scholarly journals Populism, the media, and the mainstreaming of the far right: The Guardian’s coverage of populism as a case study

Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 026339572095503
Author(s):  
Katy Brown ◽  
Aurelien Mondon

Populism seems to define our current political age. The term is splashed across the headlines, brandished in political speeches and commentaries, and applied extensively in numerous academic publications and conferences. This pervasive usage, or populist hype, has serious implications for our understanding of the meaning of populism itself and for our interpretation of the phenomena to which it is applied. In particular, we argue that its common conflation with far-right politics, as well as its breadth of application to other phenomena, has contributed to the mainstreaming of the far right in three main ways: (1) agenda-setting power and deflection, (2) euphemisation and trivialisation, and (3) amplification. Through a mixed-methods approach to discourse analysis, this article uses The Guardian newspaper as a case study to explore the development of the populist hype and the detrimental effects of the logics that it has pushed in public discourse.

First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Recuero ◽  
Felipe Soares ◽  
Otávio Vinhas

This paper aims to analyze and compare the discursive strategies used to spread and legitimate disinformation on Twitter and WhatsApp during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. Our case study is the disinformation campaign used to discredit the electronic ballot that was used for the election. In this paper, we use a mixed methods approach that combined critical discourse analysis and a quantitative aggregate approach to discuss a dataset of 53 original tweets and 54 original WhatsApp messages. We focused on identifying the most used strategies in each platform. Our results show that: (1) messages on both platforms used structural strategies to portray urgency and create a negative emotional framing; (2) tweets often framed disinformation as a “rational” explanation; and, (3) while WhatsApp messages frequently relied on authorities and shared conspiracy theories, spreading less truthful stories than tweets.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-91
Author(s):  
Mellie Torres ◽  
Alejandro E. Carrión ◽  
Roberto Martínez

Recent studies have focused on challenging deficit narratives and discourses perpetuating the criminalization of Latino men and boys. But even with this emerging literature, mainstream counter-narratives of young Latino boys and their attitudes towards manhood and masculinity stand in stark contrast to the dangerous and animalistic portrayals of Latino boys and men in the media and society. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the authors draw on the notion of counter-storytelling to explore how Latino boys try to reframe masculinity, manhood, and what they label as ‘responsible manhood.’ Counter-storytelling and narratives provide a platform from which to challenge the discourse, narratives, and imaginaries guiding the conceptualization of machismo. In their counter-narratives, Latino boys critiqued how they are raced, gendered, and Othered in derogatory ways.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Mah

This research investigated the Ride for Free Public Transportation program for seniors in Oakville, Canada. Using a mixed-methods approach, participants were surveyed (n=131) to understand their travel behaviour, and interviewed (n=16) to understand their perspectives towards taking public transportation. While 63% of seniors said that the Ride for Free Transit Program did not impact their travel behaviour, 37% said that it increased their public transit use. The most popular reason for seniors to use public transportation was taking it by themselves. Some interview respondents said that they used public transportation because they would not have to ask others for rides or they did not have access to a car. Seniors suggested that more education of how to use the bus and transfer could increase senior ridership. This research may aid other municipalities considering similar programs, which could help to sustain the independent mobility of seniors.


Geografie ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liviu Chelcea ◽  
Raluca Popescu ◽  
Darie Cristea

Our understanding of gentrification outside of the Anglo-Saxon core is relatively undeveloped. In order to contribute to a more de-centered approach, we ask who are the gentrifiers and how do they change central city neighbourhoods in a post-socialist context? The answers are explored through a mixed-methods approach, using both quantitative and qualitative data: construction permits analysis, census tract data, field trips, and interviews with tenants, former owners, and real estate agents. Findings indicate that gentrifiers vary in nature. They include state tenants, former owners, marginal gentrifiers, political capitalists, and institutional investors. Through their actions, central neighbourhoods have gained younger, more educated, and smaller households. Beyond this case study, we emphasize the usefulness of rent gap theories, the need to study displaced households, and the potential of property rights to enrich theories of gentrification.


