https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:44 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-greferendum-and-the-eurozone-crisis-in-the-danish-daily-press/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:44 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-greferendum-and-the-eurozone-crisis-in-the-danish-daily-press/ Continued]]> This article presents a critical analysis of the Danish press coverage of the referendum called by the Left-led coalition government of Greece in July 2015, concerning the future of austerity policies. It focuses on the conservative daily press of Denmark, one of the ‘core’ EU countries, writing on developments in the periphery. Three main themes emerge in the study’s discourse analysis of Berlingske Tidende’s and Jyllands Posten’s coverage: ‘post-democratic realism’, ‘the upper-class gaze’, and ‘Orientalism and cultural racism’. The authors not only reveal the one-sided, elitist coverage by the rightwing papers at Europe’s centre but also point out how the principles of neoliberalism itself and the acceptance of austerity are being constantly reinforced by the media in a country like Denmark, which had previously been marked out for its more progressive welfare capitalism. Denmark’s turn to the Right (and to racism) alongside its biased coverage of the ‘Greferendum’ are examined here in the context of the way in which neoliberalism and its politico-social effects are now presented as both common sense and the only way forward.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/race-and-class-in-german-media-representations-of-the-greek-crisis/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:42 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/race-and-class-in-german-media-representations-of-the-greek-crisis/ Continued]]> Research has shown that the mainstream media coverage of the EU’s economic crisis has been not only offensive and prejudiced for the people of the countries most affected by it, but most crucially, utterly relying on elite understandings of the crisis, as articulated by the political and economic establishment of the EU. Indeed, the hegemonic public framing of the Eurozone crisis followed an ‘Orientalist’ approach, through spectacular narratives stressing cultural and moral failures of ‘national characters’ and exceptional national institutions that are (supposedly) fundamentally different from the ‘European’ cannon. This way, regimes of exception were able to be publicly constructed as plausible explanations for the crisis (as a ‘self-inflicted’ problem by those not following the European norm), and equivalent exceptional policies (such as austerity regimes) to be implemented in the supposedly problematic countries. Drawing on the findings of previous research, this contribution presents the class and racist dimensions of the German mainstream media’s ‘Greek-crisis’ representations, by focusing on the ‘crisis epicenter’, Greece, a country relentlessly targeted and, slandered and shamed by the German media and the German elites in particular. The chapter concludes that both in their light and in their serious versions, the German media publicly construct the so-called Greek crisis in line with the bourgeois and post-democratic principles directing the EU.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/media-and-the-economic-crisis-of-the-eu-the-culturalization-of-a-systemic-crisis-and-bild-zeitungs-framing-of-greece/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:41 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/media-and-the-economic-crisis-of-the-eu-the-culturalization-of-a-systemic-crisis-and-bild-zeitungs-framing-of-greece/ Continued]]> This article critically studies the hegemonic discursive construction of the EU’s current (2012) economic crisis, as it is articulated by political and economic elites and by mass media. The study focuses on the political economy of the particular crisis and through the critical concept of reification, the study emphasizes the hegemonic naturalization of the economic crisis by the “free market” economistic ideology. The article problematizes the positioning of Greece as the “crisis epicentre” in Europe, understanding Greece as a scapegoat and as a laboratory where political strategies of capitalist restructuring of the EU are performed. Through the frame analysis of Bild-zeitung’s headlines on the coverage of crisis-struck Greece, the article discusses a) the “culturalization” of the crisis and the diversion from a structural public debate on the global economic crisis b) the disciplinary function of crisis’ publicity, related to social control and the production of new, neoliberal social subjectivities c) the alienating effect of the culturalist crisis discourses to transnational publics, resulting to the misrecognition of the ideological and structural reasons of the given crisis, the misrecognition of the effects of the crisis and crisis-politics in people’s lives, the misrecognition of popular socio-political struggles in countries worse struck by crisis politics, and the eclipse of transnational solidarity and identification to the common issues that European people in particular are facing.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/austerity-discourses-in-der-spiegel-journal-2009-2014/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:54 +0000 http://arc.local/items/austerity-discourses-in-der-spiegel-journal-2009-2014/ Continued]]> This article looks at the ways mainstream media discuss austerity and its failure to reach its
proclaimed goals, to reduce public debt and to boost productivity in the heavily indebted countries of
the Eurozone’s periphery. This study analyzed Der Spiegel’s articles presenting the crisis and austerity in Europe, focusing on the Greek case, from 2009 until 2014. A thematic analysis was developed in
