School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses

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The construction of risk in government advertising: a case study of Operation Sovereign Borders video advertisements

Nguyen, Hoang Van ( 2017)

The notion of risk has become an integral part of the contemporary societies, which come to understand potential harms and threats in and through the discourses of risk. Aligning itself with the literature of risk and discourse, the current study aims to gain an insight into the construction of risk in and through semiotic resources within multimodal texts in their social contexts, with a focus on the discourses of irregular migration in Australian government advertising. Through a case study of two video advertisements as part of the Operation Sovereign Border campaigns to deter maritime arrivals, the study examines how risk is constructed through a multimodal analysis of each video. Findings of the study are consistent with the social theories of risk, which point to the use of both technico-scientific discourse to highlight expertise, as well as the discourse of governmentality that stresses the role of self-regulation of the individuals in controlling risk. With its findings, the study has added to the growing bodies of research on risk and multimodal discourse analysis, and enhanced understanding of migration issues in Australian political contexts, which contribute to the future research on similar topics.