Tao Papaioannou - Media Representations of Anti-Austerity Protests in the EU: Grievances, Identities and Agency

Media Representations of Anti-Austerity Protests in the EU

This book analyses constructions of injustice, group identification and participation in news and social media in anti-austerity protests within the European Union (EU). Since 2008, EU member-states have witnessed waves of protests and demonstrations against the adoption of austerity measures and alignment of domestic economies with the prevailing global neo-liberal order. Understanding how the media represents dissent and how it influences public deliberation is of critical importance. It is accordingly necessary to explore the strategies deployed and role played by news and social media in representing and perhaps acting upon anti-austerity protests in the Eurozone crisis. This volume undertakes such a critical exploration.

Tao Papaioannou is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Communications at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. She co-edited a special issue of Cyprus Review on media representation and the 2013 financial and political crises in Cyprus (Spring 2015) and Media Studies on critical insights in European media literacy research and policy (December 2012).

Suman Gupta is Professor of Literature and Cultural History at the Open University, UK.

Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.

101 Matrix Activism
Global Practices of Resistance
Michela Ardizzoni

104 Politics, Media and Democracy in Australia
Public and Producer Perceptions of the Political Public Sphere
Brian McNair, Terry Flew, Stephen Harrington, and Adam Swift

109 Media Representations of Anti-Austerity Protests in the EU
Grievances, Identities and Agency
Edited by Tao Papaioannou and Suman Gupta

Grievances, Identities and Agency

First published 2018
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2018 Taylor & Francis

The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-68593-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-54290-4 (ebk)

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The editors are very grateful to Toby Manning for checking the final drafts of all the chapters meticulously, confirming factual details, verifying references and making numerous corrections. His contribution to this volume has been invaluable and is greatly appreciated.

This volume arises from the international collaborative project Framing Financial Crisis and Protest: North-West and South-East Europe, 20142016. Thanks are due to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of an International Networks Grant for this project.

In the wake of the Eurozone economic crisis in 2008, European Union (EU) member-states such as Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain have witnessed a number of protests against the adoption of austerity measures and alignment of domestic economies with the prevailing global neo-liberal order. The implementation of austerity policies has exacerbated social conflicts within and across EU member-states, between citizens and elites. Anti-austerity protests largely condemn the neo-liberal version of democracy and capitalism, and attempt to reconceptualise social justice and equality at both material and discursive levels (della Porta, 2012; Demetriou, 2013). Using protests as a mechanism of political representation, protesting citizens usually aim to achieve their objectives through either influencing particular target groups such as key decision makers and constituencies, or communicating their agendas to as wide an audience as possible. In this process, protestors rely on media to convey, amplify and sustain their messages in order to obtain legitimacy in public discourse, mobilise political support and broaden the scope of conflict (McCarthy et al., 1996). Consequently, media portrayal of protests or a lack thereof influences the dynamics and outcomes of social protests. Since the institutional politics and social demands that animate contentious action have arguably become more extensively mediated and complex than ever (Cottle, 2008), understanding how media represent these and bear upon public deliberation within and across EU member-states is of critical importance. Such a project is of particular significance amidst public misgivings about the rise of far-right populist parties across Europe, the emergence of new left movements in Southern Europe and the dominance of the neo-liberal financialpolitical elite in national and European political spheres. As such, anti-austerity protests offer a context for examining medias functions and capacities for providing information and analysis, encouraging the deliberation of differing policies and interests, and thus enabling democracy to function.

When examining media response to social protests, in addition to mainstream news media, commercial social media platforms have become important to contemporary forms of citizen activism. Social movements, advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations increasingly incorporate such platforms into broader practices of informing, networking, campaigning and mobilising. It is widely accepted that media play a seminal part in contentious politics, and may bridge or widen fissures between different publics and within opinion formation and policymaking. It is accordingly necessary to explore the strategies deployed and the role played by news and social media in representing and acting upon anti-austerity protests in the Eurozone crisis. This volume undertakes such a critical exploration.