Exploring gendered and xenophobic news frames

Abstract

This study explores how intermedial perspectives can develop and add nuance to the understanding of alternative news media. First, we contextualize alternative news media. Second, we discuss definitions and strategies for scholarly approaches to the material from the Riks YouTube Channel. In this, technology is stated to be able to make for a first reading of the material. The empirical material consists of the Riks News YouTube broadcast, in a format resembling morning TV news, with comments on the news from the presenters and the viewers.  In the analysis, we will do a pro-reading by performing text analysis with a simple automated text analysis tool and prompt AI tools to create specific descriptions of the material. We will also do a counter-reading, and in this work we will use concepts such as gender framing, impression management (Goffman, 1959), ambassadorship, xenophobic framing, and overall symbolic interaction. To further this analysis, we create and explore the potentials of critical technocultural discourse analysis (Brock, 2018), engaging traditional gender theory, news frame analysis and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992; Halliday, 2014). AI tools are explored to enhance and assist in the counter-reading analysis. In the concluding discussion, we particularly explore the affect crescendos (a form of affective decisive points) in the news broadcasts and the comments. We compare and discuss how technology, with particular keywords and AI prompts for the affect crescendos, can create a more critical technocultural discourse analysis, including various multimodal aspects.