Political Discourse and Media in Times of Crisis

INTRODUCTION

Emmanouil Takas

Panteion University

Sofia Iordanidou

Open University of Cyprus, Advanced Media Institute

Nael Jebril

Media Studies Program, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

If there is something that we have learned as an international community during the past few (and not only) years is that in today’s interconnected world, a crisis is never ‘far away’ from us. From the recent paradigms of the international financial crisis in 2008 and its aftermath to the pandemic of COVID-19 and the war between Russia and Ukraine, we have all experienced the effects of a crisis in different contexts and depths.

Research on crisis and crisis communication involves many models and definitions, but with the common denominator that a crisis is a major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome (Coombs 2015). A basic condition of a crisis is a non-specific event, which has a strong effect on the entire social tissue and creates feelings of uncertainty (Seeger 1998). In this environment, political communication is expected to highlight clear leadership with the aim of alleviating the symptoms of this crisis and strengthening the structures so that the next crisis will have milder effects. Along with the term ‘crisis’, that is both experientially and scholarly defined, the term ‘political communication’ has been widely researched and sometimes vaguely defined. For example, Pye (1993: 422) follows a social-constructivist definition by arguing that political communication is ‘the flow of messages and information that gives structure and meaning to the political process’. In addition, Blumler (2014: 39) highlights the importance of the media organisations suggesting that political and media organisations ‘show a horizontal interaction while on a vertical axis, they separately and jointly engage in disseminating and processing information and ideas to and from the mass citizenry’. Other scholars ( Jamieson and Kenski 2014; Powell and Cowart 2003) with a wider approach define political communication as a communicative activity of citizens, individual political figures, public institutions, media and social movements. Perloff (2018: 12) defines political communication as a ‘complex, communicative activity in which language and symbols, employed by leaders, media, citizens and citizen groups, exert a multitude of effects on individuals and society, as well as on outcomes that bear on the public policy of a nation, state or community’, highlighting the notion of political leadership.

At this point, Kahn (2020) identifies two models of leadership, namely the Political Prominence Model, where the political protagonist receives advice from experts but still reserves the decision-making process and the Expert Appointee Prominence Model, where the politician focuses on delegation of the decision-making process. In both models, trust is a crucial factor in political communication during crisis (Van Zoonen and Holtz-Bacha 2000). In this volume, both models are apparent, highlighting that the way in which a crisis is interpreted by political actors and media underscores their strategic leadership.

In addition, scholars such as Haslam et al. argue that effective political and media communication during a crisis should be built on a social identity approach. The authors argue that social protagonist should focus on building a ‘togetherness’ rather than a division between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Under this prism, they argue that the rhetoric of political and media actors to motivate others is grounded to their identity leadership especially in crises where identity plays a significant role (Steffens et al. 2014).

This volume addresses a central and multifaceted question in different contexts: How does political rhetoric and media deal with a crisis? Although the question has been explored many times at different levels, this volume focuses on the following areas: (a) the economic and social crisis of the Memoranda in Greece and the impact of the logic of the Memoranda on journalism, (b) populism as a political choice, (c) the geographical crisis with the conflict of geopolitical interests and (d) the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this volume is to explore the common grounds and differences of political rhetoric at different levels of ‘crisis’ in different examples. More specifically, the volume aspires to contribute to the narrative of political communication and the media by the following:

Examining how responses to crises are mediated through media and political discourse

•Identifying the key challenges of political communication in times of crisis

•Discussing politically populist trends and discourses in time of crisis

Assessing the implications of the financial crisis on media and political discourse.

In the present context, where crisis is more frequent than tranquility and social balance, this volume consists of different paradigms and approaches, aspiring to contribute to the wider discussion on crisis communication, political rhetoric and media.

Chapter 1 ( Jamie Matthews) focuses on the relationship between crises, as an event and a process and as a process of collective sense making. The chapter provides the theoretical ground for the term ‘crisis’, that even though is mostly considered as an opaque term, there are many definitions across different disciplines that agree that a crisis is an ‘unexpected disruption that will or is perceived by some, to lead to adverse outcomes’. The chapter contributes in seeking the concept of crises, namely its nature, its different forms, the underlying processes and actors that shape crisis and its outcome. It begins with a qualitative exploration of definitions from different fields, namely differentiations and common characteristics between different theoretical approaches. This exploration sets the narrative boundaries of each approach and highlights the characteristics of each theoretical paradigm. The narrative of this chapter follows the notion of ‘crisis events’, ‘crisis processes’, ‘sense making and construction of crisis’ and the characteristics of a crisis (visibility and absence, elite sources and narratives. The author argues that a crisis is a social construction and subject to collective sense-making processes and highlights the role of the media as an integral part of the sense-making process.

