Annual Reports as Autobiography: A Tale of a Television Company

Abstract

Once merely straightforward accounts of a company’s activities and fiscal performance in the preceding year, annual reports (ARs), a form of purposive communication, have grown polysemic as they become enriched with graphics, visuals, and texts. Accordingly, they serve as important framing devices through which a company can present its own story, its autobiography. Using the ARs of ABS-CBN, arguably the biggest media conglomerate in the Philippines, between 1996 and 2010 as a case study, this paper seeks, at the theoretical and methodological levels, to apply Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework in the study of ARs and, at the practical level, to highlight ABS-CBN’s corporate storytelling. Findings indicate the utility of CDA in understanding the annual report, both as imbued with meaning on its own and in relation to its stakeholders. Moreover, this study explicates ABS-CBN’s narrative about its standing as a national yet increasingly global network that has faced significant challenges in the course of f ifteen years.

Keywords: Philippines, annual reports, television, Critical Discourse Analysis