{"title":"Review forum of Tamar Katriel’s book Defiant Discourse","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088427","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46847924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The normalisation of the far right in the Dutch media in the run-up to the 2021 general elections","authors":"Léonie de Jonge, Elizaveta Gaufman","doi":"10.1177/09579265221095418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095418","url":null,"abstract":"Although there is widespread agreement in the literature that the media play an instrumental role in furthering or limiting the spread of right-wing populism, there are few studies that examine the micro-mechanisms at play that facilitate the normalisation of the far right in and by the media. This contribution seeks to redress that gap. Focussing in particular on the Netherlands, we trace the ways in which the media have accommodated populist radical right politicians and their parties in the run-up to the 2021 Dutch general elections, thereby discursively shifting the boundaries of what is considered appropriate or ‘normal’. We do so by concentrating on the far-right political newcomer, Thierry Baudet, who is the leader of the Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy or FvD, also referred to as Forum). Using discourse-conceptual analysis of Dutch newspaper articles, the article provides illustrative evidence that Dutch mainstream media outlets adopted an accommodative stance towards Baudet and his party in the run-up to the elections. The findings suggest that this media strategy contributed to the normalisation of the far right in the Dutch public sphere.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49386490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reporting the news: How Breitbart derives legitimacy from recontextualised news","authors":"Jason Roberts, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen","doi":"10.1177/09579265221095422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095422","url":null,"abstract":"The alternative right-wing news website Breitbart has been a subject of increased academic scrutiny following the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President in 2016. Due to its prominence during the campaign, where it became the most significant news website within the conservative media sphere. Breitbart remains highly influential within the conservative media sphere, particularly as a result of its attacks on mainstream media actors and organisations, which remain a prominent feature of its coverage and represent an ongoing form of metajournalistic discourse in the struggle to define the boundaries of journalism. This paper seeks to examine how Breitbart builds journalistic authority and legitimacy amongst their readership as a result of attacks on liberal and conservative journalists alike, emotionally appealing to normative, ‘common-sense’ understandings of journalism. In particular, Breitbart frequently use recontextualised news as a method of attacking oppositional journalism whilst simultaneously bolstering their own journalistic credentials. We argue that in a media ecology in which emotional content is prioritised in order to commodify the anger of citizens, practices of recontextualisation will continue to play an important role in the battle over the boundaries of acceptable journalistic practice.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42648223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debating the legal recognition of gender identity in parliamentary discourse: Human rights and queer politics","authors":"Ioannis Michos, Lia Figgou, A. Baka","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088129","url":null,"abstract":"This study documented the rhetorical constructions of ‘human rights’ in political discourse and the potential implications of their invocation as a frame for LGBTQI+ claims. The minutes of the VI Greek Parliamentary session on a bill related to the legal recognition of gender identity, conducted in 2017, were analyzed. Analysis utilized the concepts of Rhetorical and Critical Discursive Social Psychology, indicating that human rights are flexibly used in arguments oriented to the expansion, the limitation, or the opposition to self-defined gender identity. Varied representations of human rights’ content and boundaries and different constructions of agency concerning their enactment are identified. Although representations of human rights as universal are oriented to the inclusion of LGBTQI+ community, other liberal arguments obscure anti-LGBTQI+ social actors’ accountability. Human rights are also depicted as threatening Westernizing tools. The rhetorical functions of these constructions and their potential implications for queer claims and politics are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44134915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public pedagogies in post-literate cultures","authors":"Phil Graham, H. Dugmore","doi":"10.1177/09579265221095421","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095421","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we present a perspective on normalisation that turns on public pedagogies; that is, on ambient, ever-present systems of mediated experience that consciously teach ways of seeing, evaluating, acting, and reacting. Our perspective is further focused by theories of literacy and utopianism. It takes the view that we are in, or at least fast moving towards, post-literate cultures for which instructions to achieve political utopias are grounded in the devices of narrative mnemonics. We demonstrate our perspective using negative discourse analysis and show how narrative elements from extremist manifestos get normalised through the mediations and remediations of mainstream politicians, and through print and broadcast journalism, greatly aided at every stage by the volatile environments of digital media.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47424942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shameless normalization as a result of media control: The case of Austria","authors":"R. Wodak","doi":"10.1177/09579265221095419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095419","url":null,"abstract":"Far-right populist parties instrumentalize the media and intervene into processes of mediatization in significantly different ways, depending on socio-political contexts, their position of power, their role in government or opposition and – related to the latter – their specific access to media. In this paper, I focus on one of the many ways propagandistic tools are employed to control the relevant agenda and information being disseminated by both traditional media and online, in other words ‘message control’. Message control illustrates one of many steps of normalization of far-right agenda. The concept of ‘message control’ emerged from the specific propaganda tool developed by the former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his followers and implies launching and thus controlling select information via weekly press conferences, briefings, personal conversations, back-ground conversations (Hintergrundgespräche), and text messages, and to financially subsidize only those media that reported favorably about the activities of Kurz’s government. Thus, a new media logic based on favoritism, nepotism, and clientelism was established and normalized. This stands in contrast to Trumpism, which delegitimized all investigative journalism without explicitly attempting to control it. Former US President Donald Trump constitutes rather a prime example of Löwenthal and Guterman’, as he instrumentalized far-right and extreme-right media channels (such as Breitbart or Fox News) and extensively used Twitter to spread systematic disinformation.