Discourse Context & Media最新文献

{"title":"Bumble’s ticking clock: Dating app temporal design as neoliberal discipline","authors":"Riki Thompson","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100897","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100897","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines Bumble’s self-positioning as a feminist dating app through a critical lens that combines theories of disciplinary technologies and governmentality with a neoliberal postfeminist framework. While Bumble markets women’s empowerment through its “first-move” feature, this research investigates how the platform’s 24-hour messaging requirement creates temporal constraints that potentially undermine its stated feminist goals. By analyzing how these time-based features influence user behavior and create additional forms of labor for women—communicative, relational, and postdigital—this study reveals tensions between Bumble’s empowerment claims and its disciplinary mechanisms. The research combines multimodal critical discourse analysis and ethnographic approaches to examine how Bumble’s marketing discourses and interface design construct and reinforce particular notions of gender empowerment while simultaneously subjecting users to new forms of control. This paper contributes to our understanding of how dating platforms serve as sites of engagement where gender, platform design, and social practices converge to normalize certain behaviors within tightly controlled temporal and interactive parameters.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 100897"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144170068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Where there is suffering, there is sharing: Sharing discourse by Chinese breast cancer patients on social media","authors":"Yue Zhao ,&nbsp;Yansheng Mao ,&nbsp;Kaihang Zhao","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100896","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100896","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores themes of the sharing discourse by 40 Chinese breast cancer patients and their thematic features across different disease stages on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform. The results show that Chinese breast cancer patients’ sharing discourse is mainly oriented towards disease information, personal emotions, and social relationships. Across the four stages of breast cancer, there is an overall increasing tendency of the patient’s orientation towards personal emotions and social relationships, but a decrease in disease information. The study highlights sharing discourse in virtual spaces can cross-sectionally reflect patients’ attitudes and beliefs about cancer, suggesting digital sharing can be approached and initiated as empathy-charged support outlets for cancer patients across stages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 100896"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144170067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The intersection of corporate discourse and platform design: A study of WhatsApp’s corporate blog and website","authors":"Agnese Sampietro","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100893","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100893","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Scholars interested in users’ interactional discourse on WhatsApp need to better understand the corporate interests and commercial motives embedded in the app. Critical media scholars have investigated the intersection of digital design and user agency by examining how technical, social, and economic factors affect the evolution, design, and use of a range of platforms. This study explores the development of WhatsApp’s corporate discourse, showing how design changes and significant shifts in the company’s self-presentation align with the app’s ‘platformization’. WhatsApp initially marketed its messaging service as innovative and interoperable on its website and blog, but its discourse subsequently shifted to emphasizing intimate conversations with close friends and the constant assurance of user privacy, aligning with Meta’s broader discourse on the future of messaging. Nevertheless, the analysis revealed incongruities between the company’s emphasis on user privacy and its commercial interests which prioritize other forms of engagement, such as communicating with businesses. This study ultimately demonstrates the significance of corporate discourse in exposing the economic interests that shape the design of a mobile messenger and the need to consider these interests when examining WhatsApp communication.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 100893"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144124974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Discursive practices of blame during the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese Weibo","authors":"Ying Jin ,&nbsp;Dennis Tay","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100895","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100895","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The participatory affordance of web platforms has encouraged ordinary users’ participation in sociopolitical issues and opened up new channels for public opinion expression, particularly to blame authorities for their perceived wrongdoings. The current critical discourse analysis study contributes to this scholarship by investigating bottom-up discursive practices on user-generated texts on <em>Weibo,</em> the most widely used social media website in China. Using Social Media Critical Discourse Studies, we examine how netizens blame the elite group for their money and mask donations during the COVID-19 pandemic. They do this by constructing an identity for the elites as norm-breaching, outliers, and criminals, in contrast to their own norm-monitoring and judicial identity, thereby justifying the blame on the elites. Several discursive practices were identified with varying degrees of rationality and affectivity. Data includes comments presented in both textual and image forms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"66 ","pages":"Article 100895"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144106204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sharing as informal teaching: Identity construction of an English learner/teacher microcelebrity