a range of experts as possible on what the numbers and other dates in your story actually mean. Interpreting the spreadsheets and crunching the numbers are the bread and butter of financial and economic journalism, but this information only encompasses one aspect of the “what” of an economic story, the results or numerical variations of a particular economic trend. Quality economic journalism must go beyond such limited representations and engage with as broad a range of specialised expertise as possible – economists, academics, policymakers – in order to make full sense of the implications and meaning behind a particular data trend. Speak to people directly and give space in your story to the most pertinent and credible analysis. Avoid overreliance on any one expert, as this can contribute to a narrowing of economic perspective in a way that can be deleterious to your coverage. Also remember that there are often activists in trade unions or NGOs who may be concerned about a specific issue, for example sovereign debt, general work conditions or cost of living. Such sources may be more closely attuned to the actual effects on the ground of economic policies than financial or governmental agencies. Varying your sources of expertise and taking the time to include fresher voices, once their credibility is established, can widen the range of your analysis considerably. In this regard, keep in mind that the most “prestigious” expert or institution is not always the best one. This works at all levels of sourcing on a business or economic story. For example, the “management” in a company is not the same as the company itself. Listed companies are owned by shareholders, and they may hold different views of company management. Equally, employees may hold alternative viewpoints, and speaking to their representatives can give you a sense of their take on the development being covered. Likewise, be wary of self-promoted spokespeople. For example, business owners or employers speaking for their employees or the employees of their sector; workers should have their own voice. Beyond Numbers and Expert Analysis, Consider the Human Impact of These Numbers Properly

Accurate, nuanced distillation of the raw data associated with your story is important, as is expert analysis and interpretation, but have you done everything possible to find the human story behind the economic or business development? Numbers and acronyms on their own – for example relating to

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price rises, interest rates, GDP – can have a detaching and deadening effect on the reader. Ensure your journalism helps audiences understand what these numbers mean in human terms. This can be done via representative case studies, interviews and a general foregrounding of the non-expert sources who have first-hand experience of the implications of an issue, i.e., the lowerincome family dealing with the effects of inflation. While group dynamics and certain sectoral trends are important in economic coverage, the individual must also be given weight and meaning in a way that is not reductive or patronising. Have You Differentiated Speculation and Commentary from Fact?

Journalists should take care to use sources and analysts who are factually oriented rather than “informed” speculators or commentators. Likewise, be wary of organisations such as rating agencies and do not report their deliberations as definite facts. Economic analysis can often lean towards a degree of speculation, for example claiming that because x and y is happening now and it resulted in z previously, the same thing will happen this time. Sometimes such analysis omits or deemphasises other factors that might influence alternative outcomes. Wampole (2018) outlines the lure of speculative journalism, which, due to it being neither true nor false, works as a “strange compromise, a third way that shelves for now the question of what is real and true”. Grusin (2010) argues that this kind of hyper-variation of speculative outcomes is a means of the media buffering itself against shock. This sort of speculation, which Grusin terms ‘premediation’, keeps every possibility within peripheral view and creates a media apparatus into which any future event might be plugged, offering readers the illusion of preparedness and journalistic credibility. Journalists who wish to avoid following this logic and perpetuating inaccurate or incomplete information must go the extra mile to delve down into what the commentary is based on and work out how much is speculative and how much is verifiably fact based. It can be very time consuming to take the time to gain a greater understanding of the economic systems that your experts are alluding to, but this effort must be put in on what can be a quite specialised newsbeat. Having these kinds of critical anchor points of understanding can vastly improve the quality of your reporting. Prize Accuracy over Speed, and Fight for the Integrity of Your Work

There are numerous organisational and political economic pressures on journalists that make it very hard for them to resist churning out stories at speed. This is particularly the case in business reporting and has been noted repeatedly by practitioners (see Chapter 14). A fuller understanding of the cumulative effect of poorly conceptualised and weakly evidenced journalism,

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which this book should have provided you with, should also give you a stronger sense of how important it is that this kind of journalism be resisted by journalists at an individual and collective level. Accuracy must always take precedence over speed. Your standards as a journalist MUST be high in this regard, and if an editor or organisation will not allow you to meet these, then you should seek to work somewhere that does. 2.  Ideological and Theoretical Literacy in Journalism Practice

This edited collection has outlined key themes in economic theory as well as how ideas around ideology affect how certain issues are mediated. We also looked at several methodological approaches for the analysis of media output. In this section we will try to distil some of these ideas and consider practical ways in which they can inform or guide your journalistic approach to economic, financial or general business stories. Your Work Matters

