Media and the transformation of “reality”. A critical discourse analysis of BBC Panorama’s “Slumdogs and millionaires”

The role of the media as a mirror of “reality” was the translucent background against which much research and theorising in Media Studies was done since the establishment of this field and up to the 1960s (Gurevitch et al., 1982/2005: pp. 3-4). Stuart Hall (1980) and a new critical tradition, however, convincingly challenged the mirror position: he argues that the media message is negotiated through the ideological encoding of meaning on the part of the text producer and the ideological decoding of meaning on the part of the audience. The interplay between the two forms the basis for the construction of “realities”.
After briefly introducing some recent elaborations of Hall’s encoding/decoding model, this paper will look at a practical example of how media can represent and transform reality. In order to do so, I approach the media text through a Critical Discourse Analysis lens (Fairclough, 1995) and carry out a thematic analysis of the representation offered by the Panorama program compared to other representations. The argument is supported by contextual/ discursive and intertextual/ interdiscursive evidence as well as a close analysis of the text. Finally, as part of a small-scale reception study, I will ask the audience to take part in a short survey in order to explore their immediate response to the material viewed.

The paper aims to contribute to discussions in Media Studies about how reality is represented in the media by employing tools from the Critical Discourse Analysis tradition and by focusing on the interaction of audiences with media texts. At the same time, it also aims to contribute to research in Critical Discourse Studies by focusing on the genre of infotainment delivered through mass-mediated channels and by exploring its effects on an audience.