ECREA16-Abstract

Thursday, November 10

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PP 119

Safeguarding the Status Quo: The Press, Anti-Austerity Politics and the Emergence of a New Left in Greece, Spain and the UK

M. Kyriakidou

, I. Garcia-Blanco

University of East Anglia, School of Politics- Philosophy- Language and Communication Studies, Norwich, United Kingdom

Cardiff University, JOMEC, Cardiff, United Kingdom

The current financial crisis and the austerity policies adopted to tackle it across Europe have been met with popular discontent and citizen resentment.These

anti-austerity voices have in some cases found expression in institutional politics and the redefinition of political parties, in particular those of the left.

The paper focuses on the emergence of this new left, namely the left focusing on anti-austerity and fighting the political establishment that was (at least)

partially responsible for the crisis, deeply corrupt, disconnected from citizens, and uncritically embracing policies of austerity. In particular, we focus on three

national contexts: the ascent of Syriza in Greece, the emergence of Podemos in Spain, and the rise of Corbyn as the Labour leader in the UK. We approach

all three cases as expressive of a broader anti-austerity movement in Europe. Syriza and Podemos have transformed the outrage that fuelled the Indigna‑

dos and Aganaktismenoi respectively into successful political parties. Jeremy Corbyn expressed Labour's commitment to fighting austerity as soon as he

became the party's new Leader in September 2015. What we are interested in here is the way this new left and its anti-austerity politics have been covered

in the press. Although they have been celebrated as regenerative force, they have also not been free from controversy and opposition. The national press

in all three countries has presented these parties as a possible cure to the economic and political crisis but also as a threat to the political status quo and

national competitiveness. Through a discourse analysis of Greek (Kathimerini, ta Nea, and Naftemporiki), Spanish (El País, El Mundo, and ABC) and British

(The Guardian, The Telegraphand Financial Times)newspapers, this paper examines the journalistic construction of the left parties as political actors in

critical moments (2014 European Parliament elections in Greece and Spain; the 2015 General Elections in Greece; the 2015 Regional and Local elections in

Spain; the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour leader and the coverage of his first 100 days of leadership in the the UK).The paper argues that in all three

countries the left parties were predominantly constructed as a threat to political stability and their anti-austerity policies as extreme political positions. In

this way, newspaper coverage indirectly contributed to the legitimisation of the imposed austerity policies and neoliberal narratives of the crisis in European

countries.

PP 120

Right-Wing Political Discourse and the Corbyn Phenomenon: Anti-Democratic Tendencies in the UK

S. Price

De Montfort University, Media Discourse Group, Leicester, United Kingdom

This illustrated paper examines the response to the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the UK Labour party, through a comparative analysis of Right-

wing political discourse (found in the press, online sources, and within political organisations) and the supposedly more democratic use of social media

forms by Corbyn's supporters on the Left. One emergent theme that characterises this debate is the determination of Right-wing strategists to label their

opponents as a threat, not to democracy as such (since Corbyn is in some sense an embodiment of this principle), but to 'national security'. There are two,

mutually supporting threads to this discourse, one of which is overt and apparently legitimate, and the other covert and usually condemned as illegitimate.

The first is represented by a remark made by Prime Minister Cameron, who announced on 13

February 2016 that 'the Labour Party is now a threat to our

national security, our economic security and your [sic] family's security', while the second emerged when an unnamed serving General declared that, in

the event of a Corbyn government being elected and removing theTrident nuclear deterrent, 'the Army just wouldn’t stand for it.The general staff would not

allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that' (Mortim‑

er, Independent, 20

September 2015). Although this remark was condemned fromwithin the Establishment itself, the congruence of the themes animated

in both public and private realms, testifies to the 'structural complicity' (Price, 2010 and 2011) that exists between the subterranean and legitimate form

of political power.This paper argues that, ultimately, the imposition of austerity under the guise of fiscal necessity, and the displacement of a socioeconomic

crisis with a rhetorical crisis over security, is based on an essentially authoritarian model of political power.

PP 121

Theorising Media, Power and Politics in Discourse Theory and Framing Studies: Conflict or Co-Existence?

C. Dindler

, M.M. Roslyng

Aalborg University, Dept. of Psychology and Communication, Copenhagen SV, Denmark

The development of digital media has profound consequences for social and political interaction and, therefore, a new radical interactivity also influences

the way in which media can be theorised (Couldry, 2012, p. 2). As pointed out by Hall (2006) and others, media discourse may either contribute to or chal‑

lenge the current status quo. Likewise, media framing studies indicate that the media may play an independent political role in terms of raising, shaping

and morally judging issues of civic relevance (Entman, 2004). Framing and discourse theory have overlapping as well as different trajectories in empirical

studies of mediated political communication. Both perspectives bear upon constructivist and critical thinking concerning the role of media in society (Gitlin

1980) and previous studies of media content have even sometimes conflated the terms discourse and frame/framing (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). It could

be claimed that no significant differences exist between discourse and framing studies of particular news content. However, with this paper we want to

explicate how these two widely applied entrances to media analysis theorise media, power and politics differently. We believe that this is a both timely

and necessary endeavour considering the radical interactivity that characterizes mediated political communication today. Conceptualisations of power and

politics will be addressed in order to compare and examine these two approaches to political media analysis and their theorising of media. Firstly, when

examining how media power is conceptualised within framing and discourse studies, traditional approaches to power (Lukes, 1974) may be relevant.

A tension appears between current framing studies’ drawing on institutional approaches to media power and discourse studies’ focus on either media

counter-power or the media’s role in hegemonic politics. Secondly, the paper argues that each tradition conceptualises politics differently. On the one hand,

studies based on media framing draw on an institutional approach to politics where media play a role in supplementing and contesting political power in