ProTest Project Holds Intensive Workshop on Discourse Analysis

On September 11-12, 2025, as part of the ongoing work towards the completion of the Work Package 2 (WP2) report, members of the ProTest Project participated in a two-day internal workshop dedicated to Discourse Analysis. The workshop was designed to deepen participants’ shared understanding of discourse analytical approaches and to refine the methodological framework guiding the project’s upcoming analyses.

Day 1 of the workshop focused on the foundations of Discourse Analysis (DA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), exploring key questions such as “What is CDA, and why do we use it in the project?” Participants examined various traditions within discourse analysis—sociological-interactive, anthropological-linguistic, textual, and critical—and discussed how elements from these approaches can be combined within CDA.

The session then turned to the three principal frameworks guiding CDA in the ProTest project:

• Norman Fairclough’s Dialectical-Relational Approach,

• Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach, and

• Teun van Dijk’s Sociocognitive Approach.

Drawing on the Key Concepts Glossary developed by Lika Tsuladze, the group engaged in an in-depth discussion of the main concepts from each approach and their relevance for the project’s analytical work.

Day 2 emphasized practical application. Participants worked with sample excerpts from the Mediatized EU project to apply CDA techniques in practice, followed by hands-on analysis of new materials. The final session focused on tailoring CDA to the ProTest project’s specific research components, including biographical interviews with activists, media analysis, and in-depth interviews with officials, law enforcement bodies, and experts.

Through collaborative discussion and practical exercises, the workshop helped consolidate a shared analytical vocabulary and strengthened the team’s methodological coherence in preparation for the WP2 report.

Screenshot from the online workshop on Zoom.

Lika Tsuladze conducting the workshop.