Tackling multimodal news: Some implications of critical analytical research on the ‘children overboard’ affair

Abstract

Abstract Accounting for front‐page news puts pressure on analytical resources, especially when news‐making is characterised by features such as overt political intervention in visual (photographic) and verbal (attribution) news data; explicit references to and investment in visual news to support political claims about news‐makers; and significant changes over time to a story, moving it from public scandal, through media disclosure to political defence. This article offers an account of how I tackled these analytical challenges in my research into the ‘children overboard’ affair in Australian newspapers. The affair was generated from a false claim by Liberal Party ministers that asylum seekers threw their children overboard to coerce the Australian Navy into rescuing them. The story became front‐page news in October, 2001, helped to provide the Coalition with another term in office and greatly influenced public discourse about refugees and border protection. The article shows how I analysed semiotic resources such as voicing (in verbal news) and framing (in visual news) to track changes in this affair. It argues that political interventions in these semiotic resources (what I call ‘first‐order discourse') were pivotal in the management of news about asylum seekers. The article concludes by highlighting some implications of the methodology for critical analysis of multimodal news discourse.