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Ethics Ethics Case Studies

The SPJ Code of Ethics is voluntarily embraced by thousands of journalists, regardless of place or platform, and is widely used in newsrooms and classrooms as a guide for ethical behavior. The code is intended not as a set of "rules" but as a resource for ethical decision-making. It is not — nor can it be under the First Amendment — legally enforceable. For an expanded explanation, please follow this link .

For journalism instructors and others interested in presenting ethical dilemmas for debate and discussion, SPJ has a useful resource. We've been collecting a number of case studies for use in workshops. The Ethics AdviceLine operated by the Chicago Headline Club and Loyola University also has provided a number of examples. There seems to be no shortage of ethical issues in journalism these days. Please feel free to use these examples in your classes, speeches, columns, workshops or other modes of communication.

Kobe Bryant’s Past: A Tweet Too Soon? On January 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant died at the age of 41 in a helicopter crash in the Los Angeles area. While the majority of social media praised Bryant after his death, within a few hours after the story broke, Felicia Sonmez, a reporter for The Washington Post , tweeted a link to an article from 2003 about the allegations of sexual assault against Bryant. The question: Is there a limit to truth-telling? How long (if at all) should a journalist wait after a person’s death before resurfacing sensitive information about their past?

A controversial apology After photographs of a speech and protests at Northwestern University appeared on the university's newspaper's website, some of the participants contacted the newspaper to complain. It became a “firestorm,” — first from students who felt victimized, and then, after the newspaper apologized, from journalists and others who accused the newspaper of apologizing for simply doing its job. The question: Is an apology the appropriate response? Is there something else the student journalists should have done?

Using the ‘Holocaust’ Metaphor People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is a nonprofit animal rights organization known for its controversial approach to communications and public relations. In 2003, PETA launched a new campaign, named “Holocaust on Your Plate,” that compares the slaughter of animals for human use to the murder of 6 million Jews in WWII. The question: Is “Holocaust on Your Plate” ethically wrong or a truthful comparison?

Aaargh! Pirates! (and the Press) As collections of songs, studio recordings from an upcoming album or merely unreleased demos, are leaked online, these outlets cover the leak with a breaking story or a blog post. But they don’t stop there. Rolling Stone and Billboard often also will include a link within the story to listen to the songs that were leaked. The question: If Billboard and Rolling Stone are essentially pointing readers in the right direction, to the leaked music, are they not aiding in helping the Internet community find the material and consume it?

Reigning on the Parade Frank Whelan, a features writer who also wrote a history column for the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call , took part in a gay rights parade in June 2006 and stirred up a classic ethical dilemma. The situation raises any number of questions about what is and isn’t a conflict of interest. The question: What should the “consequences” be for Frank Whelan?

Controversy over a Concert Three former members of the Eagles rock band came to Denver during the 2004 election campaign to raise money for a U.S. Senate candidate, Democrat Ken Salazar. John Temple, editor and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, advised his reporters not to go to the fundraising concerts. The question: Is it fair to ask newspaper staffers — or employees at other news media, for that matter — not to attend events that may have a political purpose? Are the rules different for different jobs at the news outlet?

Deep Throat, and His Motive The Watergate story is considered perhaps American journalism’s defining accomplishment. Two intrepid young reporters for The Washington Post , carefully verifying and expanding upon information given to them by sources they went to great lengths to protect, revealed brutally damaging information about one of the most powerful figures on Earth, the American president. The question: Is protecting a source more important than revealing all the relevant information about a news story?

When Sources Won’t Talk The SPJ Code of Ethics offers guidance on at least three aspects of this dilemma. “Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.” One source was not sufficient in revealing this information. The question: How could the editors maintain credibility and remain fair to both sides yet find solid sources for a news tip with inflammatory allegations?

A Suspect “Confession” John Mark Karr, 41, was arrested in mid-August in Bangkok, Thailand, at the request of Colorado and U.S. officials. During questioning, he confessed to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Karr was arrested after Michael Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado, alerted authorities to information he had drawn from e-mails Karr had sent him over the past four years. The question: Do you break a confidence with your source if you think it can solve a murder — or protect children half a world away?

Who’s the “Predator”? “To Catch a Predator,” the ratings-grabbing series on NBC’s Dateline, appeared to catch on with the public. But it also raised serious ethical questions for journalists. The question: If your newspaper or television station were approached by Perverted Justice to participate in a “sting” designed to identify real and potential perverts, should you go along, or say, “No thanks”? Was NBC reporting the news or creating it?

The Media’s Foul Ball The Chicago Cubs in 2003 were five outs from advancing to the World Series for the first time since 1945 when a 26-year-old fan tried to grab a foul ball, preventing outfielder Moises Alou from catching it. The hapless fan's identity was unknown. But he became recognizable through televised replays as the young baby-faced man in glasses, a Cubs baseball cap and earphones who bobbled the ball and was blamed for costing the Cubs a trip to the World Series. The question: Given the potential danger to the man, should he be identified by the media?

Publishing Drunk Drivers’ Photos When readers of The Anderson News picked up the Dec. 31, 1997, issue of the newspaper, stripped across the top of the front page was a New Year’s greeting and a warning. “HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR,” the banner read. “But please don’t drink and drive and risk having your picture published.” Readers were referred to the editorial page where White explained that starting in January 1998 the newspaper would publish photographs of all persons convicted of drunken driving in Anderson County. The question: Is this an appropriate policy for a newspaper?

Naming Victims of Sex Crimes On January 8, 2007, 13-year-old Ben Ownby disappeared while walking home from school in Beaufort, Missouri. A tip from a school friend led police on a frantic four-day search that ended unusually happily: the police discovered not only Ben, but another boy as well—15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, who, four years earlier, had disappeared while riding his bike at the age of 11. Media scrutiny on Shawn’s years of captivity became intense. The question: Question: Should children who are thought to be the victims of sexual abuse ever be named in the media? What should be done about the continued use of names of kidnap victims who are later found to be sexual assault victims? Should use of their names be discontinued at that point?

A Self-Serving Leak San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams were widely praised for their stories about sports figures involved with steroids. They turned their investigation into a very successful book, Game of Shadows . And they won the admiration of fellow journalists because they were willing to go to prison to protect the source who had leaked testimony to them from the grand jury investigating the BALCO sports-and-steroids. Their source, however, was not quite so noble. The question: Should the two reporters have continued to protect this key source even after he admitted to lying? Should they have promised confidentiality in the first place?

The Times and Jayson Blair Jayson Blair advanced quickly during his tenure at The New York Times , where he was hired as a full-time staff writer after his internship there and others at The Boston Globe and The Washington Post . Even accusations of inaccuracy and a series of corrections to his reports on Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks did not stop Blair from moving on to national coverage of the war in Iraq. But when suspicions arose over his reports on military families, an internal review found that he was fabricating material and communicating with editors from his Brooklyn apartment — or within the Times building — rather than from outside New York. The question: How does the Times investigate problems and correct policies that allowed the Blair scandal to happen?

Cooperating with the Government It began on Jan. 18, 2005, and ended two weeks later after the longest prison standoff in recent U.S. history. The question: Should your media outlet go along with the state’s request not to release the information?

Offensive Images Caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad didn’t cause much of a stir when they were first published in September 2005. But when they were republished in early 2006, after Muslim leaders called attention to the 12 images, it set off rioting throughout the Islamic world. Embassies were burned; people were killed. After the rioting and killing started, it was difficult to ignore the cartoons. Question: Do we publish the cartoons or not?

The Sting Perverted-Justice.com is a Web site that can be very convenient for a reporter looking for a good story. But the tactic raises some ethical questions. The Web site scans Internet chat rooms looking for men who can be lured into sexually explicit conversations with invented underage correspondents. Perverted-Justice posts the men’s pictures on its Web site. Is it ethically defensible to employ such a sting tactic? Should you buy into the agenda of an advocacy group — even if it’s an agenda as worthy as this one?

A Media-Savvy Killer Since his first murder in 1974, the “BTK” killer — his own acronym, for “bind, torture, kill” — has sent the Wichita Eagle four letters and one poem. How should a newspaper, or other media outlet, handle communications from someone who says he’s guilty of multiple sensational crimes? And how much should it cooperate with law enforcement authorities?