Following this theoretical background, Chapter 2 (Yu Xiang) analyses the framing processes of the medical experts by Xinhua, the leading state media and mediator of the party line and the largest news agency in China, during the COVID-19 pandemic. China has been placed in the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic, often by the western media attributing missteps to the Wuhan government. In this context, China used proactive diplomatic strategies, such as providing masks and vaccines to other countries, to increase its soft power and reverse the negative image of the country. This reversal has been accomplished through a strategic effort of the domestic media, such as Xinhua, in an effort to construct and support a positive image of the Chinese government.

By employing content analysis, the chapter focuses on Xinhua’s coverages of seven Chinese medical experts, with five of them having governmental backgrounds. The corpus consists of samples across 10 months, from 20 January 2020 to 28 November 2020 and five categories arose: (a) professional knowledge, (b) positive interpretation, (c) support for government initiatives, (d) individual achievement recognition and (d) government accreditation and award. These categories are used to highlight the processes of framing for each of the seven experts during the examined period. The main findings show that two events were decisive in constructing the Chinese anti-pandemic narrative: (a) the lifted lockdown of Wuhan in April and (b) the celebration ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in September, where Xi Jinping awarded four medical experts for their contribution and celebrated the ‘victory’ over the pandemic.

These experts were framed as heroic figures contributing to an epic narrative of ‘conquering the contagion’ and were used as a basis and proof of the ability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to successfully navigate the Chinese nation through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chapter 3 (Emmanouil Takas and Gerasimos Prodromitis) focuses on the Greek political rhetoric through an extremely harsh period, namely from 2008 to 2015, where the three Memoranda were signed. The impacts of the international financial crisis hit Greece hard resulting in a major societal, political and financial turmoil that the country still faces. This chapter provides the historical context of the signing of the three Memoranda and explores the political rhetoric through the exploration of the official parliamentary transcripts regarding the voting of the first, second and third Memorandum. The authors argue that in times of crisis, as suggested in Chapter 1, political rhetoric forms representations, explanations and evaluations of the crisis. These representations are encapsulated in the process of social influence, highlighting what ‘should be done’ and what ‘is necessary’. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to explore the dominant representations of the parliamentary discussions and how these were constructed to achieve social influence.

The authors analysed the official transcripts of the parliamentary debates regarding the three memoranda to highlight the dominant representations and party positioning, by applying thematic and structural analyses using hierarchical classification. For each parliamentary discussion, hierarchical classification was employed as well as factor analysis of the political parties that participated in each parliamentary discussion. The hierarchical classification in each parliamentary discussion depicts the main themes, their connections and their content. The factor analysis in each parliamentary discussion, according to its pro- or anti-memorandum rhetoric, shows the party positioning and the dividing borders of each political party.

The main conclusions of this chapter, regarding representations, highlight that in the parliamentary discussion regarding the first Memorandum, ‘Europe’ was the main representation. In the second Memorandum, the dominant representation was ‘Debt’ and in the third one, the dominant representation ‘intra-parliamentary procedural issues’ shows how the Greek political system internalised the necessity of remaining in Europe and accepting the Debt, issues that until today play a crucial role in the cohesion of the social context.

Following the same period as in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 (Sofia Iordanidou and Leonidas Vatikiotis) focuses on the implications of memoranda in Greece in the Greek Press. We stand in a period that not only the circulation of printed newspapers and magazines was affected because of the rise of new media, but we also face the harsh austerity measures that were imposed by the Troika (IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank) on the Greek society. Greece was under the strict supervision of the Troika from May 2010, when the first Memorandum was signed, until August 2018, when the third Memorandum officially expired, and suffered a huge loss in GDP during those years. In a context of severe social, financial and political crisis, the authors focus on whether the general decline of the press was due to declining revenues or to changes that affect the media industry because of the new media. Comparative examination of indicators in Greece and other European countries was used, in two variables: first, the circulation and second, the publishers’ revenues. Indicators were used in comparison to highlight the extent to which the Greek Press differed from other European countries under the logic of the Memoranda and the suffocating austerity measures imposed by Troika.

