The generic features of frontpage news items

Abstract

The article considers the role of frontpage news items in creating a political or a social event, and with reliance on the BBC Web news bulletin seeks to prove that frontpage news items are a special type of multimodal text with recognizable generic characteristics: a headline, a picture and an abstract. Structurally, the present paper consists of three sections, each of which is devoted to a certain aspect of the problem in question. Firstly, the author looks into the history of scientific investigations of genres. Considering both fundamental works and the latest achievements in this field, the author stresses the social role of genres and maintains the view that different types of texts appear as a response to social expectations. Secondly, the issue of multimodality is brought up, and frontpage news items are described as texts written in two semiotic modes. The combination of a written text and a picture serves the purpose of constructing a social or a political event informing and influencing the reader at the same time. Thirdly, analysis of seven BBC frontpage news items is done to prove that frontpage form of news presentation is a special genre that has both technological and social roots. This genre has recently evolved from a traditional way of introducing news and has a number of distinctive features, like a short and meaningful headline provided with an abstract different from the headline of the linked article, an image that often conveys a meaning different from that of the headline. The contradictory meanings serve to construct events and form opinions; suggestion is made that the more meanings there are, the more politicized the event is.