A Congressman’s Past The (Portland) Oregonian learned that a Democratic member of the U.S. Congress, up for re-election to his fourth term, had been accused by an ex-girlfriend of a sexual assault some 28 years previously. But criminal charges never were filed, and neither the congressman, David Wu, nor his accuser wanted to discuss the case now, only weeks before the 2004 election. Question: Should The Oregonian publish this story?

Using this Process to Craft a Policy It used to be that a reporter would absolutely NEVER let a source check out a story before it appeared. But there has been growing acceptance of the idea that it’s more important to be accurate than to be independent. Do we let sources see what we’re planning to write? And if we do, when?

SPJ News –  SPJ strongly condemns sentencing of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich –  SPJ Stands With Hong Kong Press Freedom Advocate Selina Cheng After Firing –  Announcing the 2023 Sigma Delta Chi Awards, MOEy and Corbin Gwaltney winners

NEWS & INSIGHTS

The effects of social tv on television advertising effectiveness.

MediaScience is the leading provider of lab-based audience research, incorporating a range of neuro-measures including biometrics, facial expression analysis, eye tracking, EEG, and more. With state-of-the-art labs in New York, Chicago, and Austin, MediaScience is discovering actionable insights in advertising, technology, media, and consumer trends.

Dr. Duane Varan, the global authority of neuromarketing research, founded Audience Labs (formerly the Interactive Television Research Institute ) during his tenure at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, in 2001. In 2005, he launched the Beyond : 30 Project, a consortium exploring the changing media and advertising landscape, and in 2008, he was approached by Disney Media Networks to set up a dedicated custom research lab on a broader scale – and so MediaScience was born. Though he officially left Murdoch in 2015, he continues to maintain some research links with the University of South Australia and has been widely recognised for his innovative contributions to teaching and the neuromarketing industry as evidenced by a long list of awards and over 90 published academic papers in his field.

Below is an abstract from one of Dr. Varan’s papers about The effects of social TV on television advertising effectiveness from the Journal of Marketing Communications .

Social TV is the use of communication devices to connect with family and friends watching other TV screens. Plausible arguments suggest both positive and negative effects of social TV viewing on ad-effectiveness. This study contributes by providing evidence for the direction of social TV’s effects. The results of a controlled laboratory experiment suggest that the benefits of social TV, principally its association with live TV and therefore less ad-avoidance, come at the cost of negative distraction effects. Like normal coviewing, social TV viewing distracts from ad-processing, reducing unaided recall and brand attitude favorability, compared to individual (solus) viewing. However, social TV messaging about ads improved brand attitude. Perceived creativity increased the likelihood of ad-related messaging. Social TV also has an additional source of distraction, multitasking, but in this study, multitasking did not further reduce ad-effectiveness compared to coviewing. The paper concludes with implications for advertisers and future research.

Citation: Bellman, Steven & Robinson, Jennifer & Wooley, Brooke & Varan, Duane. (2014). The effects of social TV on television advertising effectiveness. Journal of Marketing Communications. 23. 1-19. 10.1080/13527266.2014.921637.

Click here to request the full text

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• Case Studies

Case Study: How Sun TV leveraged social media to improve television viewership

The case study explores how Sun TV repositioned Sun Life as a trending GEC targeted at younger digital-native demography through a 3-pronged strategy approach through social media.

Brand introduction.

• The brand identified and studied content consumption patterns of the target group across categories. This included popular social media channels, genres, content formats, hashtags, trends, tonality and more.
• Used qualitative research to collect feedback on existing content, measure the stickiness of show-characters and TV personalities.
• Also monitored social chatter and the influence of show promos on perception

Problem Statement/Objective

Also read:  case study: how tata salt’s chhath puja campaign created awareness around women’s health.

சன்ஃலைப் | அக்டோபர் 7 முதல் சன்ஃலைப் இப்பொழுது புத்தம் புது பொலிவுடன்அக்டோபர் 7 முதல்!!!#SunLifeTamil #Oct7 #LiveLifeSunLife #InimeSunLifeThan Posted by Sun Life on Monday, 1 October 2018

சன்ஃலைப் | அக்டோபர் 7 முதல் இளமையின் துள்ளலோடு இன்னும் உற்சாகத்துடன்சன்ஃலைப், அக்டோபர் 7 முதல் புத்தம் புது பொலிவுடன்!!!#SunLifeTamil #Oct7 #LiveLifeSunLife #InimeSunLifeThan Posted by Sun Life on Monday, 1 October 2018

Oru Kadha Sollatuma Sir பேரன், பேத்திய கொஞ்சுறதுக்கெல்லாம் பணமா?என்ன கொடும டா!Watch #OruKadhaSollatumaSir Monday to Friday 8PM Only On#SunLife #ShortStories #StoryTime Posted by Sun Life on Wednesday, 10 July 2019

• Through the course of 50 days, the campaign reached over 11.7 million Tamilians across the region via social media, display networks, publishers and mobile apps.
• With an increased engagement during primetime and a 44% higher view rate using competition sync, Sun TV also saw a significant increase in fan armies, Facebook groups and press articles sharing campaign-related content.
• Despite the lack of celebrity endorsers or a star-studded cast, Soppana Sundari enjoyed over 7 times higher the numbers of social media mentions than its closest competitor Bigg Boss Tamil during the launch week.
• Facebook and Instagram saw over 4.85 million engagements in the very first week of the campaign via contests and interactive polls. The official Facebook page witnessed a 300% growth in followers through the course of this campaign garnering close to 22 million views.
• Leveraging avenues from TV to digital engagement, Sun TV recorded a 20% increase in brand mentions during prime time week over week.
• The success of this campaign not only contributed to the channel’s ratings but also built a continued following for secondary content that was celebrated by a new class of young and progressive Tamil television viewers.

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Case Study: The Richly-Rewarding Impact of Television in Your Media Mix

I’m reminded of the notion that “stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.” Admittedly, the particulars in the following case are a little different from Henry Ford’s observation, but the lesson rings true for advertisers in healthcare.

Recently, the data from a long-standing client provided a vivid contrast in tangible results with and without television media in the mix. (Spoiler alert: TV delivers a positive difference.)

Media supervisors like myself are constantly swimming around in a sea of numbers—performance data, media schedules and availabilities, research reports and other metrics—in order to drive the biggest and best return from a client’s ad budget.

For many years this client’s substantial media plan integrated (traditional) television advertising with digital (online) media, devoting about 50 percent of the budget to TV. A few years ago, the telephone inquiry responses began to decline. We know now that the nation’s economic state had a big part in the decline, but at the time, the assumption was: “Television no longer worked.”

The client elected to reduce their TV budget, trimming the investment by as much as 70 percent, and eventually going entirely dark on television media. Comparing response rates between year-over-year periods of “strong TV” with “no TV,” (and subsequently a return to television advertising) now reveals a clearer picture of the impact of that decision.

• Jan-Feb 2014 (with TV) = 185 Search/PPC leads, weekly average
• Jan-Feb 2015 (no TV) = 85 Search/PPC leads, weekly average

After six weeks of no TV (and the serious drop in inbound leads), the client returned to TV in week seven, and Search/PPC leads jumped from 85 to 150—illustrating the immediate impact of being back on TV.

For reasons of confidentiality we can’t reveal other particulars, but our industry and media planning experience affirms that the impact of television in the media mix is significant, and parallels exist in many business categories including the automobile industry, healthcare delivery and many others.

A solid, results-driven marketing plan and media mix is a challenge that requires professional help. What’s more, television advertising doesn’t fit every client situation. But there are at least two important planning lessons for hospital and healthcare marketers in this case example.

First, the side-by-side comparison—with and without television being the only significant difference—shows the important contribution of television advertising when integrated in the marketing and media mix with online tools.

And second, that pulling back on the advertising budget as a purely budget-saving measure is not a path to improving response or better results. Arguably, this client’s lost opportunity and missed new business was greater than the short-term “savings” in the budget.

For related reading, see:

• Media Buying Myths: Reducing Financial Risk in Healthcare Advertising
• Affordable, Creative Television Ads That Deliver Impact and Results  

Or to talk about successful media planning and cost-effective budgeting and buying; connect with us at 800-656-0907.

