A Discursive Turn in Journalism Studies? A Systematic Review of Discourse Analysis in Leading Journalism Journals

Discourse analysis has a long history within journalism studies, representing a key area of theoretical cross-fertilization with linguistics, semiotics, continental philosophy, and political theory. In recent years, discursive approaches have garnered new attention in journalism research through scholarly calls for a “discursive turn” in relation to journalistic roles, boundaries, and institutions and for the study of “metajournalistic discourse”. To map this analytical development and its inter-disciplinary theoretical foundations, this article presents a systematic literature review of discourse analytical studies in five leading journalism journals between 2018 and 2022. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 115 academic articles – in combination with a qualitative close reading – the study finds a theoretical deficit in the application of discourse analysis, with 32 out of 115 studies not engaging with any theoretical literature from major school of discourse analysis. The study also finds limited theoretical diversity among those that reference major schools, with most drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (n = 70) and few engaging with alternatives such as Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (n = 2) and (the Essex School of) Discourse Theory (n = 1). These findings call for deeper theoretical engagement and more diverse approaches to better understand journalism as a discursively constituted institution and practice.