A multimodal analysis of the representation of the Rohingya crisis in BBC’s Burma with Simon Reeve (2018): Integrating Audience Research in Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies

The paper proposes the integration of Audience Research in Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies to investigate media discourse. The novel approach is exemplified through a case study: the media interaction between one viewer and the text of his choice, BBC’s travel documentary Burma with Simon Reeve. The qualitative research design incorporates a pre- and after-viewing questionnaire, an interview and the multimodal textual analysis. The analytical focus is on the representation of social actors and it is argued that, through this integrated approach, it is possible to explore media effects on an audience by using the cognitive concepts of contextual effects, adapted from Relevance Theory, and ideological effects, a concept derived from the former and modelled around van Dijk’s definition of ideology.