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Framing and Temporality in Political Cartoons: A Critical Analysis of Visual News Discourse*
Les caricatures politiques constituent une forme visuelle du discours des medias. Les sociologues rejettent generalement leur valeur ideologique en raison du fait qu'elles offrent aux lecteurs des exposes absurdes des conditions du ( probleme , putatif et ne doivent pas etre prises au pied de la lettre. Toutefois, c'est par l'humour que les caricatures se sont emparees du bon sens et font renfonce, et par consequent ont permis au public de classifier, d'organiser et d'interpreter activement ce qu'ils perqoivent ou vivent relativement A l'actualite dans le monde A un moment donne de faqon significative. Dans le cadre des theories interactionnistes de Goffman et de Mead, deux caricatures illustrant la derniere << crise >> des << vagues d'immigration >> d6ferlant au Canada seront etudiees.
Political cartoons are a form of visual news discourse. Sociologists normally dismiss their ideological import on the grounds that cartoons simply offer newsreaders absurd accounts of putative "problem" conditions and are not likely to be taken very seriously. Nevertheless, it is through comedic conventions that cartoons seize upon and reinforce common sense and thus enable the public to actively classify, organize and interpret in meaningful ways what they see or experience about the world at a given moment. Informed by the interactionist theories of Goffman and Mead, two cartoons illustrating the recent "crisis" of "migrant waves" to Canada will be examined.
THAT THE NEWS MEDIA CAN BE SEEN as a forum within which institutions, groups and individuals struggle over the definition and construction of social reality is now something of a sociological truism. This process sees certain issues and events become the foci of collective concern or anxiety, that is, defined as "social problems," not by virtue of the objective severity or frequency of the isssue or event in question, but as a result of the organization and process of people talking and writing about them. Social problems become "visible" to mass publics, then, only when they are socially defined within "knowledge or knowledge-processing" institutions such as the mass media (Cottle, 1998: 8). As a claims-making arena where the cultural meanings of circumstances and events are constructed, news discourse provides a rich source of data for...