By bringing together the theoretical approach of cultural memory studies and analysis of news discourse, this study analyses the devices and strategies anniversary news text employs in the social construction of time within the framework of national temporality. On the example of three television news stories, the analysis makes visible the complexity of temporal constructions that convey a story of the Estonian nation. Among the strategies employed in anniversary news the compression of times, as well as accentuation of duration and temporal ‘turning points’ are used to link together the present, the past and the future. ‘Turning points’ refer to beginnings and closings which mark dynamics of continuity and discontinuity of national temporality. In various types of anniversary news narrativisation of time by leaning on meaningful chronotypes and other cultural resources takes place, the syncronisation of which contributes to the construction of national temporality.
Arjakas, Küllo (2008) “Tartu rahu piiritulbad”. [Frontier Posts of Tartu Peace Treaty.] Diplomaatia (Tallinn) 76. http://www.diplomaatia.ee/index.php?id=242&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_ news%5D=490&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=426&cHash=199ebc1ae3 [last visited 20.01.2010]
Bell, Allan (1991) The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell
Bell, Allan (1995)“News time”. Time & Society 4, 3, 305–328.
doi:10.1177/0961463X95004003003
Bell, Allan (1998) “The discourse structure of news stories”. In Approaches to media discourse, 64-104. Allan Bell and Peter Garrett, eds. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishers.
Bender, John and David E. Wellbery (1991) “Introduction”. In Chronotypes: the construction of time, 1–15. John Bender and David E. Wellbery, eds. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Billig, Michael (1995) Banal nationalism. London: Sage Publications.
Burke, Peter (1989) “History as Social Memory”. In Memory: history, culture and the mind, 97–113. Thomas Butler, ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ebbrecht, Tobias (2007) “History, public memory and media event: codes and conventions of historical event-television in Germany”. Media History 13, 2–3, 221–234.
Carey, James (1989) Communication as culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Carlson, Matt (2007) “Making memories matter: journalistic authority and the memorializing discourse around Mary McGrory and David Brinkley”. Journalism 8, 2, 165–183.
doi:10.1177/1464884907074804
Edensor, Tim (2006) “Reconsidering national temporalities”. European Journal of Social Theory 9, 4, 525–545.
doi:10.1177/1368431006071996
Edy, J. A. and M. Daradanova (2006) “Reporting through the lens of the past”. Journalism 7, 131–151.
doi:10.1177/1464884906062602
Eriksen, Thomas (1993) “Formal and informal nationalism”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 19, 1–25.
doi:10.1080/01419870.1993.9993770
Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Fiske, John and John Hartley (1978) Reading television. London: Methuen.
doi:10.4324/9780203356623
Halas, Elzbieta (2002) “Symbolic politics of public time and collective memory: the Polish case”. European Review 10, 115–129.
doi:10.1017/S1062798702000091
Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. (1983) The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoskins, Andrew (2001a) “Mediating time: the temporal mix of television”. Time & Society 10, 2/3, 213–233.
Hoskins, Andrew (2001b) “New memory: mediating history”. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 21, 4, 333–346.
doi:10.1080/01439680120075473
Hvostov, Andrei (2005) “Tartu rahutus”. [The dispeace of Tartu.] Eesti Ekspress (Tallinn) 03.02. http://195.250.160.49/viewdoc/E976D7BC771EE165C2256F9C00362C8B [last visited 20.01.2010].
Jaworski, Adam, Richard Fitzgerald, and Deborah Morris (2003) “Certainty and speculation in news reporting of the future: the execution of Timothy McVeigh”. Discourse Studies 5, 1, 33–50.
doi:10.1177/1461445603005001838
Kitch, Carolyn (2003a) “Anniversary journalism, collective memory, and the cultural authority to tell the story of the American past”. The Journal of Popular Culture 36, 1, 44–67.
doi:10.1111/1540-5931.00030
Kitch, Carolyn (2003b) “Generational identity and memory in american newsmagazines”. Journalism 4, 2, 185–202.
doi:10.1177/146488490342003
Kitch, Carolyn (2007). “Selling the ‘authentic past’: the New York Times and the branding of history”. Westminster Papers in Communication & Culture 4, 4, 24–41.
