Hybrid Media and Populist Currents in Ireland's 2016 General Election
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EJC0010.1177/0267323118775297European Journal of CommunicationSuiter et al. 775297research-article2018 Full Length Article European Journal of Communication 1 –17 Hybrid media and populist © The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: currents in Ireland’s 2016 sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118775297DOI: 10.1177/0267323118775297 General Election journals.sagepub.com/home/ejc Jane Suiter and Eileen Culloty Dublin City University, Ireland Derek Greene University College Dublin, Ireland Eugenia Siapera Dublin City University, Ireland Abstract Populism, or at the very least a ‘populist zeitgeist’ has advanced across the globe with populist actors from across the ideological spectrum at the forefront of politics in Europe, North and South America and Southeast Asia. One of the major components is the media and specifically hybrid media, which can inhibit or magnify populist political tendencies among both parties and voters. We utilised both hand-coded traditional media data and machine learning on social media data in order to disengage the hybrid media nuances for populist storytelling. We find that the media system in Ireland largely inhibits populist politics and messaging and thereby dampens all anti-out-group messaging. Thus, contrary to the literature identifying an inclination towards populism in some types of new media, and the emergence of media populism in similar media systems in the United States and the United Kingdom, we find that the Irish media, across all platforms, tend not to focus on populist messaging. In addition, the norms appear to bleed over to social media. These results are important because they potentially provide lessons for other European countries in covering populist actors and they contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of different kinds of media in the representation of populist politics. Keywords Elections, hybrid media, mediatisation, populism Corresponding author: Jane Suiter, School of Communications, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin, D09 Y5NO Ireland. Email: [email protected] 2 European Journal of Communication 00(0) Introduction Much scholarly attention has been paid to the rapid spread of reactionary populism world- wide in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession and in particular to a “populist zeitgeist” (Mudde 2004). Yet, a comparable form of populism has not been manifest in Ireland with no group or party espousing anti-out-group sentiment, rather populism appears confined to empty (simply references to ‘the people’) or left-wing varieties. This is particularly surprising, as recent conditions in Ireland appeared ripe for the emergence of populist actors (Kitching, 2013; McDonnell, 2008, Hernández and Kriesi 2016b). In the wake of economic collapse and an International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity programme, the party political system has fragmented and public disaffection with so-called elites has been manifest in a large-scale protest movement, while immigration has increased. This puzzle can be considered from a number of perspectives: party political (Farrell and Suiter, 2016; O’Malley, 2008) or the voters (Van Kessel, 2015). However, we argue that the media play a crucial role. In particular, hybridity of the media system (Chadwick, 2013) is open to both constraining and enabling a populist exploitation of oppositional political sentiment. Focusing on the 2016 Irish General Election, we show that there is successful anti-elite populism (evidenced by the voter volatility and record number of elected candidates from no party or small parties) and that hybrid media and disinterme- diation enables this anti-elite populism because it diminishes the traditional influence of professional news values. However, in terms of right-wing populism and anti-out-group sentiment we find the traditional media norms of balance and objectivity largely hold force and that anti-out-group rhetoric is largely absent. We argue that while populist rheto- ric is more pronounced on new digital and social media because traditional journalism norms are likely to be less salient on these platforms and because politicians can utilise these platforms to communicate directly to the public, there appears to be some kind of spontaneous recovery of the middle ground as traditional norms appear to bleed over limiting some populist messaging, at least of the right-wing anti-out-group variety. Understanding media populism Despite intensified scholarly interest in populism, and right-wing populism in particular, the subject remains difficult to define. In part, this stems from the ‘mercurial nature of populism’ (Stanley, 2008: 108) whereby its individual manifestations cut across histori- cal, geographical and ideological cleavages. Within comparative studies, there is general agreement that ‘populism is confrontational, chameleonic, culture-bound and context- dependent’ (Arter, 2010: 490). One fruitful approach is to define populism as a ‘thin- centred ideology’. In this vein, in his study of European populist parties, Mudde (2007) identifies four characteristics of populist ideology: the people are defined as a homoge- neous and pure entity; the elite are defined as a homogeneous and corrupt entity; the people and the elite are defined as antagonistic groups; and direct forms of democratic participation, returning power to the people, are advocated. Others developing this defi- nition of a ‘thin’-centred ideology, identify the following three core characteristics: (1) populism focuses on the people, the homogeneous in-group; (2) the homogeneous in- group is threatened by the homogeneous out-group; and (3) there is an antagonistic Suiter et al. 3 division between the pure and blameless people versus the culprit out-group (Daenekindt et al., 2017). For left-wing populism, this out-group encompasses culprit political elites while for right-wing populism, it ranges from Islam to immigrants. Integrating the anti- out-group sentiment of right-wing populism also ensures that populism can be distin- guished from more general expressions of, for example, opposition to global economic elites and demands for more direct citizen representation. As Bale et al. (2011) note, without clear grounds for making these distinctions, the populist label could be applied to ‘any political actor who is in the news frequently for a substantial amount of time’. Accepting that populism involves political and ideological communication to publics implies that populists must use the media. Yet, despite their central importance, the role of the media in populism has been neglected as an area of systematic research. This is in part due to the depiction of the media as a neutral platform for populist messages within political science (Esser et al., 2017). The alternative, grounded in communication research, characterises the relationship between media and politics in terms of mediatisa- tion (Mazzoleni, 2014); that is, the process by which political institutions ‘have become increasingly dependent on the media and have had to adapt to the logic of the media’ (Hjarvard, 2008: 107). Hence, a mediatisation perspective implies that certain media log- ics may reinforce or hamper specific communication styles such as populist discourse (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; Moffitt and Tormey, 2014; Rooduijn et al., 2014). In the past decade, this has been complicated by the rise of online media including social net- works. As Chadwick (2013) argues, digital technologies engender a hybrid media system in which traditional news cycles are replaced with more dynamic information cycles. Access to decentralised online and social communication platforms creates ‘new oppor- tunities for non-elite actors to mobilize and enter the news making process’ (Chadwick, 2013: 6). At the same time, media outlets, both old and new, become increasingly inter- dependent and forced into a process of continual adaptation. How might this affect popu- list communication? To answer this question, it is helpful to turn to a valuable distinction developed by Esser et al. (2017), who set out a typology of the relationship between media and populism: populism by the media, populism through the media and populism through citizen journalism. Populism by the media refers to media that engage in their own kind of populism and recalls the earlier work of scholars identifying populism with commercial TV and tabloid newspapers. Here, the media tend to present elections as a game, focus on the will of the people through opinion polls and portray politicians with an attitude of antagonism and, increasingly, cynicism (Akkerman, 2011; Stanyer, 2007). Politics is thereby represented as a game of U-turns, personalities and winning tactics with little thought for policy debates, experts or the nature of political compromise (Anderson, 2010; Mastropaolo, 2012). The cumulative impact of populism by the media is a general cynicism towards politics (Wayne and Murray, 2009) and sweeping popularisation (Mazzoleni, 2008). Of course, game frames alone are not a sufficient indicator of populism, but when combined with references to ‘the people’ and other contextual characteristics, they are likely to be an indicator of the presence of populist currents. Populism through the media refers to the media amplification of populist voices. Here, media amplify and report populist voices and narratives due to the convergence of goals. That is, media may expect consumption bumps when reporting populist statements, particularly by 4 European Journal of Communication