Constructing right-wing extremism in the media: The role of evaluation in three news genres

The dissertation examines the construction of public knowledge of right-wing extremism through the German news media by adopting an a posteriori , text-interpretive approach to understanding news texts as instances of objectified meaningful action. The approach is comprised of two parts: a framework for register that encompasses the features of language used to construct an idealized audience by realizing particular situational meanings, and a framework for understanding "truth" in news reporting that encompasses the use of evaluative resources in particular news genres. My data included three texts: a 2001 study by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation on right-wing extremism in the political center of German society, an article from the Zeit newspaper entitled "Starke Hand gesucht", and an editorial from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung entitled "Test der Reflexe".;Using the framework for register, I find that the language used in the news texts orients the texts to identical audiences by realizing identical situational contexts: all construct a sophisticated and technical Field and a formal and objective Tenor through a written Mode. Next, I develop an analytical framework for understanding "truth" in news reporting as partially contingent upon the appropriate use of evaluative resources (APPRAISAL, EVALUATIVE MODALITY, and EVALUATIVE CONJUNCTION) within three news genres: reports, issues reports, and challenge/editorials. I find that evaluation plays two important roles. At an intra-textual level, evaluation contributes heavily to the construal and organization of meanings according to the affordances and constraints provided by the three genres. At an intertextual level, the use of evaluation in the Zeit and FAZ texts plays a crucial role in assigning authorial stance towards the FES text. Thus, the Zeit text construes and organizes evaluative meaning around the stance that the FES text creates truthful knowledge about right-wing extremism, while the FAZ text constructs genre-based evaluative meaning around the belief that the knowledge constructed through the FES text is false.;The dissertation demonstrates the usefulness of an approach to understanding knowledge construction that makes no a priori assumptions about how right-wing extremism is "known" in the public, but rather insists that these undergo a constant process of reconstruction and reevaluation through social discourse. Social scientific research on rightist phenomena, especially as this pertains to the reporting of such in the news media, may benefit from a greater understanding of this fact.