1. To foreignize or to domesticate? How media vary cross-nationally in their degrees of incorporating foreign events.
- Author
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van Dooremalen, Thijs and Duyvendak, Jan Willem
- Subjects
CULTURAL activities ,DOMESTICATION of technology ,FRENCH newspapers ,DUTCH newspapers ,CASE studies - Abstract
While the domestication literature indicates how national media link foreign events to a country's domestic affairs, it has thus far only examined modes of domestication - the ways through which these links are created. In this article, we introduce a different dimension of the phenomenon: degrees of domestication. This includes the extents to which a foreign event gets connected with the domestic. By making a topic-modeling analysis of French and Dutch newspaper articles about 9/11, the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the Arab Spring and Donald Trump's political rise, we provide an explorative case study of this dimension. We inductively arrive at a scale ranging from no to extreme domestication of the event, classified according to four degrees of domestication: (1) an entirely foreign affair; (2) a foreign political affair involving domestic actors; (3) a domestic political affair; (4) or a personal disruption. French newspapers score higher on the second degree, the Dutch ones on the third and fourth. A deepening of this pattern shows how these differences stem from two distinctive cultural repertoires that journalists and other media participants employ when relating to foreign events: a French one, which sees them as an opportunity to dominate the international political stage, and a Dutch one, which considers them a reason for reflecting on domestic or personal matters. These clear differences indicate the concept's importance for the literature and for investigating it within other national media contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2025
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