Webinar Series: The representation of social actors in text and discourse
Sign up for the September webinar series on the representation of social actors by Dr Michael Farrelly
In recent episodes and blog posts, I’ve discussed analysing the representation of social actors.
In our June episode, COP 29, Credibility, & the Press, we applied an analysis of the representation of social actors to media coverage of COP 29 from CNN, BBC, and the New York Times, focusing on the portrayal of Azerbaijan as a 'petrostate' and issues surrounding the credibility of the conference.
I also posted some of the result tables from that analysis on a follow-up blog, Analysis of the representation of social actors in 3 media texts on COP 29, along with further discussion.
This analytical method, developed first by Theo Van Leeuwen, is an important one for CDA.
For one, the method affords us an ability to put into words an explanation for intuitions we might have about a text.
Second, it offers a way of systematically analysing texts which almost always reveals something about a text that was not apparent on a straightforward reading of that text. And very often these insights are of critical interest. As I’ve argued, the representation of social actors is a major part of how an issue or event is conceptualised in and across texts.
There is a lot of insight to be had from understanding how to analyse the representation of social actors. To that end, I’m running a series of webinars this September for PhDs and researchers who want to know more about how to apply this analytical method in CDA. There will be a webinar each week in September:
5th September 2025: Introduction to analysing the representation of social actors
12th September 2025: Identifying and categorising representations of social actors
19th September 2025: Development: ambiguous and embedded representations of social actors
26th September 2025: Development: social actors as features of genre/text-type and interdiscursivity