Evaluation as positioning in English language world news channels

This chapter addresses the question of the positioning of transnational news by an examination of a corpus of news bulletins from four providers: Al Jazeera; Russia Today; CCTV; France 24. A corpus of thirty-six half-hour news broadcasts was recorded for each of the four channels between 2011 and 2014 as part of a project with students of Political and Communication Science at the University of Siena. All were analysed for their content and transcribed making a verbal corpus of over 100,000 words We ask the questions: how do these channels define their position in relation to the Anglosphere, and how does their positioning emerge, coincide or diverge in the way they present a sample news item? Do they present themselves as standing with, against, undecided or neutral with respect to assessments, beliefs and assumptions about the world?