While the low morale, often poor compensation and lack of resources experienced by working journalists can often suggest otherwise, the mediation of economic matters via journalism is of crucial importance to the construction of accepted political and economic reality. While the extent to which journalists impact public opinion is debatable, it is broadly agreed that the media is a critical setting for debate over the “legitimacy” of economic steps taken by those in power, for example the implementation of austerity measures or tax cuts or rises. It is even more significant due to the fact that the majority of media audiences have a limited understanding of economic and financial concepts, leading them to rely heavily on media interpretations and explanations of them. Journalism, although prey to various political, economic and organisational pressures at micro and macro levels, retains a degree of autonomy and independence in terms of how it engages with and interprets these events. An ability to examine and interrogate hegemonic narratives is a key component of a journalism that is critically reflexive and can more truly represent the public interest rather than perpetuating false narratives that serve narrow agendas. While the time sensitivity and urgency of journalism work means that it cannot, and should not, attempt to replicate the rigour of in-depth scientific analysis, a general understanding of the methodological approaches to the analysis of journalism output can help maintain a broader situational awareness of how one’s work might impact on evolving news discourses. Most of the academic research on economic journalism output centres around three main pillars: the manufacture, outcome and effect of economic news. Research on the first of these – news production – centres on the political

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economic pressures that are brought to bear individually and organisationally and how these impact the mediation of a particular story. These kinds of studies also focus on accounts of the lived reality of those who produce the news in question, for example via interviews or surveys or the ethnographic observation of newsrooms and other spaces in which journalists work. The second pillar by which economic and business journalism tends to be examined is the actual output of news work in terms of what it says and how it says it. For example, what ideological perspective, both overt and implied, is contained in the reporting itself, the way content is arranged, emphasised and framed and the various voices and discourses within which the pieces interact with one another. On a more granular level, these approaches also look at the language used in reports and at the visual presentation of economic news. The third methodological pillar by which news is interrogated academically is the effect of the news, both on audiences who engage with it and the political economic implications of these effects. Digging deeper into some of the methodological approaches outlined above gives rise to a number of salient points and observations that can help inform how you approach your stories. CONSIDER THE CONTEXT • An improved understanding of economic theory can improve your work practice; • Consider where your sources are situated ideologically and question any associated assumptions they might be advancing or implications of same; • Understand your own role; • What political economic limitations does your work face and how can they be overcome?; • Pay close attention to all aspects of content produced and how it is organised; • How do the different voices and perspectives interact with one another in your piece and does this suggest anything about the nature of the power dynamics between them; • Research the history and context of your story properly; • Pay attention to the diversity of your news organisation.

Know Your Economic Theory

While journalists cannot reasonably be expected to be expert economists in order to write about it on a basic level, those who want to report with

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more depth and nuance must improve their level of basic literacy in economic theory, for example around Marxian-, Neoclassical- or Keynesian-oriented approaches. In particular, this allows journalists to see beyond what is often presented as “orthodox” or “agreed-on” economic “truths” and better question the way information they are being given is framed and presented. A critical takeaway from even a cursory level of knowledge in this regard is that economic analysis does not take place from a specific fixed position or school of thought but from a rapidly evolving and contested one. What might be considered economic orthodoxy in one era – see, for example, the current emphasis on market liberalism as a guiding principle for economic policy – may have been seen as something quite radical a short time previously. If you are interested in economics, finance and business as a beat, consider getting specialised training in this area. Even short-term micro-credentials in related areas can be hugely beneficial to the level of reporting you can achieve. Ideology Underpins Everything

Anyone who writes in the media, but particularly around economic issues, must consider their own ideological perspective. Without understanding your leanings and biases in this regard, be they conscious or unconscious, you run the risk of your work underpinning and advancing ideological agendas in unintended ways, for example by propagating or legitimising certain “economic imaginaries” (described in more detail in Chapter 2). “Economic imaginaries” offer certain simplified master narratives that selectively frame people’s actions and experiences as a means of making sense of lived, day-today economic reality. Do not assume that your position is “post-ideological” as some sectors in economic media have claimed. If you do believe yourself to occupy an “objective” or “post-ideological” space, at least interrogate the facets of your work robustly and regularly. Consider carefully the ideological positions of your sources and the cumulative effect of these within your story and in your publication as a whole. Are diverse ideological perspectives being allowed for or are some given primacy over others? Is the dominance of neoliberal and free market ideology among primary definers of economic thinking being interrogated sufficiently by your work? Know Your Role

It may seem an obvious thing, but how do you understand your own role as a journalist? News production-oriented studies that examine journalists’ normative role conceptions have found, for example, that business journalists are less likely to perceive themselves as having a watchdog role. Consider the aspects that you believe are central to your work as a journalist. Do you see yourself as more of an information verifier or a conduit or facilitator of

312  Fergal Quinn, Maria Rieder and Henry Silke

government policy dissemination? Is that by accident or design? Who do you see as your most important audiences and what do you see as your key obligations to them? Organisational and political economic pressures often result in journalists being denied the resources to do anything beyond the mere reporting or repackaging of information. By having a fuller understanding of what your role should be, or indeed what you desire your role to be, you can better establish the boundaries and limitations that restrict you. It is only from this point that you can work to overcome them more effectively. Recognise How Political Economic Factors Limit the Scope of Your Work

