Spatiality and Temporality of News Narratives – An Investigation of Norwegian Newspapers

Abstract:

Space and time are important dimensions of narratives, and how the geographical imaginations of different regions are shaped. Geographers have long been interested in narratives and the role of language in shaping the spaces around us. Research on narratives of different types of text is a growing area of research that provides historically contextualized and process-driven understanding of regional evolution. However, while the importance of space in narratives is increasingly being recognised, how this interacts with the temporal orientation of the text remains underexplored. The distinction between a past-oriented (retrospective) and future-oriented (prospective) is important, as retrospective statements tend to relate to criticism and legitimisation of past or current actions while prospective statements tend to relate to the proposition of and demands in future policies. Analysing the temporality of narratives in news can provide us insight on which regions are associated with the past and future, how temporalities matter to regions and the potential futures of regions. Using a computational analysis of the Norwegian Newspaper Corpus, this paper investigates the temporal orientation of regions in Norway and which regions are associated with prospective or retrospective narratives in relation to different topics.