Abstract
The 2014 European Parliament elections defined a key ‘moment in time’ in European politics, a moment in time marked principally by the rise of right-wing populist parties. In this chapter, Ekström and Morton analyse the mediated performances of populist leaders to ask two questions. Firstly, what constitutes the performances and the appeal to the people articulated in television news and current affairs across countries? Secondly, how has television news journalism responded to the challenges of reporting on an increasingly prominent political populism? The study shows general features of populist discourse, rhetorical strategies and claims of exclusively representing ‘the people’. It also presents significant differences in the embodied styles of individual politicians and how the performed cultural identities of the populist politicians resonate myths and stereotypes in the specific national contexts. Finally, the comparative analyses demonstrate the ambivalence of a journalism exposing populist politicians for extraordinary critical interrogations and providing favourable environments for the performances of populism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Colloquial term for a kitchen apron.
- 2.
This came after an incident where a Golden Dawn MP slapped a former female journalist and current MP of the Greek communist party on the face on air during a live morning TV talk show on 7 June 2012.
References
Akkerman T (2016) Conclusions. In: Akkerman T, de Lange S, Rooduijn M (2016) (eds.) Radical Right-wing Populist Parties in Western Europe. London: Routledge. pp. 268–282.
Akkerman T, de Lange S, Rooduijn M (2016) (eds.) Radical Right-wing Populist Parties in Western Europe. London: Routledge.
Alexander J (2006) The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alexander J (2011) Performance and Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bell A (1991) The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell.
Canovan M (1999) Trust the people! Populism and the two faces of democracy. Political Studies, 47: 2–16.
Corner J, Pels D (2003) (eds.) Media and the Restyling of Politics. London: Sage.
Coupland N (2007) Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Cleen B, Carpentier N (2010) Contesting the populist claim on the ‘people’ through popular Culture. Social Semiotics, 20: 175–196.
Fairclough N (2016) A dialectic-relational approach to critical discourse analysis in social research. In: Wodak R, Meyer M (eds.) Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. London: Sage, pp. 86–108.
Forchtner B, Krzyzanowski M, Wodak R (2013) Mediatisation, right-wing populism and political campaigning: The case of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). In: Ekström M, Tolson A (eds.) Media Talk and Political Elections in Europe and America. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 205–228.
Hallin, D (1986) The ‘Uncensored war’: The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley: University California Press.
Ivaldi G (2016) A new course for the French radical right. In: Akkerman T, de Lange S, Rooduijn M (eds) Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 225–245.
Kress G (2010) Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge.
Krämer B (2014) Media populism: A conceptual clarification and some theses on its effects. Communication Theory, 24: 42–60.
Laclau E (2005) On Populist Reason. London: Verso.
Mazzoleni G (2008) Populism and the media. In: Albertazzi D, & McDonnel D (eds.), Twenty-first Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 49–64.
Moffitt B (2015) How to perform crisis: A model for understanding the key role of crisis in contemporary populism. Government and Opposition, 50: 189–217.
Moffitt B (2016) The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Moffitt B, Tormey S (2014) Rethinking populism: Politics, mediatisation and political style. Political Studies, 62: 381–397.
Mudde C (2007) Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Muller J (2016) What is Populism? Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Niemi M (2013) The true Finns identity politics and populist leadership on the threshold of the party’s electoral triumph. Javnost – The Public, 20: 77–91.
Norocel C (2013) ‘Give us back Sweden’. A feminist reading of the (re)interpretations of the Folkhem conceptual metaphor in Swedish radical right populist discourse. Nordic Journal of Feminist and gender Research, 21: 4–20.
Stanyer J, Salgado S, Strömbäck J (2016) Populist Actors as Communicators or Political Actors as Populist Communicators: Cross-National Findings and Perspectives. In: Aalberg T et al (eds.) Populist Political Communication in Europe. London: Routledge.
Taggart P (2000) Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Thornborrow J (2015) The Discourse of Public Participation Media. London: Routledge.
Wodak R (2015) The Politics of Fear. London: Sage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ekström, M., Morton, A. (2017). The Performances of Right-Wing Populism: Populist Discourse‚ Embodied Styles and Forms of News Reporting. In: Ekström, M., Firmstone, J. (eds) The Mediated Politics of Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56629-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56629-0_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56628-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56629-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)