The Coverage of Golden Dawn by Greek Online Media
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Running head: GOLDEN DAWN AND MEDIA COVERAGE The coverage of Golden Dawn by Greek online media Eralda Agalliu Student ID: 10696865 Master’s Thesis University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Communication Master’s Programme in Communication Science / Political Communication Supervised by: Dr. Knut de Swert Amsterdam, 26 June 2015 GOLDEN DAWN AND MEDIA COVERAGE 1 Abstract The prosecution of the Greek far-right party, Golden Dawn in 28 September 2013 gave impetus to academics to start investigating the political course of this party. This paper focuses on the Greek media coverage of the party since it entered the Greek Parliament. In other words, it is an effort to investigate whether Greek media coverage can explain the ‘success’ of Golden Dawn. A content analysis of three online Greek newspapers (To Vima, Kathimerini and To Proto Thema) was conducted for investigating whether the use of threat and opportunity frames, the tone of coverage and the political affiliation of media can give a thorough insight of how Golden Dawn is perceived in a national level. The present study reveals that Golden Dawn is framed more as a threat by the Greek media over time and the partisanship of the newspapers determines the use of the relevant frames. Media coverage is a crucial factor for evaluating Golden Dawn’s political performance and the way it is perceived by Greeks. Keywords: Golden Dawn, far-right, online newspapers, threat frame, opportunity frame, partisan media The outbreak of the European economic crisis, in 2008, revealed a tremendous change in the European political field, namely, that of the massive rise of far-right parties. A number of popular European far-right parties highly supported by citizens (Eurostat,2014) such as the French Front National (FN), the Flemish Vlaams Blok (VB), the Dutch Partij Voor de Vrijheid (PVV) , The Danish People's Party (DPP) and The Swedish Democrats (SD) started dominating the political field. Among those far-right parties a new far-right party becomes very prominent, Golden Dawn. This far-right party enters the Greek Parliament for the very first time in the country’s history (Ellinas, 2013; Psarras, 2013). The first step towards a historical and political change for both Greece and Europe began right after the Greek Parliamentary elections of June 2012. Despite the fact that economic crises are characterized by academics as ‘a fertile ground’ for the emergence of extreme political reactions in terms of electoral behavior and political options (political parties) (Boomgaarden & Vliegenthart, 2007; Kriesi ,2012; Dalakoglou 2013;), the Greek case appears to be a ‘special case’. In fact, the presence of Golden Dawn has been rather weak in the political stage until 2009, when the consequences of the economic crisis were more than apparent in Greece (Psarras, 2013). Both the socially and economically ‘fragile situation’ in Greece due to the strict austerity measures applied by relevant governments in order to cope with the crisis , not only paved the way for GOLDEN DAWN AND MEDIA COVERAGE 2 Golden Dawn’s success but also rendered the party as a unique political construction (Dalakoglou, 2013). As a matter of fact, the party is evaluated by scholars as a Neo-Nazi party rather than simply a far-right one (Banteka, 2013; Dalakoglou, 2013; Ellinas, 2013; Psarras, 2013). Several incidents in which Golden Dawn was involved reveal that the political struggle of the party expands beyond lawful actions. In September 13th of 2013 the party reaches its peak of attention with the involvement in the murder of Pavlos Fyssas which was also the main motive for the Supreme Greek Court to start investigating Golden Dawn. Only two weeks later a number of prosecutions followed, that of Golden Dawn’s leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, as well as of several of Golden Dawn’s MPs. The arrested leader and MPs were accused of directing a criminal organization (Psarras, 2013). Due to those circumstances the Greek media coverage about Golden Dawn increased dramatically. The tabloidization of the political discourse (Mudde, 2012) by the far-right party could also justify both media attention and the impact of the party on the Greek public opinion (Bistis, 2013) . Despite the fact that the party was accused of being involved in 32 cases since the August of 2013, the percentage of Golden Dawn in the European Elections as well as the Greek National Elections of 2014 and 2015 still remained high (Ekloges.ypes.gr, 2014; Ekloges.ypes.gr,2015).Thus arises the question about the reasons due to which Golden Dawn still achieves to attract voters’ attention and support. A number of previous studies (Bistis, 2013; Dalakoglou, 2013; Ellinas, 2013; Koronaiou & Sakellariou, 2013; Toloudis, 2013) have already dealt with the reasons that made Golden Dawn successful explaining this phenomenon by focusing on traditional aspects like economic, social and anti-immigrants factors. According to Brants and van Praag (2006), we