Charlie DeNatale, Healthcare Success Media Supervisor - has over 30 years of experience in media planning, buying and research with specific expertise in national, regional and local direct response broadcast strategies and analysis. He previously was media director of Christopher Thomas Associates and Lobo & Petrocine in New York and is currently overseeing and managing all media plans and budgets for more than 30 clients. Charlie attended Upsala College and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Radio and Television Broadcasting.

Marketing a healthcare organization can be challenging - even painful if you don't approach it with the right knowledge, tools, and guidance. By reading about mistakes and lessons others have learned the hard way, you can boost your marketing effectiveness and take a shortcut to success. Discover how to avoid these "Seven Deadly Sins". Plus, join over 30,000 of your fellow healthcare providers with a free subscription to our Insight Newsletter.

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Television & New Media

Television & New Media (TVNM) , explores the fields of television and new media studies as they focus on the historical, ethnographic, political-economic, technological, and textual dimensions of media in social contexts. With eight issues annually, TVNM engages with critical and interdisciplinary research in areas including audiences and consumers; authors and producers; cultural history and geography; globalization; policy; citizenship; activism; and pedagogy. The journal also actively explores the intersections between social identities, such as race, class, and gender. View full journal description

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) .

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Digital Media to Claim Growing Share of Asia Pacific Advertising Market – Study

India’s ad and linear TV markets on separate tracks from rest of the region

By Patrick Frater

Patrick Frater

Asia Bureau Chief

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The advertising market in the Asia-Pacific region is poised to grow by 5.1% in the current year and at an average 4% through to 2029, when it would reach $290 billion.

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Premium AVOD, encompassing branded long-form online video platforms, SVOD, AVOD, freemium players, and FAST, is set to grow at a 9.2% CAGR, according to the report, reaching $12 billion by 2029. User-generated content and other social video platforms, including YouTube, Meta and TikTok, will expand to $39 billion.

Traditional media faces challenges, with linear TV declining at a 2% CAGR over 2024-29. Again, India the outlier. It is the only market showing material growth in linear TV advertising.

“The industry’s future is intrinsically linked to the rising adoption of commerce, connected TV, and premium AVOD, alongside the persistent dominance of UGC/social video platforms. Retail media is set to drive over 50% of incremental growth in total advertising across six key markets over 2024-29, while online video retains its position as the fastest-growing media segment across all 14 measured markets” said MPA executive director Vivek Couto.

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• Published: 28 July 2024

The construction of stance in English and Arabic newspaper editorials: a case study

• Sharif Alghazo 1 , 2 ,
• Khulood Al-Anbar 2 ,
• Ghaleb Rabab’ah   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1804-5859 1 , 2 ,
• Nimer Abusalim 2 &
• Mohammad Rayyan 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  971 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Cultural and media studies
• Language and linguistics

This study explores the construction of authorial stance in English and Arabic newspaper editorials. To achieve this objective, the study examines a corpus of 80 newspaper editorials retrieved from two newspapers: The first publishes in English ( The Guardian , the UK), and the second publishes in Arabic ( Addustour , Jordan). The study adopts Hyland’s taxonomy of stance, which includes features of hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mentions. To analyse the data, the study follows a mixed-methods approach to identify differences, if any, in the construction of authorial stance in the two languages in the editorial genre. A functional analysis is carried out to capture these markers within contexts. The results reveal that the most frequently used stance devices in Arabic editorials are the attitude markers, followed by boosters, hedges and self-mentions. Contrariwise, the findings showcase that the most frequently used stance device is hedging, followed by attitude markers, boosters, and self-mention. The study concludes that the two languages differ in the way they construct stance in editorials, a conclusion that provides implications for second-language professional writing teachers and students. The findings provide insights that might enhance the skills of argumentative writing in English for media courses.

Introduction

In research on intercultural rhetoric, the use of linguistic conventions to structure a text is of paramount importance. Equally important is the way authorial stance is constructed to achieve the objectives of writing (Pho, 2013 ; Peng, 2019 ). Intercultural rhetoric is concerned with the influence of the writer’s first language on the production of a text in the second language. Such an influence is explored by comparing writings in two languages. Of the most under-researched types of writing is the writing of newspaper editorials, which is used to express opinions and argue for certain positions. It is no accident that editors and members of the editorial board opt for certain stance markers in their editorials to unveil the mystery behind their own judgements and evaluations. That decision to pick a certain stance feature in a language is not a random one but rather a deliberate and thoughtful one based on the setting in which it exists. Such acts of evaluation or expression of opinion merely draw on a variety of different factors, including the newspaper’s ideology and the editorialist’s stance.

Editorials are the institutionally constructed voice of the newspaper. Therefore, a balanced, fair, and factual manner of reporting events is seen as something that most journalists and editors aspire to do in journalism. However, it could be argued that editorial writers do not have the option of excluding their views and their organisational cultures in the writing of their editorials. In fact, editorials can be less restricted with the absence of biases and prejudices as long as they completely concur with the stipulations of the institution. Therefore, editorials may influence one’s eyesight or sentiments of an issue over time. Richardson and Lancendorfer ( 2004 ), in their discussion of the framing theory and affirmative action in newspaper editorials, stated that ‘the opinion page is just that- a place where editors can bluntly state exactly what they think’ (p. 75). In broad terms, editorials have been proved to be a stance-rich environment where the ideology of the newspaper can be represented in journalism circles and to the public. For Hyland ( 2008 , p. 5), stance means “the writer’s textual voice or community recognised personality”.

A straightforward reflection of opinion in an editorial targeted at the newspaper readership is not as simple as it seems. The editorial stance is generally seen to have a strong power in the process of agenda-building and political agenda-setting in their respective countries. Jaffe ( 2009 , p. 8) pointed out that ‘stance attributions are tools of control and ideological domination’. Thus, editorial stance is believed to have a considerable influence on the ideologies, social attitudes and values of the community. Resulting of this, many studies have suggested a number of functions that stance performs in a written text (e.g. Biber and Finegan, 1988 ; Hunston and Thompson, 2000 ; Hyland, 2005 ; Dafouz-Milne, 2008 ). For instance, Biber and Finegan ( 1988 , p. 2) stated that ‘a broad range of functions falls under the umbrella of ‘stance’ including expression of certainty, generalisation, and actuality’. It is worth noting in this respect that stance as a linguistic term was referred to in the literature using different labels, such as evaluation, appraisal, voice, and writer’s commitment. Hunston and Thompson ( 2000 , p. 6), in their discussion of why evaluation has attracted broad interest, also identified three functions that evaluation is used to perform: expressing opinion, maintaining relations, and organising the discourse.

In this study, we compare the use of stance features in English and Arabic editorials to identify differences (if any) in how editorialists construct their stance in the two languages. The aim is to highlight the similarities and/or differences between both languages in the use of stance features, with a view to determining the factors affecting the use of stance in editorials. To achieve this objective, the study analyses editorials published in two well-known newspapers: The first in English ( The Guardian , the UK), and the second in Arabic ( Addustour , Jordan). These newspapers were selected based on their popularity and wide readership in their respective contexts. This study seeks to answer the following search questions:

How do newspaper editorialists construct their stance in English and Arabic newspaper editorials?

What are the similarities and/or differences (if any) in the use of stance markers in English and Arabic newspaper editorials?

Literature review

The literature on metadiscourse use abounds with studies that analysed different text types and genres (e.g. Abusalim et al., 2022 ; Alghazo et al., 2023a ; Alghazo et al., 2021a ; Rabab’ah et al., 2022 ; Rabab’ah et al., 2024 ). However, little research has been found on the use of metadiscourse in media discourse genres. For example, Chen and Li ( 2023 ) examine how two newspaper agencies, namely China Daily (CD) and The New York Times (NYT), use interactional metadiscourse to engage the readers and the similarities and differences in their usage. Specifically, the research focuses on identifying the rhetorical tools used by each agency and how/why they are used. The researchers used corpus analysis where the data was collected from 60 commentaries, 30 from each newspaper agency, which were published over the course of 6 months and the analytical framework used to analyse the data was derived from Hyland’s works on metadiscourse. The results show that both newspaper agencies used interactional metadiscourse, but their usage differed in terms of total frequency; the NYT used interactional discourse more. Secondly, in terms of the macro level, the NYT uses of stance and engagement were balanced, whereas the CD heavily focused on stance. Thirdly, in terms of the subcategories, the NYT used ‘hedges, self-mention, and engagement markers’ more frequently compared to the CD. As for ‘boosters and attitude markers,’ the differences were insignificant.

