Politics, Protest and the Press: New Right Hegemony, Crisis Discourse and the 1997 Ontario Teachers' Strike

Abstract

<p>This thesis is a discussion of the discursive construction of an education crisis in Ontario under the Progressive Conservative government of the 1990s. It first describes the historical emergence of New Right hegemony in Ontario and pays critical attention to the formation and meaning of crisis and crisis response. Second, it discusses the role of the mass media, and the press in particular, in the construction of crisis, by describing the ways in which events are reported and understood in their journalistic context by newsreaders. The empirical component of the thesis is served by a content and critical discourse analysis of 'mainstream' news text and photographs from the 1997 Ontario teachers' strike. It is argued that crises are compositional arrangements that depend crucially upon the active participation of a variety of individuals and groups who, in their unity, help to transform the balance of political forces that delineate and govern social and political change.</p>