Press and social media reaction to ideologically inspired murder:The case of Lee Rigby

Abstract

This article analyses reaction to the ideologically inspired murder of a soldier, Lee Rigby, in central London by two converts to Islam, Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo. The focus of the analysis is upon the contrast between how the event was reacted to by the UK National Press and on social media. To explore this contrast, we undertook a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to look at three periods during the event: the initial attack, the verdict of the subsequent trial and the sentencing of the murderers. To do this, we constructed and analysed corpora of press and Twitter coverage of the attack, the conviction of the suspects and the sentencing of them. The analysis shows that social media and the press are intertwined, with the press exerting a notable influence through social media, but social media not always being led by the press. When looking at social media reaction to such an event as this, analysts should always consider the role that the press are playing in forming that discourse.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481314568545
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
?? 53981500Jl ??
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Language Research at Aston (CLaRA)
Additional Information: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).
Publication ISSN: 1750-4821
Last Modified: 19 Feb 2024 08:31
Date Deposited: 12 Mar 2020 16:09
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://journal ... 750481314568545 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2015-02-05
Authors: McEnery, T.
McGlashan, M.
Love, R. (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-7212-1165)

Download

[img]

Version: Published Version

License: Creative Commons Attribution

| Preview

Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record