Language, Legitimacy, and Epistemic Authority in News Reporting: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Coverage of the Renée Good ShootingČerkezović, Miro (Avtor) Jurančič, Klementina Penelope (Mentor) news discourselegitimacyidentitymedia reportingepistemic authorityThis thesis examines how English-language news media linguistically construct legitimacy, identity, and epistemic authority in coverage of the shooting of Renée Good. It starts from the sociolinguistic premise that journalism is not a neutral transmission of facts, but a discursive practice that distributes voice, credibility, and interpretive power. The theoretical framework combines the concepts of identity, stance, footing, and Monoglot Standard Ideology as a regime of legitimacy in news discourse. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of ten articles from Reuters, MPR News, ABC News, Fox News, and The Guardian across two reporting waves. The analysis shows that different strategies of actor naming, quotation, attribution, modality, and agency distribution produce different interpretive framings of the event. A key finding is that the hierarchy of voices determines who is presented as a credible knower and who remains a marginal or mediated source. The findings further suggest that meaning is stabilized in news discourse mainly through procedural, institutional, and evidential mechanisms. The thesis contributes to understanding journalism as a site of epistemic gatekeeping and of the production of publicly legitimate knowledge.M. Čerkezović20262026-04-11 07:29:41Magistrsko delo/naloga97767sl