Discursivity and Media Constructions of the Intern: Implications for Pedagogy and Practice

This empirical study advances the literature on teaching and learning in management by critically analyzing a pervasive and well-established educational practice, the U.S. internship, and the discursive outcomes for those affiliated with the practice, most notably the intern. We accomplish this by employing critical discourse analysis on a collection of New York Times articles. In the first stage of our analysis, we focus on how interns are characterized by the New York Times, which leads to the identification of three subject positions: (1) The intern as cheap labor, (2) the intern as a non-employee, and (3) the overworked intern. In the next stage, we expose the discourses or discursive strategies that are being employed to construct these subject positions. In the final stage, we discuss the implications of these subject positions as they apply to questions of power. Specifically, we show how the discourses surrounding the internship and the resulting subject positions serve to privilege the organization or manager while marginalizing and disempowering the intern. We conclude with a discussion of new avenues for change, suggesting that educators be more engaged in reshaping the internship discourse by disseminating counterdiscourses that disrupt the discursive and otherwise problematic nature of the internship.