The Multimodal Analysis of Online Newspapers: Developing Analytical Skills and Project Work with Students

This is a book for teachers wanting to make use of online news sources with secondary, post-secondary and university EFL students, particularly those who are pursuing studies in the humanities or social sciences. Drawing on insights from linguistics, critical semiotics, cultural studies and theories of representation, the book equips readers with the analytical skills required to describe the world of online news and asks them to explore a range of questions such as what epistemological differences exist between printed and online newspapers and how can these differences be investigated? What impact do online newspapers have on the way news is constructed and interpreted? What can multimodal and intercultural analysis of online newspapers tell us about the changing experience of reading newspapers and the criteria that govern the organisation of the newspaper webpage? The book provides examples of how project work can be undertaken, showing how to adapt various corpus-searching and concordancing techniques to the study of online regional newspapers and how these newspapers construct their relationships with their readerships in a global market. The book is supported by a companion website maintained by the authors which contains supporting materials, suggestions for class activities, lists of questions and guidelines for project work.

Mariavita Cambria is assistant professor in English linguistics in the Faculty of Letters, University of Messina. Rosalba Rizzo is director of English at CLAM, the University of Messina’s Language Centre. She organises courses in English language and linguistics for all the University’s students.