Through a post-political gaze Örebro Studies in Media and Communication 20 ERNESTO ABALO Through a post-political gaze On the ideological loading of democracy in the coverage of Chávez's Venezuela Cover photo: Patrik Paulov © Ernesto Abalo, 2015 Title: Through a post-political gaze: On the ideological loading of democracy in the coverage of Chávez's Venezuela. Publisher: Örebro University 2015 www.oru.se/publikationer-avhandlingar Print: Örebro University, Repro 4/2015 ISSN 1651-4785 ISBN 978-91-7529-083-6 Abstract Ernesto Abalo (2015): Through a post-political gaze: On the ideological loading of democracy in the coverage of Chávez's Venezuela. Örebro Studies in Media and Communication 20. Rooted in ideology critique, this dissertation studies the construction of democracy in the coverage of Venezuela during the era of President Hugo Chávez. The aim of this endeavor is twofold. First, the dissertation aims to understand the relationship between ideology and the construction of de- mocracy in journalism on foreign political phenomena. Second, it attempts to explore the ways in which the relationship between ideology and democ- racy in journalism serves to legitimize or delegitimize the struggle for social justice in nations in the global South vis-à-vis the political and economic fundamentals of global capitalism. The dissertation comprises three articles that study the construction of democracy in depictions of the Venezuelan political system and its key polit- ical actors. Article I studies the construction of (il)legitimate democracy in relation to the Venezuelan government, Article II explores the construction of difference between Chávez’s supporters and his opponents, and Article III studies the coverage of the coup d’état against Chávez in 2002. All three articles are methodologically rooted in critical discourse analysis and rely on materials from a sample of three elite newspapers: Dagens Nyheter (Swe- den), El País (Uruguay), and the New York Times (US). Across the studies, there are four macro-strategies that in different ways serve to ideologically load the notion of democracy. Three of these strategies – the constructs of populism, of power concentration and of difference – serve to define political deviance and to (de)legitimize political actors in relation to democracy. The fourth macro-strategy, relativization, serves to justify actions that contradict established democratic principles but serve greater politico-ideological goals. (De)legitimation in relation to democracy corresponds with the closeness of a group of actors to the dominant political practices and values within global capitalism. Journalistic reporting thus follows a post-political gaze; it is generally in accordance with the political consensus that characterizes the post-Cold War era. Through this gaze, any challenge to the political tenets of global capitalism fails on democratic grounds. Keywords: Ideology, Democracy, Hegemony, Journalism, International journalism, Post-politics, Critical discourse analysis, Media studies, Venezuela Ernesto Abalo, Department of Media and Communication Studies Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden, [email protected] Contents PART I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................... 9 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 11 1.1 The problem ....................................................................................... 13 1.2 Aim and research questions ................................................................ 17 2. RESEARCH REVIEW ......................................................................... 19 2.1 Across two research fields .................................................................. 19 2.1.1 Media and democracy ................................................................. 19 2.1.2 International journalism.............................................................. 20 2.1.3 Studies on democracy in international journalism ....................... 22 2.1.4 Knowledge and knowledge gaps ................................................. 25 3. THEORETICAL POSITION ............................................................... 28 3.1 An ideology-critical position .............................................................. 28 3.2 Understanding democracy .................................................................. 32 3.2.1 The promise of good government ............................................... 32 3.2.2 Liberal democracy and its critics ................................................. 34 3.2.4 The notion of democracy after the Cold War ............................. 37 3.3 Journalism and hegemony .................................................................. 41 3.3.1 The structural conditions of journalism ...................................... 41 3.3.2 Understanding ideology in journalism......................................... 44 4. METHODS AND MATERIALS .......................................................... 48 4.1 Critical discourse analysis: understanding ideology in journalism ...... 48 4.2 Materials ............................................................................................ 52 4.2.1 Choosing elite newspapers .......................................................... 53 4.2.2 Data collection and materials ...................................................... 56 4.3 The analytical procedures .................................................................. 60 4.3.1 Article I ....................................................................................... 61 4.3.2 Article II ...................................................................................... 61 4.3.3 Article III .................................................................................... 63 4.4 Research quality and reflexivity ......................................................... 65 4.4.1 Research quality .......................................................................... 65 4.4.2 Generalizability ........................................................................... 68 4.4.3 Reflexivity ................................................................................... 69 5. CONTEXTUALIZING THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION ............. 72 5.1 Oil and neoliberalism ......................................................................... 72 5.2 The Bolivarian Revolution as a national project ................................ 74 5.2.1 Participatory democracy ............................................................. 75 5.2.2 Economic and social policy ......................................................... 78 5.2.3 Political polarization ................................................................... 79 5.3 The Bolivarian Revolution in a global context ................................... 81 5.4 The media as a battlefield................................................................... 84 5.5 Summing up ....................................................................................... 86 6. CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................. 88 6.1 The ideological loading of the notion of democracy ........................... 88 6.1.1 Populism as a deviance marker ................................................... 89 6.1.2 Power concentration and the liberal approach ............................ 91 6.1.3 Difference and democratic (de)legitimacy ................................... 93 6.1.4 Relativization and the flexibility of democracy ........................... 95 6.2 Through a post-political gaze ............................................................. 97 RESUMEN EN CASTELLANO ............................................................. 105 REFERENCES ....................................................................................... 107 PART II ARTICLE I Abalo E (2014) Constructing (il)legitimate democracy: populism and power concentration in newspaper discourse on Venezuela. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 12(2): 802-821. ARTICLE II Abalo E (Forthcoming) Through Eurocentric logics: the construction of difference in foreign news discourse on Venezuela. Accepted for publica- tion in Journal of Language and Politics (Accepted in October 2014, to be published in 2016). ARTICLE III Abalo E (2012) First hegemony, then democracy: on ideology and the media discourse on the coup against Hugo Chávez. Observatorio (OBS*) Journal 6(3): 105-128. Acknowledgments I felt rather confident at the interview for this PhD candidate position when one of the professors at the meeting – who was probably tired of my cockiness and not so impressed with my project plan – interrupted me and said: “Ernesto. The thesis you want to write has already been written. In 1986. By me.” Although I was fairly certain that something worthy of research must have happened in the world since the year that Maradona blessed the planet with his unorthodox playing skills, my confidence disap- peared – along with all of the air in the room – and I was sure that my first trip to Örebro had been in vain. However, something must have gone fa- tally wrong in the admission process because I was accepted as a PhD stu- dent and, eventually, I finished my dissertation. Because research, like eve- rything in social life, is the outcome of a collective effort, I would like to show my appreciation to a number of people. My camaradas Walkyria