on Douyin","authors":"Yaqian Jiang ,&nbsp;Camilla Vásquez","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100888","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100888","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous research has demonstrated that informal language learning and teaching activities occur through user-generated content on popular video-sharing platforms. As individuals can claim varying degrees of authority in the knowledge they transmit to others, the identity constructions relevant to digital knowledge production represents a topic that demands more scholarly attention from a discursive, social, as well as pedagogical perspective. To address this issue, this paper takes a case study approach to exploring the self-presentation of a popular Tibetan content creator on Douyin, Jiadecang, who shares short English language learning vlogs featuring himself practicing spoken English that are designed to attract followers. Taking a social semiotic approach to the analysis of multimodal discourse (<span><span>Bezemer and Jewitt, 2025</span></span>, <span><span>Kress, 2010</span></span>, <span><span>Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006</span></span>), this study investigates how Jiadecang harnesses various linguistic and other semiotic resources afforded by the platform to engage in public identity construction in his videos. By projecting identities of both learner and “teacher” simultaneously, Jiadecang attracts followers interested in learning English and, at the same time, is protected from potential critiques by others about his “imperfect” English. This study adds to a growing body of research on digital genres, self-branding practices, and influencer cultures.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 100888"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143917520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Performing Couplings: Communing affiliation through bullet curtains in live stream","authors":"Jian Shan ,&nbsp;Huan Yu","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100890","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100890","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper provides insights into how viewers commune affiliation through bullet curtains in live stream. Due to the apparently chaotic form of live stream interactions and streamers’ central role in holding live stream shows, previous research either sees live stream interactions as disordered or over-emphasizes the role of streamers in mustering the community. This study argues that viewers can also affiliate with co-viewers by performing in bullet curtains. To account for this particular way of affiliation, this study localizes the Ambient Affiliation theory in systemic-functional linguistics with the help of the linguistic-anthropological theory of stage performance. Through the analysis of 50 h’ recording of live stream shows, this paper finds that although the strategies of Ambient Affiliation are still adopted in live stream, the realization of them is different. Instead of addressing potential readers as in other forms of social media, viewers here dialogue with streamers and commune affiliation by performing the ideation-attitude couplings in their dialogical comments on the virtual stage of live stream. The performances targeting couplings brought up by streamers would adjust the dialogical space of these couplings (FINESS), and those targeting couplings in viewers’ bullet curtains would interpersonally foreground an entire coupling (PROMOTE). Viewers may also <em>meta</em>-perform to remind audiences of upcoming performances and in this way attribute couplings to target audiences (CONVOKE). Meanwhile, as viewers need to steal the spotlight of streamers by building their performances on streamers’, not only is stylization employed to invoke more powerful voices so as to compete with streamers, but the resulting logico-semantic dependency also sets constraints on the semantic choices of their performances.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 100890"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143917548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mediatizing distant suffering: A longitudinal analysis of The New York Times’ coverage of famine in Somalia (1960–2021)","authors":"Wenxue Zou","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100891","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100891","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Grounded in mediatization theory, this article unpacks the discourse strategies employed by The New York Times in its coverage of Somali famine from 1960 to 2021, with analytical lens anchored in the social construction of reality. Through a multimodal critical discourse analysis of 819 reports, the study reveals that the media adopt different strategies to depict famine and famine victims in response to the ever-evolving US-Somalia relationship. The portrayal of international relief operations serves to reinforce the heroic image of developed countries while perpetuating the dichotomy between “us” and “them” in the international political structure. This framing implicitly constructs Western moral legitimacy through saviorist rhetoric while positioning distant suffering as a passive object of rescue, a discursive strategy that mirrors and perpetuates power asymmetries in the media coverage. The current research contributes to mediatization scholarship by reconceptualizing it as a mnemonic practice of power, wherein media institutions do not merely record historical events but actively curate collective memory, transforming distant suffering into consumable scenes of humanitarian drama.