The state of the nation: television news and the politics of migration

Gross, Bernhard 2011. The state of the nation: television news and the politics of migration. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

The State of the Nation investigates discourses of British nationhood by analysing the coverage of migration on UK public service television news bulletins. These bulletins embody discourses of the national on a structural level through their public service remit and their position in the programme schedule. They also evoke the nation in and through their content—in particular in the context of the coverage of migration. The central line of enquiry of this thesis is focussed on the potentially problematic consequences of the interrelation of discourses of migration with discourses of the nation. That this is a question of how they interrelate rather than whether rests on three theoretical assumptions: discourses of nation represent a form of identification; identification is the outcome of encounter with and potentially exclusion of the Other; migration is a discourse of encounter. Two further assumptions relate to the current historical moment and the news coverage under analysis: discourses of the nation have increasingly come under pressure; and yet, public discourses do not fully recognise or even acknowledge this, instead insist on the nation‟s continued unchanged relevance. The key question is: Under what contingencies is migration positioned as an excluded Other in relation to theses imagined community discourses? The thesis relates these issues to wider questions about the possibility for a cosmopolitan ethic. It theorises that certain logics of narrow nationality are a key determinants, but have to be understood as variable rather than as constant. The first two chapters of section 1 develop these key theoretical assumptions as well as some methodological concerns. The third chapter provides some topical context and background for the main data set: material collected during six months of media monitoring in 2006 on three news bulletins with a public service remit. The data is analysed in section 2 across three case studies. The first considers so-called illegal migration in relation to questions of space, attempting to trace the boundaries of the nation. The second moves from the boundary to the inside of the nation and looks at the changing nature of citizenship. The third case study focuses on the conditions under which journalists and migrants encounter each other.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	19 Mar 2016 22:43
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/25194

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