McCambridge ( 2022 ) examined how commenters on YouTube use stance to construe their voice while reacting to a video by compiling a list of 2000 comments on a viral video of Greta Thunberg made by 1949 users and analysing them using ATLAS.ti. The study states that from the data collected, the voice that seems to be construed is that of bullying. In terms of the frequency of the codified categories, attitude markers came first, followed by boosters, reader addresses, self-mentions, and hedging, respectively. The overall stance of the comments was negative and can easily be ‘[characterised] as bullying.’ The comments as a whole nurtured hate towards Thunberg through the use of sarcasm and insults, amongst other methods which fall under the above-mentioned categories. Finally, McCambridge ( 2022 ) extrapolates these results to the ‘wider social scale’ where group commentaries such as the one covered in this paper can be used to create an intimidating force against a given entity or figure.

Hyland and Zou ( 2021 ) studied the usage and function of stance in the genre of ‘Three Minute Thesis presentation (3MT)’. More specifically, the research focuses on analysing the usage of stance by the presenters, the differences that exist in said stances between the different fields, and the reasoning behind the differences using a corpus analysis of 140 presentations, which were transcribed from the video format. The presentation material covered multiple fields, including education, applied linguistics, history, and sociology. The corpus was categorised under hard sciences and soft sciences. Hyland’s model was used as the analytical framework, and AntConc was used to analyse the data. The results showed that in total, there were 4616 stance markers, where 2086 belonged to the social sciences, and 2529 belonged to the hard sciences. This difference was proven to be statistically significant. Moreover, when it comes to the subcategories, the hard sciences had more uses of boosters and hedges, whereas ‘attitude markers and self-mention were only slightly more frequent in the social [sciences]’. Finally, the hard science presenters used ‘more epistemic devices’ to support their claims, whereas soft science presenters used ‘a more affective and visible stance’.

Droz-dit-Busset ( 2022 ) explored the representation of Social Media Influencers (SMIs) by English news agencies by analysing the usage of the celebration and derision stances through the usage of ‘legitimation and delegitimation’ approaches. Droz-dit-Busset ( 2022 ) used a corpus analysis of 143 pieces, which included editorials, features, and opinion pieces extracted from a number of international English news agencies through LexisNexis, as well as pieces from the Guardian and the New York Times. The results show that for ‘celebration,’ techniques used included discussing positive metrics (view count, reach, etc.) as well as ‘narratives of [societal] upward mobility,’ where the SMIs are celebrated as individuals who went from zero to hero. As for the ‘derision’ stance, approaches to delegitimise SMIs include ‘negative moral evaluations’ regarding ‘their work [ethics]’ and referencing their ‘lack of institutional legitimation’.

Yazdani et al. ( 2014 ) investigated how articles from Persian and English news agencies utilise interactional metadiscourse, using a corpus analysis tool to analyse 30 articles (15 from Persian and 15 from English) and adopting Hyland’s ( 2005 ) system of metadiscourse. The results show that, in total, the English articles had a much higher frequency of interactional metadiscourse compared to the Persian articles, with a value of 70% compared to 29% respectively. In terms of the subcategories, English articles’ most frequently found markers were hedges (38%), followed by attitude markers (26%), boosters (18%), self-mentions (12%), and engagement markers (6%), respectively. As for the Persian articles, the most frequently used markers were the attitude markers (48%), followed by hedges (32%) and boosters (20%), respectively. Interestingly, the engagement markers and self-mentions were not present in the Persian articles, which led the researchers to conclude that these differences are attributed to the different writing styles of English and Persian writers, the writer-reader relationship dynamics, and the cultural differences between the two languages.

Fu ( 2012 ) examined how interactional metadiscourse is utilised in job postings, adopting a corpus analysis method to analyse a corpus consisting of 220 different job postings obtained from five sub-corpora of job postings, including that of ‘The Daily Telegraph’ and ‘The Guardian.’ These postings were further divided into postings made for college students and another for non-college students. Hyland’s ( 2005 ) model was used as the analytical framework, and the instances of interactional metadiscourse were categorised. Moreover, a questionnaire was given to 30 randomly selected students. The results show that, in total, the number of engagement features and stance features are similar, 1757 to 1804, respectively. Among these features, self-mentions (1145) and reader-inclusive pronouns (1497) are the most frequent. On the other hand, micro-level features (hedges/boosters) are not frequent. Personalisation is also a distinct feature, as displayed in the use of ‘we’ and ‘you’ when referring to the writer and the reader, respectively. As for the difference between postings made by college students and non-college students, interactional metadiscourse was more frequent in the postings by college students.

Al-Subhi ( 2023 ) investigated the use of interactional metadiscourse in the USA and UAE-based leading newspaper editorials, using a corpus analysis on a corpus consisting of 24 editorials with 12 from UAE-based news agencies ‘namely, Khaleej Times, Gulf Today, and The National Gulf,’ and 12 from USA-based news agencies namely, ‘The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Times’. The analytical framework used was Hyland’s ( 2005 ) model of interactional meta-discourse. The results showed that both corpora had similar frequencies when using interactional metadiscourse. Moreover, both corpora used stance markers more frequently compared to engagement markers. As for the subcategories of stance, both corpora used hedges most frequently, followed by attitude markers, boosters, and self-mentions, respectively. Engagement markers were few, with only ‘5%–8%’ present in the corpora. Al-Subhi ( 2023 ) concludes by addressing how editorials ‘constitute a persuasive genre par excellence’ given their usage of ‘rhetorical and argumentative structures’ which ‘[aims] to influence public opinion and [express] the institutional voice of a newspaper’.

Shen and Tao ( 2021 ) examined the usage of stance markers in scientific medical research articles and newspaper opinion columns, using a corpus analysis on two corpora: 52 articles and 175 opinion articles from ‘The New York Times’. Hyland’s ( 2005 ) framework of stance was used as the analytical framework of the study. The results showed that stance markers were frequently used in both corpora; however, the number of markers in the opinion columns was nearly twice as many compared to the medical corpus, which in turn ‘[reflects] a high level of interaction between writers and readers’ in that genre. As for the frequency of the categories, hedges were the most frequent, followed by boosters and attitude markers; all these categories were more frequent in opinion columns compared to medical articles. Self-mentions were also used in both genres; however, their usage differed, with opinion columns using ‘first person singular forms’ and medical articles using ‘the first person plural forms’. The results also showed that there was some overlapping in the usage of markers and that even though stance markers were more frequent in opinion articles, there were some subcategories under the difference between the two genres.

In a recent study on the use of stance features in the editorial section of newspapers, Al-Anbar et al. ( 2023 ) compared the use of interactional features of metadiscourse in two groups of editorials: the first was written by native English authors, and the second by nonnative English authors, using Hyland’s ( 2019 ) framework. The findings showed that non-native editorialists used fewer hedges and more boosters than native editorialists, who were found to also use more engagement markers in writing. In a related investigation, Alghazo et al. ( 2023b ) explored the interactive features of metadiscourse in 80 newspaper editorials written in first language (L1) English and second language (L2) English. The analysis showed that, in the main, there was no significant difference in the use of interactive features. However, a slight variation in the use of frame markers and evidentials was observed in the data analysed.

Methodology

The data were gathered from two broadsheet daily newspapers in Jordan and the UK, namely Addustour newspaper and the Guardian newspaper. This study is focused primarily on editorials which were published on the websites of the two newspapers between 2020 and 2021. Simply put, the present study gives an account of how stance is expressed in Arabic and English editorials. Therefore, it was decided that the best method to adopt for this investigation was to analyse the data both quantitively and qualitatively. A mixed-methods approach, combining both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data, was used to allow for a deeper insight into the use of stance markers by editors of both languages. Eighty editorials were divided into two sets; each set consisted of 40 editorials in each language. The data was collected from the two newspapers’ websites (Addustour and the Guardian) and then transferred to a Microsoft Word document. This study utilises Hyland’s ( 2005 , 2019 ) model of interaction, which includes stance and features of writer positioning. As for Hyland’s ( 2019 ) typology of stance, features of writer positioning are of four kinds: hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mentions .