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44869566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Narrating the ‘new normal’ or pre-legitimising media control? COVID-19 and the discursive shifts in the far-right imaginary of ‘crisis’ as a normalisation strategy","authors":"M. Krzyżanowski, N. Krzyżanowska","doi":"10.1177/09579265221095420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095420","url":null,"abstract":"This article highlights how the recent discourse of ‘the new normal’ – re-initiated and widely used in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in national and international media and political discourse – marks the advent of a new approach to ‘crisis’ in the normalisation of far-right populist politics. Drawing on the example of the analysis of ‘policy communication’ genres pre-legitimising the Polish right-wing populist government’s recent actions aimed at curtailing media freedom and controlling opposition media, the article shows that, in the context of an undisputed crisis such as the recent pandemic, the right-wing populist imagination has gradually and strategically altered its usual, highly ambivalent approach to crisis. However, the latter’s new, (quasi) ‘factual’ imaginary has, as is shown, become a tool in the further escalation and normalisation of far-right political strategies and policies, especially with regard to new far right strategies of media control aimed at the systemic colonisation of the wider public sphere. Therein, as the article shows, far-right actors often resort to a very peculiar – and by now common – adoption of many pro-democratic arguments while ‘flipsiding’ them in favour of far-right arguments and pre-legitimising their own undemocratic politics of control and exclusion.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44957672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The normalization of far-right populism and nativist authoritarianism: discursive practices in media, journalism and the wider public sphere/s","authors":"M. Krzyżanowski, Mats Ekström","doi":"10.1177/09579265221095406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221095406","url":null,"abstract":"This article postulates broadening as well as deepening the agenda for critical research on the role of discursive practices in media, journalism and the wider public sphere/s in normalization of far-right populism and nativist authoritarianism. Our argument is that, on the rise since the early 2000s and especially from the 2010s onwards, authoritarian and nativist populism has posed some very significant challenges to contemporary media and journalism. This has made necessary the calls for in-depth, critical discussions about the norms and practices of journalism as well as for the systematic analyses of the sometimes obviously active role that news and opinion discourse have played in normalizing the nativist as well as radically-nationalist and authoritarian status quo. Through a set of empirically-based studies which outline how media carry as well as normalize far-right political and other discourse and ideology, but also how they become the tool and the target of far-right politics, we show that the entanglement between far-right ideas and actions on the one hand, and media and journalism on the other, has become ever stronger as well as ever more complex. At the same time, we also point to the practices in the wider public spheres where, inter alia, the pervasive presence of alternative far-right media and uncivil society and its news sources has posed wider and indeed numerous challenges. These have become evident in the ongoing radicalization of both online/offline media and journalism and of wider public opinion and imagination wherein the normalization of undermining of values and norms of liberal democracy has become increasingly prevalent and widespread.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48355404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Critical analysis of dehumanizing news photographs on immigrants: Examples of the portrayal of non-citizenship","authors":"María Martínez Lirola","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088121","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses the main visual characteristics of sub-Saharan immigrants represented as non-citizens in a sample from the Spanish press, and deepens on how this contributes to perpetuating the ‘we-they’ dichotomy. The data consist of all the news items published on sub-Saharan immigrants in the digital editions of the Spanish newspapers El País and ABC from 1 January 2016 to 1 January 2021. Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and van Leeuwen’s model for the visual representation of social actors will be the theoretical frameworks. The findings indicate that there are different visual ways to portray immigrants as non-citizens, which allows establishing this classification: representing immigrants’ arrival as illegal and clandestine, portraying them as invaders, representing immigrants as violent individuals or associating them with animalization. All these can be considered visual dysphemisms that problematize the arrival of immigrants and highlight the differences between Spanish population and immigrants.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45125553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An analysis of self-other representations in the incelosphere: Between online misogyny and self-contempt","authors":"Giuseppina Scotto di Carlo","doi":"10.1177/09579265221099380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221099380","url":null,"abstract":"The present study intends to contribute to the analysis of digital discursive practices of hate speech expressed throughout the so-called ‘Manosphere’, a group of online communities in which men express their considerations about masculinity. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, it investigates how one of the main Manosphere groups, the Incels, creates its in-group/out-group discourse through its representations of women and of themselves. Driven by Critical Discourse Studies and studies on the ideological function of metaphors, the first part of the analysis reveals a conflation of apparently sarcastic metaphors, dark humour, and misogyny used to talk about women, while the second section of the study focuses on the peculiar self-representations of the men who participate in the forum, which breach Van Dijk’s ‘us vs them’ identity square pattern: rather than emphasising the positive traits of the in-group, incels describe themselves through self-derogative nominations and predications that give way to a spiral of self-pitying and self-contempt, which might be used to create fraternal bonds within the community.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48968821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}