Analysis of the Civil Power of the News by Civil and Anti-Civil Reporting of the ICC: In Case of Brexit as News Story

Abstract

In the civil sphere, news excises its civil power by making civil and anti-civil judgments. These judgments need media organizations to use specific lexis to emphasize the public sentiment with ICC of identity, legitimacy, and risk. Thus, Brexit as a news story is selected from 12th November to 18th November 2018 from The Mirror, The Guardian, and The Washington Post in this paper. In terms of ICC of identity determination, journalists prefer to use a combination of pros and cons to reflect the impact of the Brexit event on the public. Concerning ICC of legitimacy, journalists mostly focus on the border problem of Northern Ireland by using anti-civil judgments. For the part of the ICC risk, the government gives some specific measures to overcome potential risks which belong to civil judgment. The rest reports just list what risks would happen and what influence people and the state will face but do not give positive and effective measures, so these reports belong to anti-civil judgment. In short, the analysis reveals that the news media prefer using anti-civil judgement over civil judgement by using compound language with multiple positive and negative perspectives to achieve this purpose of reporting.