In order to identify stance markers in the two sets of editorials, a functional analysis was carried out to capture these markers within contexts. Studies of stance have traditionally relied upon the contextual analysis of texts in stance detection (e.g. Dobbs, 2014 ; Aull and Lancaster, 2014 ; Wu and Paltridge, 2021 ). We prepared a list of potential stance markers in English and Arabic after reviewing many relevant studies in the literature (e.g. Biber and Finegan, 1988 , 1989 ; Fitzmaurice, 2004 ; Jaffe, 2009 ; Johnstone, 2009 ; Kiesling, 2009 ; Grey and Biber, 2012 ; Alghazo et al., 2021b ). After that, each potential stance marker was double-checked within context to verify its analysis. Each stance marker was then highlighted to lay down the ground for the calculation of the number of stance markers in each set of editorials. It should be noted here that Arabic stance examples were translated carefully after ensuring that they are considered stance features. In the quantitative part, a statistical analysis was performed using SPSS and the Mann–Whitney U test to compare the differences between the two independent groups. And for the purpose of qualitative analysis, numerous examples have been discussed with reference to earlier studies of stance. An explication of these instances has been made to uncover the interpretations and justifications of stance-taking options in both languages.

The findings of the study show that the most frequently used stance markers in the Arabic set of data were the attitude markers, followed by boosters, hedges, and self-mentions, respectively. Attitude markers, interestingly enough, were far more frequent than any other kind of stance features in the Arabic group of editorials. While boosters were the second most employed feature of stance across the Arabic editorials (23.4%), hedges were used less and less frequently (7.3%). There was only one instance of self-mentions in the Arabic collection of editorials (see Table 1 ). Self-mentions are considered to be the least recurring feature of stance in the Arabic editorials (0.1%), which was exactly the same as that of the English ones (0.1%).

Table 2 below shows the frequencies, percentages, and frequencies per 1000 words of stance features in the Guardian collection of editorials. By far, the most frequent stance feature in the English set of editorials was hedges (37.7%), followed by attitude markers (37%) (see Table 2 ). It is also worth noting that the gap between the usage of hedges and attitude markers in English editorials was relatively small (only 0.7%). Boosters ranked third among the most frequent stance features in the Guardian English editorials (25.2%). At the very least, self-mentions were used only once in the English editorials (0.1%), as can be seen in the table below.

The Mann–Whitney U Test, also known as the Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test, was adopted to capture further in-depth information on the similarities and/or differences between both languages in the practices of stance. This non-parametric statistical test was selected for its reliability and validity when comparing two independent groups. The results of the correlational analysis are summarised in Table 3 , and all types of stance markers were evidently present in the editorials of both languages. There is also evidence of a statistically significant difference between both sets of editorials in the total usage of stance markers, where the Z value reached (−7.713). Most strikingly, the test revealed a significant difference between the two groups of editorials in the usage of each type of stance markers. The two sets of editorials differed in the use of every category of stance markers (namely hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions). This means that the expression of stance in editorials has significantly diverged from the Jordanian versus the British setting.

We turn now to consider the different types of stance with some examples from both sets of editorials. Stance, with its roots in metadiscourse and Hyland’s interpersonal model, is generally broken down into four elements. Hyland ( 2005 ) categorised stance elements as being hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions. Hyland’s ( 2005 ) typology of stance features is very widely used in the studies of interaction and stance in written discourse.

Hedges have basically been used to refer to the linguistic items used by writers to distance themselves from their content. Hedging can be loosely described as ‘the softening’ of the writer’s statements or comments (Housen et al., 2012 ). Kaltenböck et al. ( 2012 , p. 1) defined hedging as ‘a discourse strategy that reduces the force or truth of an utterance and thus reduces the risk a speaker runs when uttering a strong or firm assertion or other speech act’. Van Dijk ( 1995 , p. 16) has also emphasised that ‘opinions may not only be expressed implicitly but also be implied indirectly’. Examples of hedges from the editorials of both languages are presented below. Hedges are used in the below-mentioned examples to moderate and tone down the rhetoric in these utterances.

1 In defense of a nation that is almost overwhelmed by despair.

This would also promote our national economy.

Perhaps we could cultivate such attachments (The Guardian view on second-hand clothes, The Guardian, 2021).

But Prince Philip was also, perhaps paradoxically , the trailblazer for the idea of royalty as a profession. (The Guardian view on Prince Phillip, The Guardian, 2021).

Although Arabic editorials contained a relatively small amount of hedges (7.3%), they performed a variety of vital functions in these editorials. Editors may comment on a topic of interest using an adverb of degree, which is placed before the verb it modifies (see Example (1)). Badawi et al. ( 2013 ) also mentioned that words such as kada كاد ‘almost’ or ‘nearly’ are regarded among the most commonly used words in Arabic discourse. A possible explanation of this use of the stance adverbial ‘almost’ in Example (1) as a hedge may be related to the employment of hedges as face-saving strategies (Hübler, 1983 ). In this example, the writer has the ability to say غلبها or ‘that is overwhelmed’, but the writer preferred using كاد ‘almost’ to avoid any face-threatening act (FTA). Crompton ( 1997 , p. 278), in a discussion about hedging, argued that “the writer is not displaying a lack of confidence in his own proposition but politeness towards the discourse community”.

In the second example, an expression of stance was delivered through the use of the modal verb ‘would’. Almeida and Vazquez ( 2009 , p. 1171) mentioned that ‘modal verbs grammaticalize speaker’s subjectivity’. The category of modals or modal verbs can be considered a grammatical category or a pragmatic one (Kreutz and Harres, 1997 ). The epistemic modals or modals of probability, like ‘would’ in Example (2) and could in Example (3), are used to soothe the firmness and intensity of these narratives. Since hedges were the most commonly employed stance feature in the English corpus, the editors often utilised the hedging word to express a sense of ambiguity. Thus, it is obvious that the adverbial hedging word was an interpretation devised and presented by the writer, as shown in Examples (3) to (4). Biber et al. ( 2021 , p. 861) claimed that ‘news and academic prose also use probably and perhaps, with predictions, suppositions, explanations, and interpretations that have not been clearly proven’. As for Biber et al. ( 2021 ), ‘perhaps’ is one of the most common stance adverbials across all registers for marking doubt about what you are saying. Hyland ( 2019 , p.143), in a discussion about Milne’s ( 2003 ) comparison between Spanish and English editorials, highlighted that ‘similarities in the use of hedges and attitude markers, for instance, reflect the combination of mitigation and opinion needed to persuade newspaper readers’.

In the literature, the term ‘boosters’ tends to be used to refer to the amount of affirmation or emphasis a writer is putting on a certain claim. Multiple terms were used to describe the notion of placing a level of ‘assertion’ on a proposition, such as certainty markers, emphatics, and modality markers. Hyland ( 1998 ) reminds us that boosters ‘allow writers to negotiate information, helping to establish its perceived truth by strategically presenting it as consensually given’. In fact, the degree of certainty voiced by boosters in editorials is not equal in all cases. Therefore, previous research has established a scale of certainty to describe the level of assertion that a writer asserts (e.g. Holmes, 1982 ; and Rubin, 2007 ). To illustrate, the continuum of certainty in these scales ranges from absolute certainty to low certainty with varying degrees in between. A point to note is that we observed the use of boosters with high levels of certainty or with what is called ‘absolute certainty’ in the editorials of both languages, as shown in Examples (5) to (8). A possible explanation for this result is that editors are trying to build authority and trust between themselves and their readership. Perhaps stance-taking from a strong foundation exerts a hidden power on the public. For example, Hyland ( 2008 ) suggested that boosters might help bring readers to the text or involve them in building some kind of solidarity. Since editorials are meant to be the newspapers’ voice, the journalistic stance of the newspaper about issues of the day is assumed to be firmly present by means of pragmatic boosters.

In Examples (5) and (6), writers of the editorials used boosters in their discussion of political issues in the Jordanian context. Namely, the writers handled the partnership between the public and private sectors in Jordan and the prime minister’s visits to the cities of the country. The same applies to their English counterparts from the Guardian newspaper, where boosters were utilised to discuss some politically oriented topics in the British context (see Examples (7) and (8)). In particular, the writers addressed topics such as Biden’s 100 days after the presidency and the view on the BBC.