Consider and try to mitigate against the political economic limitations that influence your work. Who is your outlet owned by and how is it financed and managed? How do these different organisational elements and influences interact with one another? What are the work practices that result from the material outcomes of these dynamics? For example, the increased prevalence of “financialised reporting”, where business reporting tends to parrot uncritically business and financial perspectives, is linked to greater reliance on advertising revenues generated by money and finance supplements. Is this the case where you work? These kinds of pressures on financial reporting come in a climate of general dis-improvement in journalistic work conditions, where increased time pressures, lower staffing levels and greater output demands are leading to weaker sourcing and surface level reportage. Just as profit dynamics and wealth concentration have impacted wider society in favour of those with power in society, so a proliferation of bad actors and declining investment in human resources in the media have squeezed the space needed to drive legitimate news production in favour of the more corporatised elements of media infrastructure. Consider Deeper Meanings Communicated by the Way Your Content Is Selected, Constructed and Presented

It is not the journalist’s job to academically analyse their own work while they are producing it, but a greater awareness of how different types of content analysis approach economic journalism output can help avoid established pitfalls and traps and contribute to a greater balance in your work overall. Pay attention to how individual sources are used within the construction of your article and the conclusions or interpretations of a development it suggests. Does the choice of headline, subheadlines, accompanying pictures and illustrations contribute to your article being framed in a certain way? Give greater thought to your choice of sources and the extent to which particular sources or voices are leading the story and the implications of this

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in terms of the overall gist of the piece. Pay attention to the words you use, particularly where repeated. Are these choices deliberate or accidental? Does the cumulative effect of these editorial and journalistic choices help or hinder your audience’s ability to get a balanced picture of what is being reported on? Are you communicating your own unconscious biases and opinions via your work without intending to? News Discourse Reveals Where Power is Thought to Reside

Every journalistic choice you make communicates in explicit and implicit ways where you believe power resides. Your work contributes to a specific social construction of the world that is not, in actuality, the “natural order” of things. Pay attention to your use of particular metaphors or rhetorical constructions and what they might be suggesting in terms of your story. Does your usage of these contribute to the legitimation of one perspective or position over another and is this intentional? Are you guilty of giving too much prominence to the fluctuations and variations of market movements as a game in and of itself rather than the human elements that are integral to its workings? These include those who professionally manipulate the market via trade and speculation AND those who are affected by the outcomes of these activities (the broader public). Where are you positioned within this dynamic? Are you an independent element or a reflexive part of the market system? History and Context Are Critical in Business and Financial Reporting

When interpreting and making sense of economic developments, journalists must heed Santayana’s (2011) observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Journalists should be at odds with the kind of bullish market-oriented logic that demands that risk is embraced in pursuit of reward and disregards lessons of history that highlight capitalistic economic systems as a perpetual cycle of boom and bust. The literature has repeatedly highlighted the extent of short termism in media discourse and the degree to which amnesia does not account for sequences of events that preceded previous crises. Taking the time and demanding that the time be given to coverage that allows for sufficient research into historical context and past experience is a vital element of journalism work and can provide indirect but valuable warning of economic danger points, for example various types of bubbles or market crashes. In this book you have encountered numerous examples of weakly conceived economic reporting that does not hold up well in light of subsequent events (for example, confident predictions of economic stability immediately preceding the collapse of 2008). Take every step to ensure that your reporting does not fall into similar traps.

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Diversity Matters

The truthful representation of the world that good journalism aspires to requires diversity of class, gender, race and age-groups within the media. Weak levels of representation in the journalism profession specifically is linked to a lack of perspectives within stories and a generally narrow discourse around economic issues. Those working within economic media at all levels should acknowledge and facilitate, where possible, diversity within their working environment by being generous with mentoring and by highlighting this issue even if it does not affect you directly. Numerous recent events have highlighted an urgent need for this to be addressed. For example, a lack of people from working-class backgrounds in journalism has contributed to a sense of a media that is out of touch with where specific communities are coming from. This was exemplified during the rise of radically populist movements in Britain and the US and the widespread inability of much of mainstream media to imagine how large sectors of society might feel so left behind that any kind of disruption might be deemed preferable to preservation of the status quo. It also likely contributed to an accumulation of coverage, highlighted by Bell and Entman (2011), among numerous others, that framed tax cuts, which led to greater inequality and disproportionate benefits for the better off, as being a necessity. References Alaqil, F. and Lugo-Ocando, J. (2021). “Using Statistics in Business and Financial News in the Arabian Gulf: Between Normative Journalistic Professional Aspirations and ‘Real’ Practice”. Journalism Practice, pp. 1–24 Bell, C.V. and Entman, R.M. (2011). “The Media’s Role in America’s Exceptional Politics of Inequality Framing the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003”. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 16(4), pp. 548–572. Grusin, R. (2010). Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11. Springer. Lawson, B.T. (2021). “Hiding behind Databases, Institutions and Actors: How Journalists Use Statistics in Reporting Humanitarian Crises”. Journalism Practice, pp. 1–21. Pani, P. (2017). “Introduction to Business and Economic Journalism”. [Online]. Available from: https://fnfsc.fnst.org/sites/defa​u lt/files/uplo​ads/2018/04/24/ int​rodu​ctio​ntob​usin​essa​ndec​ono micjournalism.pdf [Accessed 5 March 2021]. Santayana, G. (2011). The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense (Vol. 1). MIT Press. Thompson, L.A. (2020). “Business Reporting Tips for Journalists on Other Beats”. International Journalists’ Network. Available from: https://ijnet.org/en/story/ busin​ess-report​ing-tips-jour​nali​sts-other-beats. Wampole, C. (2018). “What Is the Future of Speculative Journalism”. New York Times, 22 January. Available from: www.nyti​mes.com/2018/01/22/opin​ion/spec​ ulat​ive-jou​rnal​ism-fut​u re.html.

