Digitalization has transformed the way news is produced, distributed and received. Traditional textual boundaries are transcended, with novel ways of meaning-making being mobilized to enrich the storytelling and news consumption experience online. As the mediascape evolves, the theorizing of multimodality has taken a new course to account for the distinct possibilities and constraints of each mode, and the constitution of meanings in multimodal wholes (Jewitt, Bezemer, & O'Halloran, 2016). In this talk I will illustrate the importance of a multimodal perspective in understanding the meaning-making process in the new media by drawing examples from a sports context. My

research investigates how female and male professional tennis players are represented on sports news websites and social media. The dataset, which consists of texts and images, was assembled during the 2018 Wimbledon Championships from six sports news websites and three social networking platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The entire corpus consists of approximately 2.5 million tokens and 3,000 photographs. Data were analyzed using a corpusassisted critical discourse analytic approach, integrating corpus tools into Fairclough (1995)’s sociocultural approach to critical discourse analysis. Kress & van Leeuwen (2006)’s visual grammar and van Leeuwen (2008)’s social actor network were also drawn on. The discussion will focus on how the gender-bland sexism discourse manifests itself in three interconnected ways: gendered collocates (e.g. a greater variety of lavish vocabulary used for male than female tennis players), gendered visual representation (e.g. contrasting gaze, camera angle and facial expressions) and gendered representation of social actors (e.g. activation for men and passivation for women in face of difficulty). The distinct meanings produced by each mode and how they are combined to form a multimodal whole underpinning the gendered discourse are discussed. The complexity of addressing multimodality in the new media is also considered.

Fairclough, N. (1995): Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.

Jewitt, C. & Bezemer, J. & O'Halloran, K. (2016): Introducing Multimodality. London: Routledge.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006): Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Second Edition. London: Routledge.

van Leeuwen, Theo (2008): Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.