The relationship between the sectors and its sustainability will necessarily improve the citizens’ standards of living.

The approach of communication and fieldwork, that aims to serve Jordanians, has been consistently the focus of the leader’s attention and care.

No one doubts the sincerity of the Biden team. (The Guardian view on Biden’s 100 days, The Guardian, 2021).

It is often said that the BBC has never faced such towering challenges. In this occasion, that is certainly true . (The Guardian view on the BBC, 2021).

Attitude markers

The use of ‘emotive markers’ or ‘frames of mind’ in speech, originating from Aristotle’s attitude to Austin’s illocutionary force, is one of the deeply entrenched topics in linguistics and has its deep roots within the field of sociolinguistics. In Searle’s ( 1975 ) taxonomy of illocutionary acts, he defined what is meant by an illocutionary force and argues that ‘the illocutionary force indicating device in the sentence operates on the propositional content to indicate, among other things, the direction to fit between the propositional content and reality’ (p. 359). In speech, the illocutionary force of a sentence might be used for asserting, demanding, promising, exclaiming, or questioning. The idea of attitude markers in writing is similar to that of emotive markers or illocutionary acts in speech. Attitude markers are set forth by the writers to describe their own faith and feelings about the given content. Hyland ( 2019 , p. 36) points out that ‘almost any linguistic choice conveys an attitude of some kind, expressing our likes and dislikes, our approval and disapproval’. Since editorials are packed with opinions and attitudes, it is essential to analyse the linguistic aspects used to express these sentiments. Below are some examples of attitude markers in their context of use.

The Hashemites were wise and capable of being with their people

These meetings, where citizens and officials present both their vision and their hopes for their officials, are responsible for achieving the desired development, which is the most useful and beneficial .

It is disappointing but not surprising that the PM appears uninterested in plans to make people healthier. (The Guardian view on the way we eat, The Guardian, 2021)

The situation is extraordinarily difficult , with cases at about 40 universities so far and further outbreaks expected. (The Guardian view on universities, The Guardian, 2020).

Examples (9) to (12) illustrate the use of attitude markers in the editorials of the two languages. In every instance of these attitude markers, the writers used an adjective to describe their own stance. This is exactly what Dafouz-Milne ( 2008 ), in her discussion of attitude markers, referred to as the use of ‘attitudinal adjectives’. An example of an attitudinal adjective would be the usage of the word ‘disappointing’ in Example (11).

Self-mentions

Drawing on features of interactional metadiscourse, self-mention markers can be considered as the link between authors of the texts and their communities. Hyland ( 2001 , p. 208) demonstrated that self-mention is ‘a strategy that maximises the credibility of the writer to elicit credence from the reader’. Self-mention markers in the editorials of both languages were indicated using first-person plural pronouns rather than using self-reference words such as the author(s) or the name of the institution. In only one instance was the existence of self-mention markers in English and Arabic editorials. Numerous studies attributed the low frequency of self-mentions in certain texts to the writer’s absence of awareness about their metadiscoursal and pragmatic role. However, we find it unreasonable that the editorial authors are unaware of the self-mentions’ pragmatic role but are rather constrained by the genre style and conventions.

As far as we are concerned, there are two likely causes for this result, as it seems possible that the paucity of self-mentions in the editorial genre will be made for a good reason. Firstly, the number one reason for this might be the idea that editorials are responsible for representing the institution’s voice rather than the individuals’ viewpoints. Secondly, this result can also be attributed to the intricacies of authorial identity construction in the genre of newspaper editorials. It might be the case that editorial writers struggle with separating their own sense of identity or personal beliefs from their institutional identity (personal voice versus institutional voice). Wu and Zhu ( 2014 , p. 137) argued that ‘everyone has a ‘core identity’ connected to internal states, but all people have multiple identities connected to their performances in society’.

Wu and Zhu ( 2014 ) also mentioned three aspects of the authorial identity: the detached self, the individual self and the collective self. Though this classification has been proposed in the context of academic discourse, it seems that it also applies to the editorial genre of texts. In this sense, it can be noticed that ‘the collective self’, where the writer is showing a strong affiliation with the discourse community, is the dominating aspect of identity within newspaper editorials (Wu and Zhu, 2014 ). A prominent explanation about self-mentions’ scarcity in certain genres was proposed by Hyland ( 2002 ), who argued that the little existence of self-mentions may be due to ‘the culturally specific views of authority’. The use of self-mentions in newspaper editorials of both languages is shown in Examples (13) and (14).

As a result, we are facing a promising new phase full of vital projects.

The pandemic has opened our eyes to the predicament of the poor. (The Guardian view on food banks, The Guardian, 2020).

In Example (13), the usage of the first-person plural pronoun ‘we’ may partly be explained by the intention of involving a broader audience in the discourse. An alternative explanation is that the writers tend to capitalise on the collective identity of their target audience (mainly Arabs and Jordanians in this context). Furthermore, Arabs lean toward a shared sense of belonging to a group or a collective identity, which is formulated by the sociopolitical environment (Smooha, 1992 , as cited in Amara, 2016 ). Direct self-mention using a first-person pronoun can be regarded as a method to invite readers to collective bargaining. The use of the first-person pronoun ‘our’ in a discussion of a current issue (i.e. the pandemic in this respect) was the only instance of self-mentions in the Guardian (see Example (14)). The authors’ use of the self-mention marker ‘our’ is likely to be related to the assumption and promotion of a level of societal responsibility. In this regard, ‘our’ is more than a sign of visibility or author presence. Finally, here are a few more instances of stance features from the editorials of both languages Table 4 .

The aim of the present study was to examine the stance-taking strategies that editors employ when defending the newspapers’ standpoint. It has then investigated how the use of stance markers varied across two different newspapers using two separate languages with two totally different cultures. Editorials, however, are a remarkably distinct genre with respect to persuasion, evaluation, and appraisal. The discrepancy between editorials and the other text genres in the articulation of stance arises from the power of editorials on the political decisions in their respective geographic areas. For instance, Van Dijk ( 1995 ) observed that editorials might have an impact on the presidential elections or the “formulating” of people’s ideologies. Van Dijk, in this sense, defined the term ‘ideologies’ as ‘the basic ‘axioms’ of socially shared representation of groups about themselves and their relations to other groups, including such categories as membership criteria, activities, goals, values, and crucial group resources’ (1995, p. 30). This brings us to the conclusion that there is a consensus among researchers about the idea that public ideologies and beliefs are being framed or at least influenced by the stance of newspapers offered in editorials.

The present study contributes to our understanding of intercultural rhetoric and the use of rhetorical devices such as stance markers across two languages (i.e. Arabic and English). It also lays the groundwork for future research into stance markers in the editorials of other languages. The results of this study add to the rapidly expanding field of rhetoric in editorial journalism. In this regard, the findings of this study can be utilised to train editors, editors-in-chief, and members of the editorial board about stance and positioning in their early or mid-career phases. Introductory webinars for editors can take advantage of the findings of this research to help editors pursue a professional usage of stance devices in editorials. This paper is of interest to the society of editorial freelancers to assist them in understanding the tactics through which editors-in-chief optimise their strategies in showing stance.

Stance-taking and writer positioning in media discourse, plus the idea of finding the appropriate policy to present your perspective and the counterargument, would indeed be a daunting task. Kärkkäinen ( 2006 , p. 699) argued that ‘stance in discourse is not the transparent linguistic packaging of ‘internal states’ of knowledge, but rather emerges from dialogic interaction between interlocutors’. Therefore, argumentative writing in editorials is quite complex and sometimes misleading and requires a great amount of observation to be fully understood by the average reader. A contrastive analysis of the rhetorical strategies, such as stance devices and how they are utilised in editorials from diverse cultures, is needed for better comprehension of them. For that being the case, this study compared the use of stance devices in English and Arabic editorials from two national broadsheets in Jordan and the UK. This study has found that generally, Arabic editorials in Addustour newspaper employed stance markers in a different way than English editorials in the Guardian newspaper.

