New(s) Racism: A discourse analytical approach
In this chapter we critically study the way news in the press may contribute to what is sometimes called the new racism . Since news reports are a type of text, our approach will be discourse analytical . This means that we do not treat news as transparent messages whose contents may be analysed in a superficial, quantitative way. Rather, we examine the complex structures and strategies of news reports and their relations to the social context. In our case, the social context consists of the activities of journalists in newsmaking, as well as the interpretations of readers, in the increasingly multicultural societies of western Europe and North America. More specifically we want to know what role the media in general, and news in particular, play in the reproduction of racial and ethnic inequality in these societies, and aim to do so through a systematic analysis of news discourse structures.