Doing newsworthiness in execution news and death penalty ideology

Abstract

Based on a corpus of execution news articles from Thailand, this study takes a discourse analytic approach to scrutinize what news values are construed as dominant and the way in which ideologically significant lexico-grammatical choices are orchestrated to frame public perceptions of the death penalty. The findings indicate that the news values of Negativity and Eliteness predominate, serving to exaggerate the violence of the executed individuals. At the same time, the reports neutralize the inherently violent executions by the state. Other news values, some of which exhibit local socio-cultural values to the extent of encoding moral lessons and warnings, mediate the reader’s perception of death as a routine, carefully weighed, and effective procedure. The news values not only appear to reinforce an exaggerated representation of crime and offenders, but also work in concert with general crime reports to retain this form of punishment, despite international pressure to abolish it.