Author(s):  
Mian Jia ◽  
Shuting Yao

Abstract Introduced by African American communities, Chinese rap battle features an intensive ritual exchange of impoliteness, aggression, and vulgarity, but its linguistic realizations have not been systematically examined. Taking Iron Mic as a case study, this paper explores how advanced and novice rappers perform ritual impoliteness in Chinese underground rap battle competitions. Using mixed methods of discourse analysis and content analysis, we analyze the ritual impoliteness strategies in 51 rounds of Chinese freestyle rap battles. The findings show that advanced and novice rappers employed comparable instances of taboo language, threatening, and insults on their opponents’ superficial qualities and rap skills. Moreover, advanced rappers performed significantly more boasting and ritual insults on the others’ moral qualities. Their use of ritual impoliteness is warranted by hip-hop community norms of authenticity and creativity as well as Chinese social values of reciprocity, filial piety, and moral educators. This paper contributes to the research on Chinese ritual impoliteness and rap battle competitions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Tay

Abstract Obituaries are a tractable source of metaphorical depictions of death, which in turn offer unique insights into the near-universality versus culture and context-specificity of metaphors. In multicultural settings, they can shed further light on the underexplored question of how metaphor use interacts with linguistic and religious identities. This paper is a case study of newspaper obituaries (N = 337) in the multicultural and multilingual context of Singapore. It uses a mixed-methods approach to uncover the types of death-related metaphors across languages and religions, their near-universal and culture-specific aspects, and significant associations between religion and metaphor use/non-use (χ² (2, N = 337) = 84.54, p < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.501, Log (BF10) = 47.14), language and metaphor use/non-use (χ² (1, N = 337) = 71.2, p < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.46, Log (BF10) = 42.25), and religion and language of the deceased (χ² (2, N = 337) = 48.11, p < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.378, Log (BF10) = 19.7). The findings extend prevailing discussion from the substantive contents of metaphors to the intra-societal pragmatics of their use, connecting metaphor explicitly with the construction of religious and linguistic identities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 161 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deb Waterhouse-Watson

In the 21st century, ‘playing’ football at the elite level is a profession in a multi-billion dollar business. However, the way it is imagined in media discourse and the popular imagination positions football and its athletes as transcending mere ‘work’, portraying them as ‘larrikin’ national heroes, pseudo-religious figures and role models. Taking the case of Andrew Lovett as a case study, a footballer ultimately fired after being charged with sexual assault, this article demonstrates the persistence of ‘non-work’ discourses in media reporting using mixed-methods discourse analysis. It shows how ‘transcendent’ discourses provide a logical framework that makes treating footballers differently from those in other public professions seem reasonable, enabling clubs and leagues to act in their own best interests.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Davis

Online media has provided unprecedented opportunities for anti-vaccination groups to spread their message. An extensive scholarly literature has consequently emerged to analyse such discourse and develop strategies for countering it. In this article, I take a different approach. My contention is that it is no longer appropriate to approach anti-vaccination discourse as a stand-alone formation. Such sites, I argue, building on work by McKenzie Wark and Bart Cammaerts, are increasingly part of a wider proliferation of ‘anti-public’ discourse that contests fundamental democratic conventions, rules of argumentation and so on. The article uses a mixed methods approach based on a systematic content survey supplemented by the presentation of qualitative examples from 56 anti-vaccination websites. By locating anti-vaccination discourse in these broader contexts, I argue, it is possible to understand it as related to a more general transformation in public deliberation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Barthélémy

This article is concerned with the way in which media routinely achieve their task of reporting on an issue that may last for several months. The present study is based on the first months of the coverage by a British newspaper, The Guardian, of an emergent crisis between Austria and the rest of the EU governments as a result of the entry of the far right into Austrian government. The analysis focuses on the way the time dimension is practically used in the media text, with a view to rendering intelligible whatever happens under the auspices of a common system of relevances and interest.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Mikhalkova ◽  
Pavel Tretyakov ◽  
Irina Pupysheva ◽  
Alexey Ivanov ◽  
Nadezhda Ganzherli

The Internet is a communication space where newly formed communities are searching for ways to reflect on their social nature. We provide a theoretical framework to demonstrate how humor was used to manipulate social groups before and after the emergence of the media. We use Critical Discourse Analysis and pragmatics to study several cases of social manipulation through humor. The two Internet communities, 2ch and Pikabu, being among the largest Russian-speaking entertainment communities, often compete and use humor as a way to manipulate their representatives for social purposes: to consolidate, fight back, reflect on the norms and values of their community. Our research shows that these communities follow the old traditions of humor and laughter in order to organize a poorly regulated information space. Although 2chers tend to use trolling more often, there is no general difference between these communities in the way they use humor to manipulate their social group. Keywords: humor, laughter, Internet, social cognition, Critical Discourse Analysis, pragmatics, speech act


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