INDEX

awareness-raising 222 Babbage (blog) 171–173, 176 Back, K. 2–3, 9–10 Baker, P. 177 balance 171–172 bank reform 7 banking crisis 128 Barnes, L. 268 Barnhurst, K.G. 121 base-superstructure model 5, 83, 86 Basu, I. 3–6, 12 Becker, G.S. 34–35, 43 Bell C.V. 124–125, 314 Berry, Mike xii, 3–7, 11–12, 128–129, 263, 266 best practice 304–305 Better Life Index 278–279 bias 119, 121, 158, 164, 251–252, 258, 311, 313 Biber, D. 188 Bickerton, C.J. 110 Biden, Joe 96–97 biopolitics 82 Blair, Tony 247 Blanchard, O. 58 blindspots 306 Bokhove, C. 169 Booth, G. 9 bottles and bottlenecks 138 bottom-up research 257 Bourdieu, P. 251

Bowles, S. 41 Box of Broadcasts database 231, 239 Braun , V. 176–177 Brazil 55 Brennan, D. 152 Brexit 134–135, 140, 168 British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus 174 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 4, 7–8, 128, 229, 231 British Social Attitudes Survey 261, 268–269 broadcasting 227–233, 238; power of 228 Bruton, Richard 235 “bunging up” 136–137 Burke-Kennedy, Eoin 89 Bush, George W. 124–125 business cycles 5 Cambridge Analytica 62 Cambridge English Dictionary 72 capital gains 62 capitalism 59, 62, 80–84; and the capitalist mode of production 31; crises of 1–2, 5, 7; managerial 62 Capra, Frank 262 Carlin, W. 41 Carswell, Simon 294, 299–302 Carvalho, A. 232 case studies 149, 243–245, 249, 261, 263, 266 causation 277, 283

316 Index

celebrity journalists 103 ceteris paribus comparisons 285 Chakravarty, P. 5–6 Champlin, D.P. 10–11 Chandler, D. 135–136 Charteris-Black, J. 188 Chayes, S. 110 checking of work 305 Chen, H. 118 Chicago School of Economics 42–3 chief executive officers (CEOs) 106 China 118 Chomsky, N. 71 147 “churnalism” 148 civil society 28, 80–81 Clancy, Brian xi class relations 84 climate, political and social 32 climate crisis 38 Clinton, Bill 247 close readings 233 Coase, Ronald 60 codes, creation of 117 cohesion of text 212 coinages 187 Colander, D. 37 Cold War 99 Collier, S.J. 82 collocation 179–180 commentary 308 commodity fetishism 4, 75 “common sense” 70, 76, 81, 88, 200, 219, 221 community discourse 242 competition 62 computer technology 167 “conceptal metaphors” 167 concordance lines 182–186 concordancers 173–174, 177, 185 “conditioning power” 54–55 connotations 132–134, 185, 209 consumer price index (CPI) 281–282 content analysis 3, 117–121, 140–141, 149, 233, 243–248, 252, 257, 266, 269; automatic 120; mixedmethod type of 141; process of 120; quantitative 118–120 context 198, 219, 310−314 convenience sampling 265 conversation 234 Cook, Tim 234, 237 copyright 232 Corbett, J. 177

corpora 166–167, 200, 203; building your own 169–171, 174; compared with one another 175; use of 174 corporate social responsibility 249 corporations 32, 43 corpus building 233 Corpus of Contemporary Written English (COCA) 169, 180 corpus linguistics (CL) 3, 11, 166–169, 174, 188–189, 229 correlation 277, 283 Coscieme, I. 38 Couch, C. 110 Covid-19 pandemic 1, 6, 10, 59–63, 70, 72, 174–178, 194 “credit crunch”, use of phrase 151, 181–182, 187 crises 32, 57, 84; financial and economic 6–9, 146; cascading 95, 107–108 critical analysis 197 critical discourse analysis 11, 192–200, 219, 221, 226, 229–230, 233–234, 237–238; process of 198–199, 201 critical discourse moments 232 critical perpective 168 critical theory 194 Crowther, D. 141 Cushion, S. 238 cuts in services 267 cyclical effects 313 Damstra, A. 9 data: amounts of 234; types of 170 databases 200 datasets 232, 304 Davidson, Django 163 Davies, Nick 86, 147 Davies, W. 42 Davis, A. 5–9, 86, 148 Dearing, J.W. 141 decision-making 31, 34, 37, 46–47 defamation 9 deficit, response to 267 Delli Carpini, M.X. 263 democracy 43, 65, 109, 276; industrial 110 demutualisation 4 denotation 131–133 depersonalisation 197 deregulation 61–63, 148–149, 246–247 design of corpora 167, 171–174 despotic rule 107, 109 DeSwert, K. 9