are living in the era of media logic, where media lead the agenda, hence in order to understand the political fermentations of a country it is necessary to understand also how the national media deals with politics. Additionally, media content is considered by previous studies as an important factor for explaining the rise of far right parties (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004; Boomgaarden & Vliegenthart, 2007). The rise of the European far-right parties has also been interpreted by scholars as a result of the agenda setting and issue ownership of those parties in the political discourse (Walgrave & De Swert, 2004). Media seem to build the context within which political fermentations take place by controlling the information flow, selecting to cover certain issues and interpreting them in certain ways (Mazzoleni et al., 2003). In fact, there is an extensive coverage of ‘media-genic’ issues (tabloid-style and emotional issues) and the qualities of political figures which explain how far-right parties GOLDEN DAWN AND MEDIA COVERAGE 3 achieve to approach and affect the public opinion (Plasser & Ulram, 2003). The high influence of media on mass audience opinion and electoral behavior (Boomgaarden & Vliegenthart, 2007) reveal that politics and media are strongly intertwined. Therefore taking into consideration all the above mentioned and the fact that the presence, the political course and struggle of Golden Dawn has not yet been interpreted on the basis of media content, media content analysis could give a more thorough insight of the ‘phenomenon’ called Golden Dawn. Nowadays, the traditional press is read by a lower percentage of readers compared to the online newspapers (Yang & Grabe, 2011), thus the present paper will focus on the Greek online newspapers content. More precisely, the aim of this paper is to focus on how Greek online newspapers cover the course of Golden Dawn over time (2012-2015). Taking into account that far-right parties are perceived in terms of threat and opportunity by scholars (Varga, 2008) it is crucial investigating the following research question: To what extent is Golden Dawn covered as a threat and/or opportunity by the Greek online press over time? Online media content analysis will contribute in understanding how this far-right party is perceived by media, one of the most important factors of the political system. Media portrayal of Golden Dawn could contribute to the interpretation of the party’s course since it entered the Greek Parliament and the respective impact on the Greek public opinion. Theoretical background The aim of this study is to evaluate the political course of Golden Dawn through the media coverage as media has always been an important factor for understanding and evaluating politics , especially since the rise of mass media in 1970 (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). The media role, as lapdog, as watchdog or even as a hypodermic needle (McQuail, 2006) has always had an impact on public opinion about political parties. The third age of political communication revealed that media outlets have the potential to affect both the political agenda and the public opinion (Blumler & Kavanagh, 1999). The influence on public opinion is achieved through certain media ‘coverage mechanisms’; namely, the selection of certain issues instead of other known as agenda setting, the intervention in the interpretation process known as framing and by providing a basis upon which public opinion will be based for evaluating the political parties in our case, known as priming (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). GOLDEN DAWN AND MEDIA COVERAGE 4 The media ‘mechanism’ of framing is extremely important when interpreting public opinion on politics as it determines the way people will perceive a certain issue according to the context that has been set by media. Moreover, according to the theory of “cascading activation”, frames are spread more easily by the elites (media organizations in this case) to the lower levels of society, the voters (Entman, 2003). Thus, the frames regarding political parties that are created by media will be easily spread and adopted by citizens. The course of the far-right political parties cannot be regarded separately from the media context and especially framing. Studies investigating the factors that determine the success of far-right populist parties have shown that media framing is a significant factor (Bosman & d’Haenens, 2008). For example in the Dutch case newspapers framed the far-right leader Pim Fortuyn by demonizing him and causing a general feeling of disapprovement to voters (Bosman & d’Haenens, 2008). The political success of political parties can also be seen as a result of favorable media portrayal of the party or the issues related to it and its members (Walgrave & de Swert, 2004). Due to the fact that media relate certain issues to certain parties known as “ownership of issues”, voters tend to believe that the relevant party is capable to provide solutions to those policy questions (Walgrave & de Swert, 2004).