Critical Discourse Analysis of Malawian Online Newspaper Reporting: Passing of The Access to Information Bill in 2016

Abstract

Reporting is an important part of access to information in the modern age where facts are often inseparable from propaganda. This realization makes it important to analyse the various forms of information presented by the media, and the proliferation of digital media has only made this need more pressing. It is in this context that I conduct a critical discourse analysis of newspaper reporting on the passage of the Access to Information (ATI) Bill by the Malawi Parliament in 2016. The objective of critical discourse analysis (CDA) is the analysis of public discourse such as advertising, newspapers, political propaganda, official documents, laws and regulations, among others. It explores the link between language, ideology and power. CDA seeks to reveal the ideological foundations of discourse and how these ideologies are used to justify and legitimize certain social practices and policies. In this article, I examine the reporting of four online newspapers, namely Malawi24, Malawi Voice, Nyasa Times and The Nation. My discussion is within the framework of CDA where I focus on aspects of lexical choices, referential strategies and modality as deployed in the different news stories. The analysis reveals that the digital newspapers’ presentation of the passing of the bill reflects the different ideological positions of the newspapers in the Malawian political context. It is therefore necessary for readers to critically analyse all information from online newspapers, as each publication may want to promote a particular ideological agenda in a given context.