Index  317

Deutsche Bank 164 Deuze, M. 86 developing countries 244 de Vries, R. 261 diamond brackets () 172 “digital commons” 85 discourse and discourse analysis 167–168, 189, 195–196, 231, 238; evolution of 233 discourse historical approach (DHA) 231 discursive patterns 221–222 discursive practice 203, 220 discursive strategies 236 disinformation 276 diversity 314 “the dog that didn’t bark” 1 dominant beliefs 221 dominant discourse 192 dominant groups 56 Dominick, J.R. 123 donation of human organs 32, 35–38, 46 dot-com boon 244, 246 double articulation, principles of 227 Downey, C. 169 ”drivetime” 229 “dumbing down” of news 85 dyamic processes 56 Eagleton, T. 3, 73–74, 79, 82–83 “economic approach” 34–39, 46; advantages and disadvantages of 35 economic concepts 276 economic theory 90, 304–305, 308–311; key channels for 39–46 economics: application of 35–36; definition of 37, 60−61; in the present-day 36–37; professionalisation of 30 The Economist 8, 133–134, 137, 171–173, 188 Edsall, Thomas 105–106 education of journalists 45, 109 Elias, Julio J. 35–38 elites 9–11, 40, 87, 121, 125 empirical studies 37, 100 employment rates 280 endogenous money 58 engagement 105, 127 Engels, Friedrich 74–78, 81 English Broadsheet Newspapers Corpus (SiBol) 183

EnTenTen 20 corpus 177 Entman, Robert 121, 124–125, 234, 314 entrepreneurs 35, 42–43 environment, social and governance (ESG) criteria 249 environmental crisis 242 environment Kuznets curve 38 epistemology 3, 242 equilibrium 31, 58, 60 Ericson, R.V. 146 ethical considerations 283 ethnography 258, 265 Eucken, Walter 33–34 European Central Bank (ECB) 58 European Commission 235, 237; High-Level Expert Group 249 European Union 133–135 Eurozone crisis 201 events, focus on 6 everyday language 166 Excel spreadsheets 155–160 experimental study in economics 257, 263, 269, 283–284 expertise 188, 307 “experts” 4 Facebook 62, 85 face-to-face surveys 258 fact-checking 148 Fairclough, I. 222 Fairclough, Norman 199–200, 212, 222, 231 fake news 148, 276 Fernández-Cruz, J. 171 file format 173 financial reporting, language of 188 Financial Times 55, 201, 244, 251–252 financialisation 5, 7, 252, 256, 312; of news organisations 85 fine-grained analysis 206, 212, 233 Finland 10, 284 Firth, J.R. 179 fiscal policy 268 Fishman, R.M. 141 Fitch (credit-rating agency) 155 Flannery, Darragh xii flexibility in research 263 focus groups 257–258, 262; conducting you own 264–265; key issues in design of 265–266; number and size of 265–266; strengths and weaknesses of 262–264

318 Index

Foucault, Michel 73, 82–84 framing analysis 121–126, 158–159, 189, 234–235 France 84 Frank, R. 40 Free to Choose (tv series) 33 free market doctrine 6 Friedman, Milton 33 Galbraith, J.K. 32, 54–55, 59 Gallagher, C. 9 Galvin, Audrey xii Gandy, O.H. 10, 147 Gans, H. 141, 145–146 gender framing 122 Gerbner, George 141 Germany 10, 33–34, 44, 84 Gerratana, V. 73 Gerstle, G. 106 Giles, Chris 294–298 Glasgow Media Group 5 global financial crisis 1–2, 6–13, 53, 58, 77, 181, 187, 241–248, 256, 266, 306–307, 312; impact on language 171 Global South 244 globalisation 43 Gómez-Jiménez, E.M. 11 Goodbody, Will 294, 296, 302 Google 62, 85 government see states government-led policies 32 Graham, Clara xi Gramsci, Antonio 3–5, 79–83 Great Recession News Corpus (GRNC) 171 Greek financial crisis 189 greenwashing 249–252 Griffith-Jones, S. 58 Grisold, Andrea xi, 10–11, 111 gross domestic product (GDP) 275–279; measurement of 278–279 groupthink 241, 246 growth, economic 38 Grusin, R. 308 The Guardian 171, 247, 269 Guba, E.G. 119 habitus 251 Hall, Stuart 77–83, 87, 132–133, 145–146 Handbook of Journalism Studies 104–108

