Abstract
With the exponential rise of far-right populism in mainstream politics and public discourse, Mats Ekström and Marianna Patrona locate the challenges for new journalism and their reportage on the growing popularity of authoritarian populist governments in Europe, with some reference to the United States. They focus on commonly utilised topics by the far-right to gain media attention such as immigration, crime, and terrorism. The nine chapters are introduced by outlining the sociolinguistic and critical discourse analysis of the study and highlighting that language will be viewed as a form of social practice. Within part I, ‘The Far-Right Delegitimization of Mainstream Journalism’, political interviews and print/online news are used to explore the challenges within and outside mainstream journalism and the interference of the far-right in journalistic questioning. Part II, ‘The Performances and Propagation of Far-Right Populism in the News’ reviews the ways that far-right media seep its way into mainstream media and the strategies to circulate this kind of content through focusing on populist ‘style’ (chapter 4) and the concept of ‘talk scandal’ to achieve popularity and appeal to the public (chapter 5). Part III, ‘The Normalization of Far-Right Discourses in the News Media’, analyses the normalisation of this kind of media further by utilising instances of the Brexit campaign and referendum (chapter 6) and the 2017 terrorist attacks in Stockholm and London Bridge (chapter 7). It focuses on fear-mongering strategies and political interview techniques by contrasting the political and media discourses in print and televised media between the two countries. The study operates on a level focused on drawing the ‘micro-phenomena in the language of news’ (p. 157) and the ‘macro-level of discourse as a form of social practice’ (p. 157). It includes Critical Discourse Analysis of European and U.S. political scenarios with a focus on generic conventions and norms, recontextualization and framing. It looks into characteristic authoritarian populist styles (chapters 4 and 5), paradoxes of journalism and the ways authoritarian populist agendas are reported as ‘routine news events’ (p. 158) (chapters 2 and 7) as well as reportage of terrorism (chapter 8), and warning, critical reflexivity and resistance (chapters 7 and 8). The concluding chapter reiterates some of the challenges being the defensive stance news journalism is forced to take in regards to far-right provocations and the power of far-right strategies to cause imbalance in journalistic neutrality. This volume would be a benefit to scholars and students of media and communications, journalism, political studies, sociology, discourse, and linguistic studies.