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 100891"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143902110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘She can’t hide her belly any longer’: Online headlines about celebrity pregnancies as small stories","authors":"Martina Podboj","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100889","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100889","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores how online headlines about celebrity pregnancies function as small stories, i.e., a salient genre of narrative discourse often found in online spaces (<span><span>Georgakopoulou, 2006</span></span>, <span><span>Georgakopoulou, 2022</span></span>) and how online news outlets mediate these narratives. It also examines the role of clickbait in shaping the discourse around celebrity pregnancy. The study is based on the analysis of a corpus of Croatian news headlines from top-read outlets collected during 2023, and focuses on narrative positioning, stancetaking strategies, and the construction and distribution of headlines as mediated action (<span><span>Scollon, 2001</span></span>). The findings reveal that news outlets systematically rely on the small story format in to employ repetitive clickbait strategies that reinforce hegemonic discourses surrounding pregnant celebrities. Headlines consistently scrutinize celebrities’ appearance, age, and behavior during pregnancy, with particular emphasis on the visibility of the pregnant belly, which the celebrities are depicted as either “showing” or “hiding.” This narrative positioning functions as a salient clickbait strategy, drawing readers into familiar and often problematic portrayals of pregnancy. The study concludes that narrative strategies and clickbait are deeply intertwined in the observed headlines, highlighting how news outlets leverage their most distinctive digital affordance, i.e., clickbait, to construct and reinforce gendered media discourses.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 100889"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143900389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The best views come after the hardest climbs: Identity and community in infertility discourse on Instagram","authors":"Sofie van der Meij ,&nbsp;Jana Declercq","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100880","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100880","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social media have become influential platforms in how we see and construct our identities, such as health and illness identities; Instagram in particular is a much-used platform to build communities around certain illnesses or medical trajectories. This paper therefore examines how women who are undergoing fertility treatment construct their identity and their experiences with infertility and fertility treatment on their Instagram accounts. We analysed 111 public Instagram posts and 10 bios from 5 English accounts and 5 Dutch accounts. We qualitatively coded the data in ATLAS.ti, and used discourse analytical methods to analyse extracts illustrating main trends.</div><div>Our results show that these Instagram users construct themselves and other community members as expert patients/clients, prospective parents, warriors and travellers, owners of a failing body, and infertility advocates. These identities are inextricably tied to the construction of infertility as having a profound psychological and social impact. These are aspects that are possibly easier to discuss in the context of Instagram, because of the possibility to share anonymously about a subject that is often still taboo, among other reasons. Additionally, while users foreground their highly personal, individual experience, these discursive constructions have an implicit and explicit community-building function, and consequently also generate and shape collective identities. This community building for instance happens through hashtags and interactional elements, shared specific (medical) terminology, and the use of specific emoji.</div><div>To conclude, our study shows how Instagram is used as a platform to highlight the complex, unique and highly personal experience of being in fertility care. This often seems to come with a (perceived) lack of agency, while at the same time, infertility perceives health and health care as malleable and controllable. Our data reflects that dealing with infertility is not just a medical, but also a psychological and social experience. At the same time, discussing this on Instagram comes with specific (perceived) affordances, and complex and sometimes antithetical dynamics around destigmatisation and community-building. These findings are useful for health care providers as they provide insight in clients’ experiences and their use of social media information and support.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 100880"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143879214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Guilt and innocence – Emotional discourses in online discussions on climate change and housing","authors":"Eveliina Salmela ,&nbsp;Merja Koskela,&nbsp;Henna Syrjälä,&nbsp;Liisa Kääntä","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100887","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100887","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the discourses of guilt and innocence represented in Finnish online communication in different platforms. Guilt and innocence represent emotional reactions, which are discursively constructed and connected to values and social norms. We pose two research questions to our study: how are the nuances of guilt and innocence presented in online discussions, and how are self- and other-centered discourses constructed in different platforms. The data of the study consists of online discussions concerning people’s mundane housing in relation to climate change appearing in the comments on blogs and in the discussion threads on an anonymous online discussion forum. By combining Greimas’ semiotic square with discourse analysis, we show how the categories of guilt and innocence as well as not guilty and not innocent highlight the nuanced ways in which polarizing perspectives to self- and other-centered discourses appear on different platforms. Our research contributes to the discussion on environmental communication by revealing more than just two opposing poles; our analysis shows the fine-tuned differences intertwined with gendered discourses constructed in discussions on different platforms. While feeling guilty or not innocent in the blogs is mostly connected with the participant’s own actions of not doing enough, assigning guilt to someone else seems to be common on the anonymous discussion forum. Still, the analysis indicates that while community norms and expectations shape the discourses they do not determine how the discourses turn out.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 100887"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143883000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}