Hanitzsch, Thomas 98–100, 106 Hansen, A. 119 Harjunicmi, Timo 8, 10 Harvey, David 79, 81 Hayek, Friedrich August von 42, 106 headlines and sub-headlines 312 Hegel, G.W.F. 74 hegemony 75, 81–82, 192; definition of 81 Herman, E. 71, 147 Hesse, J.O. 33 heterodox economics 33, 52−64; definition of 53–54 Hicks, T. 268 hippies 107 Hirschman, Albert 52–53 historical context 306, 313 historical diachronic analysis (HDA) 231 historical school of economics 33 history: of economics 30–36; materialist conception of 76 holistic view of economics 54 Hoover Institution 33 Hope, W. 3, 5, 149 Horton, D. 227–228 housing 60, 88; commodity view of 70; as a public good 70 Hudson, N. 268, 276 human elements 313 human intelligence, need for 190 Hunt, Joanne 89 Hurley, Brian xii hyperinflation 281 hypothetical questions 260 ideology 192, 196–199, 219–221, 304, 309–311; definitions of 73–75, 121; economic 88–91; idealistic view of 74; material 76–77; and micro power 82–84; and reproduction of power 77–78 imaginaries, economic 27−29, 38–45, 311; advanced, legitimised and supported by individuals 29; as distinct from economic theory 29; examples of 28, 42–45; function of 27–28; informing of 28, 39–41; related to ideology 29; selectiveness of 28; as a simplified understanding of reality 27–29 immigration 266–267 individualist perspective 37

Index  319

inequalities 10–11, 54, 57, 111, 197, 199, 252, 308, 314 inflation 275–277, 281−282; personal 282 infographics 306 information subsidies 148 infotainment 87 innovation 63 inside sources 9 institutional economics 30–31, 56 internet surveys 258 internet tools 171–173 interpretation 309; of economic events 39 intertextuality 231 interviewing 227–228, 233, 241–248, 251–253, 284; questions for use in 246–247 investigative journalism 5 Ireland 6, 9, 12, 70, 77, 235, 237; banking crisis in 278–279, 287–289 Irish Examiner 194 Irish Times 88 Israeli-Palestine conflict 263 Jakubowski, Franz 77–78 jargon 306 Jewish Americans 33 Johnson, M. 187 Journal of Political Economy 35 journalism 1–3, 52–53, 64, 85–91, 108; crisis of 111; day-to-day approaches to 304–305, 309–314; definition 101; difficulties faced by 13; economic and financial 97–98, 102–103, 244, 292–295, 307; examples 304; influences on 97–102; international studies of 99; political 147; in relation to language 168; role of 87, 276 journalism studies 95–97, 102, 105–106, 109, 111; neglected areas in 96–97 journalists: challenges faced by 252; collaboration with linguistics 190; criticism of 97, 241; everyday practices of and resources available to 242–243; number of 111, 148; risk aversion of 148; role of 241–242, 247, 250–251; standards for 309; working conditions of 147–148 kairos 238 Katrina (hurricane) 64

Keena, Colm 89 Keller, R. 230 Kelsey. D. 12 key word in context (KWIC) 183 Keynes, John Maynard 32, 39 Keynesian economics 32, 62, 82, 106 keywords and keyword lists 166, 177–178 kidneys, price of 36, 46 knowledge of economic statistics 268 Knowles, Sophie xi, 3, 7–12, 245, 247 Koteyko, N. 189 Krugman, Paul 41, 57, 279 labour force participation 280 Labour Party 4, 12, 266–268 laissez-faire policy 44 Lakoff, George 187, 222 language: patterns of 167, 196, 200, 209; repetition of 222; as a set of resources 198; use of 194; written or spoken 168–169 Lareinese, V. 118 Lasswell, Harold 109, 141 Lawson, B.T. 305 Lazonick, W. 63 leading questions 260 Lee, F.S. 32 Lee, N.Y. 2–5, 9−10 legitimation 210, 212, 219, 221 Lewis, J. 148 LEXIS archive 202 LexisNexis database 171 libel action 9 life expectancy 107 Lincoln, Y.S. 119 linguistic resources in relation to economic beliefs 212 Linstrom, M. Lischinsky, A. 187 literacy, ideological and theoretical 309, 311 literature review 230 lived reality 310 Imiron 3 lobbying 29 logos 236 lower-income families 308 Lugo-Ocando, J. 305 Lukes, Stephen 71 Lyons, Tom 293–302

320 Index

McCarthy, M.J. 189 McChensey, R.W. 3 McClements, Freya 90 McCombs, M. 141 McDonald, John 236 Machin, D. 119 MacKenzie, D. 39 macro-economics 32–33 MacWilliams, David 154 mail surveys 257 mainstream economics 37–38, 53–57, 64–65, 107–108, 242 malfeasance 244 manipulation of the y axis 286–287 Mankiw, N.G. 41 Marais, E.W. 122–123 Marglin, Stephen 64 market-based thinking 35, 38, 43, 46; extension to novel policy areas 42 market failure 41, 62 market fundamentalism 60 market-liberalism 27, 30–35, 41–43, 311 market-oriented logic 313 market research 262 market universalism 60 markets: definition of 60; distortion of 57; opening-up of 62; role of 59 Marx, Karl 4, 31, 73–78, 81 Marxism and Marxist theory 5, 30–31, 58, 73–80, 84 mass media 28, 109, 147, 226 master narratives 27 mathematical analysis 33 MAXQDA 200 Mazzucato, M. 63 Media Amnesia 6 media-centric conclusions 2 media channels 84–85 media discourse, making of 227 media influence 269 media literacy 13 media research 226 media roles 41, 124–125 Mellado, C. 87, 100 memory, short-term 6 mentoring 314 Merton, Robert 262 metadata 173 metaphors 188, 196–197, 209, 313 methodological individualism 56 methodological tools 14 Meyer, M. 222

