Media generated news waves - catalysts for discursive change: The case study on drug issues in Estonian print media

Abstract

Journalistic discourse influences the public agenda and shapes the discourse as well as social and political lives. Journalism studies distinguish between mediated scandal, media hype, news waves and media events — approaches that help to understand why the phenomena of media gives extraordinary space, time and attention to certain events or topics. The steady flow of everyday news does not generally allow for the introduction of issues that are unknown to the public or require either a specific vocabulary or prior knowledge. Intensive media coverage can however act as a catalyst by directing the public attention to new social issues. This article examines how the press intensively reported the high profile arrest of Estonian drug traffickers in Thailand, initially emotively and subjectively, but in doing so raised public awareness and shaped the social drug discourse in Estonia.

15. From racial hoaxes to media hypes

“…Other researchers combined quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative (discourse analysis) methods, to explore how news wave can trigger change in general discourse on a specific issue (Paimre & Harro-Loit, 2011;Maneri, 2013). Others investigated internet environment, introducing a mixed method to support an in-depth analysis.…”

Periodismo para la conservación en Ecuador: cuando los medios hablan del medioambiente

“…Está bien establecido que el informe periodístico es muy importante e influyente para la agenda pública y el discurso sobre temas ambientales, mientras que la cobertura mediática rigurosa puede actuar como catalizador al dirigir la atención pública sobre algunos problemas sociales. (Paimre y Harro-Loit, 2011) En este contexto, se planteó un proyecto que cubriese la necesidad de formar y educar a periodistas, editores, fotógrafos y productores audiovisuales con herramientas que les permitan generar más y mejores contenidos sobre temas relacionados con el medioambiente y la conservación de la biodiversidad.…”

Representation of Death Culture in the Estonian Press

“…funeral of a president or mourning of Princess Diana). In addition to media event the journalism studies provide more or less elaborated concepts for different types of intensive coverage where the media plays a significant role in framing and social amplification of a certain event or topic: mediated scandal, media hype, news waves of smaller amplitude than media event (Paimre & Harro-Loit 2011). However, such death-related intensively reported cases should be analysed separately from the daily news flow that is the focus of the present research.…”