Media discourse – a research review Cover Image

Dyskurs medialny – przegląd stanowisk badawczych
Media discourse – a research review

Author(s): Iwona Loewe
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: mediasphere; hypertext discourse; public discourse; directing social attention

Summary/Abstract: The article is a review of eight studies in which, with varying intensity and different purpose, the expression media discourse has been used. Furthermore, the article includes two important postulates. The first one being to exclude fiction texts, which are of a dominant autotelic function, from the media discourse analysis. The second one – to revise the opinion that the Internet discourse is a homogeneous structure. Hypertext discourse seems to be a crucial and instrumental category which overlaps with the media discourse, being, however, more precise in nature. The author concludes that media discourse is a type of a one-way communication through the mass media, where the sender is institutionalized, and the audience is the recipient. The message requires transceiver devices and is characterized by progressing iconisation. The objective of the sender is to direct social attention and model the views of his/her audience. The press discourse, the radio discourse, the television discourse and the hypertext discourse can be distinguished within the media discourse framework, in accordance with the type of data transmission. Semiotically, this type of communication is located in the mediasphere and displays a combination of three areas of signs: iconography, “sonophere” (sphere of sound) and logosphere, while eliminating the fourth area, the “galenosphere” (sphere of silence).

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 9-16
  • Page Count: 8