micro-, meso- and macro-levels 98 micro-economics 40–41 Miliband, Ralph 73, 80–84 Miller, M. 142 Millo, Y. 39 Mills, C.W. 109 Minsky, Hyman 58 mixed economy paradigm 106 mixed methodology 14, 120 modal verbs 211 Moloney, K. 147 money supply 58 monopolisation 84–85 monopolistic behaviour 62 morality 38, 46 Moreno, A. 171 Morgan, M.S. 30 Murphy, David 294–302 mutual information (MI) statistical test 179 myth 133, 135 naturalistic research 263 naturally-occurring groups 265 Nazi regime 33–34 neoclassical economics 30–32, 44, 55, 61–62 neoliberalism 2, 5–6, 9–10, 27, 43–45, 72, 76−77, 81–82, 86, 95, 105–110, 197, 311; definition 42; as a powerful economic imaginary 42–45 Netherlands, the 9 Neuendorf, K.A. 118, 120 New Orleans 64 New York Times 171 news, economic 14; ideological function of 3; market in 4 news broadcasts 121–122, 145–146, 226, 273 news gathering 14; funding for 85, 87 news media 241–242, 253 news reporting 167–169, 187–189, 196–197, 304–306, 309–310 newspaper readers 261 newsworthiness 86–87 Nielsen, R.K. 103–104 Nisbet, K. and E. 121 node words 185 Noonan, Laura 294, 299–301 norms 31, 80, 110, 252 numbers, reliance on 305 NVivo software 200, 247

Index  321

observational data 284 O’Halloran, Marie 89 O’Keeffe, A. 169, 227 oligopoly 62 online tools see internet tools opinion polls, weaknesses of 258 ordoliberalism 33–34 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 278–279 original recordings 234 O’Rourke, Brendan xi orthodoxy 52–53, 311 Ostrom, Einor 64 O’Sullivan, M. 63 overspending by government 266 ownership of enterprises 62 Palcic, Donal xii panel studies 263 paradigmatic analysis 136, 138 Paris Agreement 249 parliamentary politics 163 passive voice 210 peer pressure 264 Peirce, Charles Sanders 130 Penn, Gemma 138–139 perceptions of the economy 265 performativity 39 Perrons, Diane 59 personification 211 perspective 197 Philo, G. 4–5, 14, 263 Pickett, Kate 57 Piketty, Thomas 57 pitfalls, reporting of 277 pluralism 9–10, 30, 32, 56, 59–60 policy advice 39 policy pluralism and plurality in economics 30, 32 political correspondents and interviews 228 political economy 96 political issues 8, 252, 262, 312 populism 12, 95, 100, 314 Post-Crash Economics Society (Manchester University) 53 post-demographic thinking 110 post-ideological space 311 post-Keynesianism 58, 62 power and power relations 54, 71, 82, 84, 313; economic 243 premeditation 308 Prendergast, Muireann xi

press releases 147–148 pressures 309–310 Preston, Paschal xi, 10–11, 98 price levels 31, 281–282 primary definers 5, 9–10, 145–146, 149, 163–164, 311 privatisation 4, 43, 147–148 probability and non-probability sampling 260 problematisation 230 pro-business climate 32 production processes 292 profitability 63 pro-market bias 10 propaganda 262 proposals 208 psychological frameworks 122 public health 63 public interest 86–87, 97, 107, 197, 223, 309 public opinion 242, 262–263, 269, 308 public policy 46, 63–65 public relations (PR) 5, 8, 111, 147–149, 244 public service broadcasting 229 public spending 12, 266 publicly-available texts 170 purchasing power 281 Quaderni del Carcere 80 qualitative analysis 229, 242–243, 251, 257–258, 266 quantitative approaches 189, 203, 205, 253, 263 questionnaires, construction of 260 questions, open-ended or closed 260 Quinn, Fergal i–ii, xi, 14 radical economics 30 radio 170, 226, 229, 233, 308 random sampling 260 randomized control trials 283 rationality and rational behaviour 34, 42, 54 Reagan, Ronald 43, 247 “real” economy 277 real-world economic relations 27–28, 41, 311 recession, treatment of 5 Reeves, A. 261 reference corpora 177–178 reflective learning 53 regulation 35; see also deregulation

