Social Media Critical Discourse Studies

Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) aims to enhance our understanding of how discourse figures in social processes, social structures, and social change. This book is in response to specific changes in mediation technologies of discourse, brought about by the significant concentration of discursive practices within the paradigm of social media communication. This book addresses this participatory media context against a broadly defined tradition in CDS, its aspirations, assumptions, and critique. It views discourse as forms of structured representations across a range of modalities of communication including the emerging meaning-making artefacts and practices across social media. It aspires to provide an overview of the key considerations in doing CDS on social media spaces. The book firstly provides a set of aspiration signposting the parameters of doing social media CDS followed by critical explorations of a number of contemporary case studies of digital discourses around identity, politics and representation. It includes various social media communication including YouTube, Instagram, Wikipedia, and Twitter. The book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of linguistics, politics, sociology, communication studies, media and cultural studies, and science and technology studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Discourse Studies.