Introduction

In this final chapter, I link challenges presented by discourse meaning in the media with wider debates about representation, misrepresentation and unresolved questions to do with ‘information’. I close by asking how much trust or suspicion we should feel towards contemporary media communicators.

Meaning and speculation

To illustrate how the continuous, daily flow of meaning disputes is both an immediate, local problem and also a longer-term social question of representation and information, I begin by drawing out some wider social issues from a news story extensively covered as I write this morning.

Today's newspapers, radio and TV news, and online news sites all report an unexpected fluctuation in the share price of HBOS, the UK's biggest mortgage lender. What makes the fluctuation newsworthy – after all, share values fluctuate continuously – is that it is thought to have been triggered by speculators spreading false rumours about an alleged funding crisis at the bank, in order to cash in on the resulting fall in share price by short-selling (that is, by borrowing shares and selling them, then spreading a rumour that causes their value to fall and buying the shares back at a profit when the rumour is not substantiated and the price recovers, then returning the original shares and keeping the profit). To counter the damaging effect of such rumours (and in this case following temporary suspension of trading after shares in the bank had lost 17 per cent of their value), a strong warning statement was issued by the Financial Services Authority.