322 Index

replication of research findings 264 representativeness 171–172, 203–204, 208 research on economic journalism 3 research problems 230 research questions 170, 201 researchers’ skills 264 “Rethinking Economics” network 53 rhetorical devices 235–236 Rieder, Maria xi, 14, 21 rioting 261 Robinson, J. 55 Rodgers, E.M. 141 Romer, P. 58 Runge, J. 268, 276 Rutherford, M. 30 Ryan, Colleen 247 saliency 1 sample size 126 sampling 232–233, 245–246, 259–260, 265, 285 Samuelson, P. 44 Santayana, G. 313 “saturation” point 266 Saussure, Ferdinand 130–131 Scannell, P. 227 Schiffrin, Anya 293, 295, 301 Schiller, D. 5–6 schools of thought 29–32 scientific economic theories 30, 39 scientific terms 177–178 scientific view of economics 58 Scott, M. 177 scrutiny of data 305 secondary frames 123 selected terms, the economy described in 42 selection of journalists 251 “self-made” entrepreneurs 28–29 Seliger, M. 73 semiotic analysis 129–133 semi-structured interviews 247, 261 sensitive issues 260 shadow banking 58 shaping of news 10 shareholder value 62–63 Shiller, Robert 57 short-termism 313 Siapera, E. 85 Silke,Henry i, xi, 4–5, 14 Simon, David 85–86 situating 230, 237

situational awareness 309 Skalski, P.D. 118 Sketch Engine 174, 177 sociablity 29 social actors and social actions 197, 210–211 social construction 77, 194, 196 social democracy 82 social desirability 260 social interaction 262 social policy 65 social power 82, 226 social practice 219–221 social provisioning 61 socialisaion 79–80, 251; political 80 socialist planning 247 sociological frameworks 122 software 16, 174, 183, 200 solar panels 138 Solow, Robert 57 sourcing analysis 3, 145–146, 149, 155–156, 160–164, 307, 312 South Korea 4–5, 9–10 speculation 149, 308 speculation-oriented synthesis 5 spending cuts 146 spillover effects 97 “spin” 147, 244 Spoken BNC2014 corpus 178 spoken discourse 170–171 spontaneity 227 Springer, B. 142 states: apparatus of 83–84; debt of 266; finance from 63; interference by 60; role of 6, 57, 62–64, 72; rule by 107 Stiglitz, Joseph 57 stock markets 4, 148, 250 Strauβ, Nadine xi, 3, 250 Streeck, W. 110 structural topic modelling 268–269 students 13–14 subscription services 171 subsidised information 147 The Sun (newspaper) 85 survey research 243, 257–262, 268–271; conducting one’s own 259 sustainable finance (SF) 241, 245, 249–252 Swyngedouw, E. 110 syntagmatic relationships 135–137 tabloidization 104 Tambini, D. 244

Index  323

Tang, Z. 120 tax base 266 taxation 12, 124–125, 146, 197, 212, 235, 314 techno-fetishism 105 Telegraph newspapers 269 telephone surveys 257–258 television 4, 170, 229–230, 306 Terry, G. 126–127 text: analysis of 199–200; completeness of 171; features of 208–209; production of 198; representativeness of 203–204, 208; structuring of 212 textbooks 13, 117 Thatcherism 81 Theine, Hendrik xi, 10, 21 thematic analysis 126–128 theoretical issues 14 “there is no alternative” (TINA) 109, 154 think tanks 75 “thinking like an economist” 197 “thinking out loud” 263 thinking skills 257 Thomas, R. 238 Thompson, P.A. 3, 6 TIME corpus 179 Time (magazine) 179–181 time periods 231–232 “titans” 107 Today programme 229 tone 234 Toolan, M. 11 top-down power 101 Torelli, R. 118 Touru, M. 189 trade unions 195, 307 training 9, 13, 25, 302, 304 transcription 169, 234 transparency 237 triangulation 120, 257, 269 Tribble, C. 177 trigger events 187 trust 110–111, 252; loss of 8 trustworthiness 119 Tnstal, J. 145 Turner, Adair 57–58

understanding 276, 308–311; of economic issues 256–257, 262–263, 267 unemployment and unemployment benefit 275–279 United Kingdom 11–12, 101, 231, 235, 245, 314 United States 9, 11, 101, 229, 245, 314 universal truths 65 unpaid work 61 Usher, N. 87–88, 244

uncertainty about the future 56 underemployment 280

YouGov 258, 268 yuppies 168

Van Dalen, A. 87 Van Dijk, Teun A. 193, 222 Vara-Miguel, A. 6 Vaughan, Elaine xi, 169 verification standards 244 vested interests 148–149 visualisation of data 277, 286 voice 233–234, 307 Vygotsky, L. 78 Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin 100, 106 Wampole, C. 308 waste 267 “watchdog” role 9, 87–88, 243–247, 250, 311 welfare benefits 267, 277; recipients of 12, 260–261 well-being, measures of 278 Wilkinson, Richard 57 Williams, B. 263 Wimmer, R.D. 123 Wodak, R. 194 Wohl, R.R. 227–228 Woods, Killian 294–302 word frequency lists 174–177 word order 210 word processing 202 word usage 118, 313 WordSmith tools 173 working-class communities 107, 314 working hours, laws on 71 working practices 86; in journalism 8–9 workplace culture 245–246 World of Journalism 95, 100–102; Journalistic Cultures Around the World award 100