Kitch, Carolyn (2008) “Placing journalism inside memory – and memory studies”. Memory Studies 1, 3, 311–320.
doi:10.1177/1750698008093796
Kristeva, Julia (1986) “Word, dialogue and novel”. In The Kristeva Reader, 34–61. Toril Moi, ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Kolstrup, Soren (2005) “Telling the news: Danish newspapers 1873–1941/2000”. In Diffusion of the news paradigm 1850–2000, 105–122. Svennik Hoyer and Horst Pöttker, eds. Göteborg: Nordicom.
Kõresaar, Ene (2005) Elu ideoloogiad: kollektiivne mälu ja autobiograafiline minevikutõlgendus eestlaste elulugudes. [Ideologies of life. collective memory and autobiographical meaning-making of the past in Estonian post-Soviet life stories.] Tartu: Estonian National Museum.
Kõresaar, Ene (2008) “Nostalgia ja selle puudumine eestlaste mälukultuuris: eluloouurija vaatepunkt”. [Nostalgia and its absence in Estonian remembrance culture: the view of a biography researcher.] Keel ja Kirjandus (Tallinn) 10, 760–771.
Lauk, Epp, Inta Brikše, Jonas Bulota, Ainārs Dimants, Sergejs Kruks, Bronius Ragoutis, Richards Treijs, and Rems Trofimovs (1993) In Towards a civic society: the Baltic media’s long road to freedom. Svennik Hoyer, Epp Lauk, and Peeter Vihalemm, eds. Tartu: Baltic Association for Media Research and Nota Baltica Ltd.
Le, Élisabeth (2006) “Collective memories and representations of national identity in editorials”. Journalism Studies 7, 5, 708–728.
doi:10.1080/14616700600890372
Luckmann, Thomas (1991) “The constitution of human life in time”. In Chronotypes: the construction of time, 151–166. John Bender and David E. Wellbery, eds. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Medijainen, Eero (2005) “Tartu rahu varjatud nurgad”. [The hidden edges of Tartu Peace Treaty.] Eesti Päevaleht (Tallinn) 02.02. http://www.epl.ee/artikkel/284235 [last visited 20.01.2010].
Meeleavaldused 2005 = Meeleavaldused ja koosolekud Tartu rahu aastapäeval [Demonstrations and meetings on the anniversary of Tartu Peace Treaty, 02.02.2005, 16:43. http://uudised.err.ee/ index.php?0547461 [last visited 20.01.2010]
Molotch, Harvey and Marilyn Lester (1974) “News as purposive behaviour: on the strategic use of routine events, accidents, and scandals”. American Sociological Review 39, 101–112.
doi:10.2307/2094279
Moores, Shaoun (1995) “TV discourse and ‘time-space distanciation’: on mediated interaction in modern society”. Time & Society 4, 3, 329–344.
doi:10.1177/0961463X95004003004
Olick, Jeffrey (2007) The politics of regret: on collective memory and historical responsibility. New York: Routledge.
Schlesinger, Philips (1999) “Putting “reality” together: BBC news”. In News: a reader, 121–133. Howard Tumber, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Originally published in 1978, London and New York: Methuen.)
Schudson, Michael (1986) “When? Deadlines, datelines and history”. In Reading the news: a pantheon guide to popular culture, 79–108. Robert Karl Manoff and Michael Schudson, eds. New York: Pantheon Books.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1991) “Time and timing: law and history”. In Chronotypes: the construction of time, 99–117. John Bender and David E. Wellbery, eds. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Zandberg, Eyal (2010) “The right to tell the (right) story: journalism, authority and memory”. Media, Culture & Society 32, 1, 5–24.
doi:10.1177/0163443709350095
Zerubavel, Evitar (2003) Time maps: collective memory and the social shape of the past. London: University of Chicago Press.
van Dijk, Teun A. (1988) News as discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
West, Brad (2008)“Collective memory and crisis: the 2002 Bali bombing, national heroic archetypes and the counter-narrative of cosmopolitan nationalism”. Journal of Sociology 44, 337–353.
doi:10.1177/1440783308097125
Wertsch, James V. (2002) Voices of collective remembering. New York: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CBO9780511613715
Winfield, Betty Houchin, Barbara Friedman, and Vivara Trisnadi (2002) “History as the metaphor through which the current world is viewed: British and American newspapers’ uses of history following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks”. Journalism Studies 3, 2, 289–300.
doi:10.1080/14616700220130043
Winfield, Betty Houchin and Janice Hume (2007) “The continuous past: historical referents in nineteenth-century American journalism”. Journalism & Communication Monographs 9, 3, 119–174.