Neary, ClaraRingrow, Helen2018-11-072018-11-072018-06-20Neary, C., & Ringrow, H. (2018) Media, power and representation. In P. Seargeant, A. Hewings, & S. Pihlaja (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies (pp. 294-309). London: Routledge.9781138913455http://hdl.handle.net/10034/621529This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies on 20th June 2018, available online: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-English-Language-Studies/Seargeant-Hewings-Pihlaja/p/book/9781138913455As the ubiquity and potential influence of the media increase, the language and imagery used to create meaning in this domain are of continued and enhanced interest to English Language researchers. While ‘the media’ or even ‘the English-speaking media’ is not one homogenous entity, the term is used throughout this chapter to refer broadly to a collection of media types such as newspapers, television, radio and so on. Media English can be understood as referring to the ways in which reality is linguistically constructed through these platforms. Additionally, media institutions play a significant role not only in terms of communication but also by way of ‘mediating society to itself’ (Matheson 2005: 1) in that the media helps to construct societal norms and values. Media language is distinctive because media discourses can be ‘fixed’ (i.e. recorded for posterity) as well as being interactive (people can react to subject matter, often using media forms to publically share their response(s), themselves becoming producers of media content). In investigating Media English, scholars analyse overall styles or genres in order to explore and challenge particular choices of language and/or imagery within a given media text.enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United Stateshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Mediasocial mediadigital mediaCritical discourse analysispowerMedia EnglishBook chapter