Monitoring anti-minority rhetoric in the Czech print media

This paper describes selected outcomes of media monitoring for anti-minority hate speech in the Czech Republic. In keeping with the agenda of critical discourse analysis, we aim to integrate historical, linguistic and cultural specificities with their linguistic manifestations in news articles about minorities, and here we present findings from a long-term study devoted to tracking xenophobia against two of the main minority groups. The AntiMetrics project, of which the work described here is one part, is designed to detect signs of anti-minority rhetoric in a society, with a view to taking steps to prevent such indicators from developing into more embedded prejudice and ultimately inter-group violence. The paper aims to provide a snapshot of what is a broad, long-term interdisciplinary project. Using a critical discourse toolkit, we analyse a sample news story about the Roma community, and identify a number of discursive and linguistic features that indicate the entrenchment of “new racism” in media at some levels. The toolkit also seeks to go beyond lexical signs to identify more implicit rhetorical devices, such as framing and (de-) contextualization of news events, and to quantify lack of balance in the selection of witnesses and other primary definers. Our ongoing content survey indicates the embedding of linguistic patterns that raise concern about leakage of far right discourse via media into everyday communication.