Title:
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News as narrative : reporting and translating the 2004 Beslan hostage disaster
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On 1 September 2004, School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania
(Southern Russia) was seized by an armed group that held over a thousand
children, parents, and teachers hostage. With over three hundred people
killed by the time the siege came to an end, Beslan was Russia's worst
hostage-crisis and, to date, there has not been another like it. This thesis uses
socio-narrative theory as a conceptual framework to investigate, using a case
study approach, a sample of online reporting generated in response to the
crisis, thus exploring ways in which different narratives are constructed
from, and in response to, events emerging from situations of violent conflict.
Narrative theory is adopted not only as an analytical tool with which to
approach the data, but in order to investigate and develop the theory itself.
Thus, the study offers a revised typology of narratives, it intentionally
combines narratological and sociological approaches, elaborates an
intratextual model of analysis, and emphasises the importance of narrators
and temporary narrators in the (re )configuration of narratives.
The bulk of the thesis is a detailed, sustained textual analysis examining
online reporting of the events in Beslan published by three different Russian-language
news websites- RIA-Novosti, Kavkazcenter, and Caucasian Knot-during
the course of the hostage-taking and its immediate aftermath, that is,
from Wednesday 1 to Saturday 4 September 2004. By examining both
Russian and English texts published by the three websites, the study also
explores issues of translation, particularly in regard to online publishing, and
ways in which translation impacts on the (re )construction of narratives.
The case study is firmly grounded in socio-narrative assumptions that
narratives do not merely represent, but constitute, reality, and furthermore,
are fundamentally (if complexly) linked to human agency and behaviour.
Thus, conclusions are drawn from the analysis that concern not only the
construction and translation of narratives but ways in which narratives are
used to account for, legitimise, and challenge individual behaviour and the
practices of institutions. With its particular focus on narratives and violent
political conflict, the project also reflects upon the potential for certain kinds
of narratives to either perpetuate or dissolve such conflict.
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