2025/05/12 by Mathias Okey Chukwu · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Discourse Analysis in Language Studies #Media Studies and Communication #Rhetoric and Communication Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/09644016.2025.2501392
openalex publication_date 2025/05/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
The socio-cognitive role of stories as the complex of mental structures in minds of individuals about the world around them implies that they could be reproduced and legitimated in discourse. It makes discourse a powerful tool of hegemony, particularly, the discourse of news reporting. This study interrogated news reports on pipeline vandalism in order to reveal the stories they project to readers and draw implications of such stories on human ecology and society at large. The data are newspaper reports on pipeline vandalism published between 2015 and 2019, one of the periods when pipeline vandalism was high in Nigeria. Findings revealed that the reports bear stories of manifest quest for financial gain as a state virtue and that legitimising such stories brings everyone under the threat of destruction because they create mental models that would hinder adequate mobilisation of the citizens for the needed fight against pipeline vandalism. Hence, such stories could encourage environmental destruction.