the study a broad corpus of articles, focusing on the main ideas they unfold. Deploying critical political
economy literature, critical cultural theory and critical media studies literature, the article criticizes the
neoliberal hegemony of the EU’s crisis politics and foregrounds the role of mainstream media, including progressivist or objectivist ones such as Spiegel, in the reproduction of neoliberal ideas that expand far beyond the crisis, to produce the institutions, social relations, beliefs and subjectivities for a
post-crisis configuration of capitalism. The article concludes that Spiegel, like other mainstream media,
produce a biopolitical policing of the crisis’ exceptionalized subjects (the citizens of indebted countries)
and the implementation of crisis-politics by creating a public “structure of feeling” related to the hegemonic crisis’ rationales. These rationales are further connected to the development of the new neoliberal subjectivity, which is an objective of the crisis-reforms, such as austerity regimes. In effect, mainstream media discourses reproduce the hegemonic frames of the

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/liberal-articulations-of-the-enlightenment-in-the-greek-public-sphere/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:54 +0000 http://arc.local/items/liberal-articulations-of-the-enlightenment-in-the-greek-public-sphere/ Continued]]> The paper analyzes ‘liberal’ constructions of the ‘Enlightenment’ in the Greek public sphere. The study is based on the analysis of articles published in two news/lifestyle websites, ‘AthensVoice’ and ‘Protagon’, during the years of the ongoing ‘Greek crisis’. Discourse theory, informed by critical discourse analysis, is deployed to analyze these discursive articulations. The analysis shows that Greece’s economic/social/political problems are viewed as symptoms that underline Greece’s fundamental deficit, which is the country’s ‘lack of ‘Enlightenment’. The article concludes that such discourses are part of a biopolitical, disciplinary framework producing the object to be reformed by austerity: a ‘un-Enlightened’ ‘Greek character’, ‘guilty’ for ‘self-inflicting’ Greece’s crisis. This ‘reform of character’ envisioned by (neo)liberals in Greece and elsewhere, is supposed to emerge through the institutional advance of neoliberal restructurings such as indefinite austerity and privatizations, conditions to foster the neoliberal, entrepreneurial, mobile and austere subject, to potentially reproduce that capitalist process.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/extreme-right-responses-to-the-european-economic-crisis-in-denmark-and-sweden-the-discursive-construction-of-scapegoats-and-lodestars/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:31 +0000 http://arc.local/items/extreme-right-responses-to-the-european-economic-crisis-in-denmark-and-sweden-the-discursive-construction-of-scapegoats-and-lodestars/ Continued]]> This article examines extreme-right online media as a site of discursive struggle over definitions of the causes, consequences and remedies of the European economic crisis. The authors focus on two Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Sweden, which have seen a rise in extreme-right activities across different arenas and in different media in the turbulent years since the collapse of global financial markets in 2008. Drawing on a discourse-theoretical framework that builds on the work of Laclau and Mouffe, the paper examines how the currently most active and visible extreme-right groups in these two countries understand and respond to the crisis as an opportunity to fuel anti-immigration discourses and prey on sentiments of instability and insecurity in the broader population, using online media to “involve members and supporters in the discursive construction of racism”. The analysis demonstrates how these groups look to Greece, as the “crisis epicentre”, for culturalist explanations for the Eurozone crisis and to the rise there of Golden Dawn as an inspiration for future mobilisations in Nordic and pan-European coalitions.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/crisis-austerity-and-opposition-in-mainstream-media-discourses-of-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:28 +0000 http://arc.local/items/crisis-austerity-and-opposition-in-mainstream-media-discourses-of-greece/ Continued]]> This article analyzes neoliberal articulations of the economic crisis in Greece, as they appear at the Ekathimerini daily. Neoliberalism is primarily understood as the ideology organizing the political strategies of late capitalist production. The analysis focuses on the ways the capitalist crisis is presented in the context of Greece, as well as the ways that socio-political opposition to neoliberal reforms are addressed. Ekathimerini reproduces the hegemonic explanations of the crisis that view the crisis as a national and moral problem rather than a global and systemic one. The analysis draws concepts from both discourse theory and critical theory. Discourse theory analyzes the neoliberal discourse organizing the political interventions for the reproduction of capitalism in the crisis-context, while political economy critiques the materiality of the capitalist process, which itself is based on discourses and political interventions. The article concludes that Ekathimerini’s crisis-coverage contributes to the form of social engineering organized by neoliberal policies in Greece, in order to produce the political and social norms for a post-crisis configuration of capitalism.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/web-2-0-nazi-propaganda-golden-dawns-affect-spectacle-and-identity-constructions-in-social-media/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:26 +0000 http://arc.local/items/web-2-0-nazi-propaganda-golden-dawns-affect-spectacle-and-identity-constructions-in-social-media/