Thread by @docrussjackson

Below is a #THREAD on just one of the articles in the journal 'Discourse & Society' from their new Special Issue on The Normalisation of Far-Right Populism & Nativist Authoritarianism: Discursive Practices in Media, Journalism & the wider Public Sphere/s.

journals.sagepub.com/toc/DAS/current

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1580131071441907713

The introductory article postulates broadening as well as deepening the agenda for critical research on the role of discursive practices in media, journalism & the wider public sphere/s in normalization of far-right populism & nativist authoritarianism.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

The authors' argument is that, on the rise since the early 2000s & especially from the 2010s onwards, authoritarian & nativist populism has posed some very significant challenges to contemporary media & journalism.

Thus the need for in-depth, critical discussions about journalistic norms & practices, & for systematic analyses of the sometimes obviously active role that news & opinion discourse plays in normalizing the nativist as well as radically-nationalist and authoritarian status quo.

A set of empirically-based studies outline how media carry as well as normalize far-right political & other discourse & ideology, but also reveal how they become the tool & the target of far-right politics.

The studies show that the entanglement between far-right ideas & actions on the one hand, & media & journalism on the other, has become ever stronger as well as ever more complex.

At the same time, the authors also point to the practices in the wider public spheres where, inter alia, the pervasive presence of alternative far-right media & uncivil society & its news sources has posed wider & indeed numerous challenges.

These have become evident in the ongoing radicalization of both online/offline media & journalism & of wider public opinion & imagination wherein the normalization of undermining of values & norms of liberal democracy has become increasingly prevalent & widespread.

In 'Friends, enemies, & agonists: Politics, morality & media in the COVID-19 conjuncture', Sean Phelan undertakes an analysis of a @BBC #Newsnight report that thematizes the ‘toxic’ nature of public debate about the science of COVID-19.

Phelan shows how the report internalizes sedimented ‘culture war’ discourses about the polarized nature of today’s public culture &, in the process, offers oblique insights into how far-right discourses are normalized.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

In 'News media & the politics of fear: Normalization & contrastive discourses in the reporting on terrorist attacks in Sweden & the UK', Mats Ekström, Marianna Patrona, & Joanna Thornborrow provide a comparative critical discourse analysis of news discourse on terrorist attacks.

Focusing on two Swedish & two UK broadsheet newspapers coverage of the 2017 terrorists attacks that took place in Stockholm & in London, the research goal is to investigate the type of discourses mobilized that help enact a ‘politics of fear’ across the two national contexts.

The paper sheds light on processes of normalization at work in the routine discursive practices of press coverage, but also to the rise of counter-discourses that resist, downplay, or take a critical stance toward the core elements of a politics of fear.

It is argued that these latter discursive practices may work in the opposite direction, namely to de-normalize or marginalize a dominant politics of fear.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

In 'The normalisation of the far right in the Dutch media in the run-up to the 2021 general elections',
Léonie de Jonge & Elizaveta Gaufman examine the micro-mechanisms at play that facilitate the normalisation of the far right in and by the media.

Focussing in particular on the Netherlands, the authors trace the ways in which the media have accommodated populist radical right politicians & their parties in the run-up to the Dutch #GE2021, discursively shifting the boundaries of what is considered appropriate or ‘normal’.

They 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 shows how Dutch mainstream media outlets adopted an accommodative stance towards Baudet & his party in the run-up to the elections, arguing that this media strategy contributed to the normalisation of the far right in the Dutch public sphere. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

In 'Shameless normalization as a result of media control: The case of Austria', Ruth Wodak shows how far-right populist parties instrumentalize the media & intervene into processes of mediatization in significantly different ways.

In her paper, Wodak focuses 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.

'Message control' implies launching & thus controlling select information via weekly press conferences, briefings, personal conversations, background conversations & text messages, & to financially subsidize only those media that reported favourably the activities of Kurz’s Govt.

Thus, a new media logic based on favouritism, nepotism, and clientelism was established and normalized. This stands in contrast to Trumpism, which delegitimized all investigative journalism without explicitly attempting to control it.

Wodak analyses how former US President Donald Trump instrumentalized far-right & extreme-right media channels (such as Breitbart or Fox News) & extensively used Twitter to spread systematic disinformation. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

In 'Narrating the ‘new normal’ or pre-legitimising media control? COVID-19 & the discursive shifts in the far-right imaginary of ‘crisis’ as a normalisation strategy', Michał & Natalia Krzyżanowska analyse the discourse of ‘the new normal’.

This 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.

Using examples from the Polish right-wing populist Govt’s actions aimed at curtailing media freedom & controlling opposition media, the article shows that the right-wing populist imagination has gradually & strategically altered its usual, highly ambivalent approach to crisis.

However, the latter’s new imaginary has become a tool in the further escalation & normalisation of far-right political strategies & policies, especially with regard to new far right strategies of media control aimed at the systemic colonisation of the wider public sphere.

Far-right actors often resort to a very peculiar – now common – adoption of many pro-democratic arguments while ‘flipsiding’ them in favour of far-right arguments & pre-legitimising their own undemocratic politics of control & exclusion.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

In 'Public pedagogies in post-literate cultures', Phil Graham & Harry Dugmore present a perspective on normalisation that turns on public pedagogies ie on ambient, ever-present systems of mediated experience that consciously teach ways of seeing, evaluating, acting, & reacting.

Their perspective takes the view that we are in, or at least fast moving towards, post-(media)literate cultures for which instructions to achieve political utopias are grounded in the devices of narrative mnemonics.

They show how narrative elements from extremist manifestos get normalised through the mediations & remediations of mainstream politicians, & through print and broadcast journalism, greatly aided at every stage by the volatile environments of digital media. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

And finally, in 'Reporting the news: How Breitbart derives legitimacy from recontextualised news', Jason Roberts's focus is on Breitbart, the alternative right-wing news website which has been a subject of increased academic scrutiny following the 2016 election of Donald Trump.

Breitbart remains highly influential within the conservative media sphere. Its attacks on MSM actors & organisations remain a prominent feature of its coverage & represent an ongoing form of metajournalistic discourse in the struggle to define the boundaries of journalism.

Roberts 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.

Breitbart frequently use recontextualised news as a method of attacking oppositional journalism whilst simultaneously bolstering their own journalistic credentials.

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.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…