A corpus-assisted approach to discursive news values analysis

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is the elaboration of an analytical tool for comparative studies. For this purpose, I used a combination of Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) and Corpus Linguistics (CL) to analyse a corpus of British Broadsheets’ news coverage of the Brexit campaign. The four major British broadsheets which were analysed were The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. A specific procedure was designed following previous studies on the topic and considering the challenges and opportunities that such a mixed-method approach (DNVA and CL) can face in exploring journalistic discursive practices and mapping the cultural and ideological discourses around certain topics. Some initial results of the case study are presented to show how the suggested procedure works in practice. From the present study’s findings, the procedure seems to work in a reliable manner, although some challenges should be considered and addressed in future studies.