Media discourse is a multidisciplinary field. In addition to extensive interest in media and cultural studies, it is the subject of scrutiny in linguistics – particularly conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, linguistic anthropology, pragmatics and sociolinguistics – and also in cultural geography, psychology, sociology and tourismstudies. This diversity and spread is both a strength and a weakness. There have been developments in parallel in a range of disciplines. One concern of this book is to explore some overlapping concerns, common origins and influences. The disciplinary diversity of media discourse as a field is reflected in its methodologies. However, discourse analysis is a method that cuts across many of them, and the conventions of discourse analysis are at the heart of this book.

What is media discourse and whystudy it?

Very few of us, if any, are unaffected by media discourse. The importance of the media in the modern world is incontrovertible. For some sections of society, at least, the media have largely replaced older institutions (such as the Church, or trade unions) as the primary source of understanding of the world. Since discourse plays a vital role in constituting people's realities, the implications for the power and influence of media discourse are clear. Moreover, in modern democracies the media serve a vital function as a public forum. In principle, journalists are committed to democratic principles in relation to the government, hence to provision of a diversity of sources of opinion about it – a function (highly) idealised as the provision of ‘a robust, uninhibited, and wide-open marketplace of ideas, in which opposing views may meet, contend, and take each other's measure’ (Gurevitch and Blumler 1990:269).