The Good, the Bad and the Other: Discursive constructions of nations in Voice of America’s international news

This research analyses Voice of America’s discursive construction of nations in its international news reporting, based on Van Dijk’s sociocognitive discourse analysis approach and his concept of the ideological square. Through a combination of content analysis, corpus-assisted linguistic analysis and manual critical discourse analysis, this research examines how countries are constructed as part of an in-group and out-group. The findings show that US interpretations of democracy, freedom and human rights are used ideologically to emphasize positive aspects of in-group members and negative aspects of out-group members, while they are absent in justifications of military involvement by the in-group. The analyses also reveal the countries and regions of the world that are discursively overlooked or relegated to simply providing context for other nations’ activities.