The Discursive Construction of Childhood in Three Turkish Children’s Books about the Cyprus Problem
Mazlum Kemal Dağdelen
& Nico Carpentier
Abstract
This research analyses the construction of childhood in three children’s books related to the Cyprus Problem through the lens of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The discourse on childhood, deployed in books whose narratives are related to an armed conflict, is seen to have four nodal points: innocence, citizenship, savagery, and otherness. Our discourse-theoretical analysis, which uses a retroductive approach (Glynos and Howarth), demonstrates that in these three children’s books, the nodal points of innocence and citizenship are particularly strong, but all four nodal points are present. The analysis also shows how these nodal points intersect with the discourses of victimhood and militarism, which alter the articulation of the childhood discourse itself and produce significant internal tensions. These alterations and tensions demonstrate the deeply political nature of the childhood discourse at times of war.
Keywords
childhood, Cyprus Problem, childhood constructionism, discourse theory, war, victimisation, militarisation
Dağdelen, M. K., & Carpentier, N. (2024). The discursive construction of childhood in three Turkish children’s books about the Cyprus Problem. International Research in Children’s Literature, 17(2), pp. 144–159. https://doi.org/10.3366/ircl.2024.0560
“Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Mujahideen”: A Discourse-Theoretical Analysis of the Militarist Discourse in a Turkish Cypriot Children’s Magazine
Mazlum Kemal Dağdelen
Abstract
This research offers a discourse-theoretical analysis of the construction of the militarist discourse in Turkish Cypriot children’s magazines, with a specific focus on the magazine Tuncer. The selected data for analysis consist of 14 issues published between January 1967 and December 1968. The chosen period is deliberate, aligning with crucial turning points in the Cyprus Problem, marked by heightened collective violence. To better understand the articulation of the militarist discourse within these issues of Tuncer, a theoretical model is developed drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The militarist discourse is seen to have 4 nodal points: (1) the army as a national protection assemblage, (2) obligated citizenship, (3) the sanctity of sacrifice, and (4) the need for the destruction of the enemy. The analysis demonstrates the presence of all 4 nodal points, with particular emphasis on the strength of the army as a national protection assemblage and the need for the destruction of the enemy. Furthermore, the contextualization within the Cyprus Problem unveils internal conflations, highlighting the deeply political nature of the militarist discourse.
Keywords
militarism, children’s magazines, discourse theory, childhood, Cyprus Problem
Dagdelen, Mazlum Kemal (2024) Media and Propaganda | “Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Mujahideen”: A Discourse-Theoretical Analysis of the Militarist Discourse in a Turkish Cypriot Children’s Magazine. International Journal of Communication, [S.l.], v. 18, p. 20, sep. 2024. ISSN 1932-8036. Available at: <https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/22345>.
Bridging the Discursive and Material Dimensions of Europeanity and Europeanisation A Participatory Semantic Map Approach
Vaia Doudaki
, Miloš Hroch
, Sara Cannizzaro
, Andrea Miconi
& Andrea Miconi
Abstract
The article aims to capture the significatory diversity of the concepts of Europeanity and Europeanisation, through the development of a semantic map in order to visualize the different concepts that define Europeanity and Europeanisation, and their interconnections. Embedded in the field of Communication and Media Studies, this semantic map combines 19 different approaches, structured through one main dimension, the discursive versus the material, which allows bridging the major rift in the conceptual reflections about Europeanity and Europeanisation. Moreover, the semantic map uses two support dimensions, with the discursive dimension intersecting with the essentialist versus relationist dimension, and the material dimension intersecting with the socio-spatial versus politico-spatial dimension. In order to construct this semantic map, phases of both general and targeted literature reviews were combined with a participatory theory-building method, which was grounded in collaborative knowledge building and collaborative theory construction approaches.
Keywords
Semantic map; Europeanity; Europeanisation; Discursive; Material.
Carpentier, N., Hroch, M., Cannizzaro, S., Miconi, A., & Doudaki, V. (2023). Bridging the discursive and material dimensions of Europeanity and Europeanisation: A participatory semantic map approach. Observatorio (OBS), 17*(1). https://doi.org/10.15847/obsOBS17120232251
Gendered constructions of migration in Europe: An intersectional analysis of inclusionary and exclusionary discourses on social media platforms
Panos Kompatsiaris
, Sara Cannizzaro
, Nico Carpentier
, Babette Lagrange
, Sofie Van Bauwel
, Miloš Hroch
, Vaia Doudaki
, Jim Ingebretsen Carlson
, Ioanna Archontaki
& Andrea Miconi
Abstract
This article explores intersectional discourses of migration and gender in the social media environments of three different European countries – Belgium, Greece, and Italy. Through a discursive analysis, we identify (1) an inclusionary discourse providing constructions of gender that welcome migrants in European societies, articulated around the nodal points of empathy and care, visibility, equality and the acknowledgement of societal relevance, and (2) an exclusionary discourse providing constructions of gender that prohibit the inclusion of migrants in European societies, articulated through the nodal points of threat, burden, radical difference and irrelevance or invisibility. For the analysis, we retrieved a dataset of 1000 posts per country about migration from Facebook and Twitter (now X) and we selected posts with a gender dimension. The article shows how the discursive struggle over migration and gender takes shape across inclusionary and exclusionary discourses that relate to the left/right-wing political spectrum in Europe.
Keywords
Europe, exclusionary, gender, inclusionary, migration, social media.
Kompatsiaris, P., Cannizzaro, S., Carpentier, N., Lagrange, B., Van Bauwel, S., Hroch, M., Doudaki, V., Ingebretsen Carlson, J., Archontaki, I., & Miconi, A. (2026). Gendered constructions of migration in Europe: An intersectional analysis of inclusionary and exclusionary discourses on social media platforms. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494251407159