Some statistically significant differences were detected between the two languages in the total usage of stance markers. Significant differences were also identified between the two languages in the use of each category of stance features (i.e. hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions). Although all stance types were present in the English and Arabic editorials, self-mentions were the least-employed stance features with the same value in both languages (0.1%). Perhaps this resemblance in the little use of self-mentions is due to the genre conventions and style of the editorials. To illustrate, it seems that the authorial presence via self-mentioning is a privilege in editorials’ argumentative writing rather than a necessity. By and large, the editorial section of the newspaper is designed to display the newspaper’s voice and not the author’s voice.

A thorough understanding of stance features in editorials, which are concerned with the most pressing current political issues, would foster the public audience’s comprehension of these columns. Liu and Hood ( 2019 , p. 589) pitched the idea that ‘the non-neutral construal of people and events in the media is an issue of considerable significance’. Editorials are now considered as the organisation’s or media institution’s portrayal of the issues of the day, and wherefore this genre has come to be referred to as ‘leading articles’ or ‘leaders’. Vigilance in observing stance features within the scope of metadiscourse in editorials is not only fruitful for an avid reader of politics but also for foreign language learners. Hashemi and Golparvar ( 2011 , p. 122) claimed that ‘metadiscourse can play a more influencing role on reading comprehension if the consciousness of the EFL learners’ is raised by their teachers, especially at the intermediate level’. In consequence, students who are learning English or Arabic as a foreign language can take advantage of the findings of this study in their comprehension of such kinds of opinion articles.

Additionally, a persona in editorials is generally affected by the dominating culture in that language. To elaborate, the term ‘persona’ here refers to ‘the mask served to express the speaker’s own opinion, only by a tactful indirection’ (Mayer, 2003 , p. 60). Broadly speaking, editorials are designed by the editor-in-chief and writers from the editorial board about socially or politically sensitive topics with careful attention paid to the culture and community convenience. This idea is positively related to what Strauss ( 2004 ) has reported about ‘cultural standing’ in the expression of opinion. She demonstrated that opinion display, argumentation, hedges, and modality are heavily impacted by the ‘cultural standing’. According to a definition by Strauss ( 2004 , p. 161), cultural standing is ‘the location of a view on a continuum that ranges from highly controversial to completely taken for granted in the relevant opinion community’. Taken together, this suggests that the examination of how stance features are used in two different languages will have significant implications for the understanding of language within a cultural and institutional frame of community.

Conclusion and implications

The findings of this study have implications for the teaching of argumentative writing in both languages (i.e. English and Arabic). These findings reveal something about the nature of discourse markers used in opinion articles. This research may provide insights to editorial training and editorial training fellowships because it might enhance the skills of argumentative writing. In these training and fellowship programmes, trainees can emulate some of the examples of stance given in this study. This simulation would further help them fine-tune their strategies for displaying stance.

Further research might explore the use of stance features in editorials in other languages to gain a greater understanding of stance in the editorial genre. That is to say, the use of stance markers as a compelling force in editorials is known to be affected by a range of factors. To start with, the differences in the use of stance markers between the two sets of editorials can be linked to the language and register that these editorials belong to. Matthiessen ( 2019 , p. 207) initially stated that ‘registers are functional varieties of language that have evolved as adaptations to different institutional settings’. Then, he argued in his discussion of language as an aggregate of registers that ‘a key aspect of the adaptive nature of language is that it adapts to its contexts of use’ (Matthiessen, 2019 , p. 212). Subsequently, it is possible to assume that register and language are the reasons behind some of the significant differences in stance markers between the two groups of editorials.

Secondly, the sociocultural dimensions can play a significant role in the choice of stance markers in editorials. Du Bois ( 2007 , p. 139) claimed that ‘stance can be approached as a linguistically articulated form of social action whose meaning is to be construed within the broader scope of language, interaction, and sociocultural value’. Thirdly, routines can be regarded among the factors affecting the use of stance markers in editorials. Reese ( 2016 , ‘levels of analysis’) said that ‘if journalism is primarily a social practice, routines are the ways of working that constitute that practice’. Along these lines, routines and institutional policies of the newspaper can determine the approach and means of displaying stance. To conclude, factors affecting the use of stance markers in English and Arabic editorials can be discussed under four headings: language, register, routines and institutional policies, and sociocultural systems and values.

As a matter of fact, there is no alternative to adopting a position and taking a stance in editorial journalism. Even when the editorial holds no position on the issue of discussion, this is believed to be a stance on its own, as Jaffe ( 2009 , p. 3) suggested that ‘neutrality is itself a stance’. Hyland ( 2019 , p. 63) also reported that ‘writers cannot avoid projecting an impression of themselves and how they stand in relation to their arguments, their community and their readers’. The grasp of this idea makes it extremely significant to pinpoint these positionings in editorials and to understand them (i.e. stance markers). As far as objectivity is meritorious in news coverage, it is thought of as blameworthy in editorials. Firmstone ( 2019 , p. 6) observed that ‘in direct contrast to most other forms of journalism, subjectivity and opinion is not only permitted in editorials- it is expected’. And there is no better way to express opinion in editorials than using stance markers. The evidence from this study suggests that the analysis and use of stance features should be carefully observed by both lay readers and editorial specialists.

Data availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this research as no data were generated or analysed.

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Alghazo, S., Al-Anbar, K., Rabab’ah, G. et al. The construction of stance in English and Arabic newspaper editorials: a case study. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 971 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03418-2

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'Border czar'? Kamala Harris assigned to tackle immigration's causes, not border security

If your time is short.

In March 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with working alongside officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the issues driving people to leave those countries and come to the United States.

The Biden-Harris administration said it would focus on five key issues: economic insecurity, corruption, human rights, criminal gang violence and gender-based violence.

Border security and management is the Homeland Security secretary’s responsibility.

Vice President Kamala Harris might soon get a new official title: 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. In the meantime, Republicans have revived a title they gave her in 2021: "border czar." 

Claims that President Joe Biden named Harris the "border czar" and that she is responsible for overseeing U.S. border enforcement gained prominence at the Republican National Convention as the party sought to link her to his immigration policy. 

The refrain intensified once Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris. It was echoed in ads and by Trump campaign surrogates, including Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance , the Republican vice presidential nominee.

"Here’s Biden appointing Kamala Harris to be his border czar to deal with illegal immigration," a narrator says in a video the Republican National Committee posted on its X account, @GOP. "And here are a record number of illegal immigrants — 10 million and counting — flooding over the border after Harris was put in charge of stopping illegal immigration."

We’ve repeatedly fact-checked claims about the number of people entering the U.S. illegally under Biden. The federal data tracks how many times officials encountered a person trying to cross the southern border, but it doesn’t reflect the number of people let in. And if one person tries to cross the border multiple times, that counts as multiple encounters, even if it’s the same person. 

For this fact-check, we’re focused on the scope of Harris’ border responsibilities. 

"Border Czar Kamala Harris' reversal of President Trump's immigration policies has created an unprecedented and illegal immigration, humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border," Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told PolitiFact in a statement. 

But Biden didn’t put Harris in charge of overseeing border security.

In a meeting with Harris in March 2021 , Biden said Harris would lead U.S. diplomatic efforts and work with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to stem migration to the U.S. Biden said that when he was vice president, he "got a similar assignment" and that the Obama administration secured $700 million to help countries in Central America.

"One of the ways we learned is that if you deal with the problems in country, it benefits everyone. It benefits us, it benefits the people, and it grows the economies there," Biden said then.

Biden asked Harris "to be the chief diplomatic officer with Central American countries" and address the root causes that make people leave their home countries, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. 

Managing the border "has always been" the Homeland Security secretary’s role, Mittelstadt said.

Biden tasked Harris with addressing the root causes influencing people’s decisions to migrate to the United States.

"I’ve asked her … to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border," Biden said in March 2021.

Biden held a similar role as vice president to former President Barack Obama. In a 2015 New York Times opinion piece, Biden said he would work with the Northern Triangle’s leaders on security, anti-corruption and investment efforts in the region.

"Donald Trump’s administration didn’t really sustain this strategy, but what Harris sought to revive in 2021 ran along the same lines," said Adam Isacson, defense oversight director at Washington Office on Latin America, a group advocating for human rights in the Americas. 

Within weeks of Biden’s remarks about Harris’ role, Republicans including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., began calling Harris the " border czar " often in tandem with pointing out she had not yet been to the border.

In April 2021, when a reporter asked Harris whether she would visit the border, she said that her role is addressing the factors that make people leave their home countries, not managing the border.

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"The president has asked (Homeland Security) Secretary (Alejandro) Mayorkas to address what is going on at the border. And he has been working very hard at that, and it’s showing some progress because of his hard work," Harris said at an event . "I have been asked to lead the issue of dealing with root causes in the Northern Triangle, similar to what the then-vice president did many years ago."

Harris said she’d focus on economic struggles, violence, corruption and food insecurity in the countries. 

In June 2021, Harris visited El Paso, Texas, with Mayorkas. They outlined their responsibilities to reporters. Harris said she was addressing "the root causes of migration, predominantly out of Central America," and Mayorkas said, "It is my responsibility as the Secretary of Homeland Security to address the security and management of our border."

But this distinction didn’t stop critics from linking Harris with U.S.-Mexico border security. 

"The administration’s messaging on this in mid-2021 was not as clear as it should have been," Isacson said. "But at no time did Harris or the White House state that her duties included the U.S.-Mexico border, or border security."

Immigration experts said it’s hard to measure Harris’ success in her role, and that a "root causes" approach implies that the results will be seen long term, not immediately.

In July 2021, the administration published a strategy , with Harris writing the lead message, for confronting the factors that drive migration in Central America. The plan focused on economic insecurity, corruption, human rights, criminal gang violence and gender-based violence.

In March 2024, the administration said it secured more than $5.2 billion in private sector investments to the region. However, only about $1 billion has been distributed, the Partnership for Central America, a group working with the administration, reported .

The White House said the investments have generated more than 70,000 new jobs in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, provided job training to 1 million people and expanded digital access to 4.5 million people. 

"Still, her engagement on this issue has been sporadic," Isacson said. "She has not traveled very often to the region or otherwise sought to make ‘root causes in Central America’ a central theme of her vice presidency."

Illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has dropped since 2021. Encounters with people from other countries, Venezuela, have risen . 

"But it’s hard to prove that U.S. assistance is a central reason" for the Northern Triangle countries’ decline, Isacson said.

The issues pushing people to leave Central American countries "are extremely complex and require deep restructuring of so much in those societies," said Cecilia Menjivar, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes on immigration. "So it’s very difficult for one person to change all that, even if it is a powerful person."

Immigration patterns at the U.S.-Mexico border have more to do with conditions in Latin American countries than "any U.S. policy," Mittelstadt said. 

For example, a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has displaced nearly 8 million people since 2014, according to the United Nations. Political, economic and security crises in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Ecuador have also led to more migration from these countries, Mittelstadt said. 

In contrast, immigration encounters with people from El Salvador have dropped in past years, partly because of the country’s crime crackdown .

The Republican National Committee said Biden appointed Harris "to be his border czar to deal with illegal immigration...Harris was put in charge of stopping illegal immigration."

Biden tasked Harris with addressing the root causes that drive migration to the United States. He did not task her with controlling who and how many people enter the southern U.S. border. That's the Homeland Security secretary’s responsibility.

Experts say that seeing the results of addressing root causes driving people out of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras  — violence, economic insecurity and corruption — takes time.

The statement contains an element of truth, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

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Edna o’brien dies: author who gave voice to irish women was 93, judge refuses to dismiss donald trump’s defamation lawsuit against abc news.

By Ted Johnson

Ted Johnson

Political Editor

More Stories By Ted

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A federal judge in Florida refused to toss out Donald Trump ‘s defamation lawsuit against ABC News over comments that anchor George Stephanopoulos made during a contentious This Week interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).

Trump sued the network over Stephanopoulos’ contention that “juries have found” the former president “liable for rape.” Last year, a civil jury found that Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll . Trump contended that he was defamed as Stephanopoulos did not make the distinction.

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Donald Trump Sues ABC News And George Stephanopoulos Over Comments During Nancy Mace Interview

“This Is Not America”: Donald Trump Promises Appeal After $83M Verdict For E. Jean Carroll In Defamation Trial

Read the Trump-ABC ruling .

In their motion to dismiss, ABC’s attorneys pointed to what the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case, Lewis Kaplan, wrote in a later ruling. “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that,” Kaplan wrote.

In a separate phase of the Carroll case this year, a jury awarded her an additional $83.3 million in damages. That followed another jury’s award of $5 million in damages to her in the initial phase of the case. Trump has denied Carroll’s claims and is appealing the verdicts.

During the interview, Stephanopoulos played a video in which Mace said that she was a victim of rape. Stephanopoulos first asked Mace, “You endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony that we just saw?”

Stephanopoulos continued to question Mace on the point, while denying that he was attempting to shame her.

Mace said that Trump “defended himself over that and denies that it ever happened, but he was not found guilty in a criminal court of law.”

Altonaga’s ruling was not on the merits of the case, but that Trump’s lawsuit had met the threshold to move forward.

In her ruling, Altonaga wrote that “Stephanopoulos’s exchange with Mace lasted about ten minutes, during which Stephanopoulos  stated ten times that a jury — or juries — had found Plaintiff liable for rape .” The judge wrote that the “jury did not find [Trump] liable for rape under New York Penal Law; it was Judge Kaplan who determined that the jury’s verdict amounted to liability for rape. Yet, none of these particularities make it into the segment such that a reasonable viewer would have indisputably understood what [ABC News] now brief in detail.”

The judge also rejected the network’s defense that it was protected under Florida’s fair reporting privilege, writing that it does “not protect media where the omission of important context renders a report misleading.”

ABC had no immediate comment.

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called the ruling a “big win” and a “great day for our country.”

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Case Study: Propaganda and the 1990 Gulf War: Television and the media.

Related Papers

Mojdeh Khast

Journal of the International Institute

shahrooz shariati

On September 22, 1980, Iraqi troops under former dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. An almost eight years of war complicated socio-economic and political problems in the region like never before. Strategically, the Iran-Iraq war was one of the worst military encounters of the twentieth century which, apart from others, severely threatened the oil interests of the two countries. In other words, the consequences of the conflict were particularly visible on the political economy as the warring sides, which account for one fifth of the world&#39;s oil reserves, failed to achieve their real status in the international arena. As this article intends to show, since the victory of Iran could affect the oil interests of the United States and its hardcore regional ally, Saudi Arabia, they left no stone unturned to take advantage of the conflict with their direct or indirect support to Iraq and then abandoning them with deep wounds. The article by using assumptions such as “Political Econom...

Op-Med - Opinions on the Meditarranean-IAI

Eman Ragab (Ph.D) د.إيمان رجب

John Pagunsan

This paper discusses the political, economical, and social impact of the United States of America's intervention in Iraq.

Clara Knäpper Bohman

Hilton L . Root

With 63 percent of the world's proven petroleum resources, and with 37 percent of its natural gas, it seems highly ironic that the Middle East and North African Region (MENA) is also the largest recipient of US foreign aid. In addition to fossil fuels, the region is also well endowed with many other minerals and plants providing it with a per capita GDP twice as high as the average of developing countries, higher even than former socialist transition economies. Poverty is relatively low in MENA, only 1.6 percent of its population earns less than $1 per capita a day. Infrastructure is relatively well developed, 88% of its population have access to improved water sources, and 91% to electricity (World Bank). From the perspective of poverty reduction, MENA’s needs for economic assistance from the developed world are by no means as pressing as those of poorer regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, yet MENA is the largest recipient of US foreign assistance since 1973.

International Journal of Global Energy Issues

Ole Gunnar Austvik

Iraq´s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 was called the biggest armed robbery in history. From an economic and natural resource point of view, however, disagreements as to what price policy to pursue for oil might have been an even more important reason for the invasion. In the same way vital economic interests, that wanted moderate oil prices, were an important reason why the allied forces, led by the U.S., went to war against Iraq on January 17, 1991. In view of the importance of the price of oil for the economies of both oil exporting and importing countries, the power to influence this price is of great significance. The more one sidedly dependent a country is on oil in the economy the more important it is who has this power. In the Gulf conflict the oil producing and consuming countries for which oil is very important, and that also have major military means, were the principal actors.

Jadi Miguel Castroverde

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