The authors conclude that the differentiations in Europe during 2009–2018 were significant regarding the drop in newspaper and magazine circulations, suggesting that there is a positive relationship between GDP/income and the purchase of newspapers and magazines, thus shrinking the circulation of newspapers in countries, where structural adjustment programmes were imposed. Building on the argument that the Memoranda politics had negative impact on the freedom and the polyphony of the press, the authors highlight that the decline in newspaper and magazine readership, and thus the quality of information, was greater among the lower-income and social strata. This leads to a dependence of the circulation on higher-income strata, that affects the content of the newspapers and magazines, thus tightening the ties between the press and the higher, but smaller, socially delimited readership.

On another case, where elites and the ‘people’ relate in terms of populism, Chapter 5 (Aysecan Kartal) discusses populism in media in the paradigm of the Turkish health reform. In particular, it analyses how the newspapers that self-identify as close to the government (Zaman and Yeni Safak) depicted the government’s health sector reforms in the period from 2002 to 2011. These reforms included compulsory service in the eastern and south-eastern regions of Turkey and included both general practitioners and specialist doctors. The State required them to work for between 300 and 600 days in the region, but the law impacted doctors that had never worked in public service before and those who graduated after the law was passed, thus not all doctors in Turkey were included in this compulsory scheme. The Ministry of Health was still, after the passage of the law, trying to understand the lack of doctors in eastern and south-eastern provinces and the pro-governmental media framed the doctors opposing to this law as ‘self-interested’. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to explore how and to what extent the pro-governmental media portray the health sector reform, and how it provides and receives narrative frames to and by the government.

The theoretical framework of this chapter draws upon the populistic discourse studies, highlighting that populistic narratives can be used as a strategic choice and as a ‘thin-centred’ ideology. The chapter also uses the concepts of ‘neoliberal populism’ or ‘neopopulism’ that recently emerged.

Moving to the north borders of Greece, Chapter 6 (Lefteris Kretsos and Valia Kaimaki) theorises on ‘disinformation’ regarding the 2018 Prespa Agreement between Greece and North Macedonia. The authors argue that this agreement initiated narrative episodes of political disinformation, propaganda and xenophobic populism. The Prespa Agreement was a crucial incident in modern politics of Greece and south-eastern Europe, since for more than 25 years after the dismantlement of Yugoslavia and the creation of a new State in the north-west of Greece, these two countries failed to reach an agreement regarding the name. The ‘new State’ chose the name ‘Macedonia’ for itself, a name that had strong connotations geographically and historically to Greece. Nevertheless, as the authors argue, the potential of a NATO membership of this new State brought the name issue as an urgent manner. Therefore, in June 2018, the Greek and Northern Macedonia Foreign Ministers signed the Agreement, in the presence of both prime ministers.

Set as an example, the analysis focuses on theoretical discussions regarding media power, media manipulation and rising populism. In addition, it examines the structural elements of media systems in both countries, in order to explore the role of the media in manipulative and disinformative narratives. The authors build their analysis on evidence and views expressed by media policymakers and professional journalists from both sides in a high-level meeting held in Athens, Greece, in 2019.

The authors conclude that in terms of media analysis, the case of this Agreement did not provide evidence of Greek or Northern Macedonian exceptionalism in terms of the disinformation, propaganda and media manipulation that took place. Therefore, they argue that disinformation and propaganda regarding the Agreement were products of specific political and financial context as well as structural factors of media ecologies in both countries.

A volume on political discourse, media and crisis could not ignore the relation of these notions to the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that has affected our social interactions, thoughts, feelings and practices in tremendous ways. Chapter 7 (Katerina Diamantaki and Lemonia Mourka) focuses on the rhetoric of the political elite during the COVID-19 health crisis. This cross-national analysis explores the narratives of political leaders in the United States, UK, Germany, Greece and New Zealand. The theoretical framework of this chapter is based on theories regarding the discursive construction of legitimation and the main legitimation type’s authorisation, moral evaluation, rationalisation and mythopoeia. The study analysed a sample of 16 texts by the political actors’ statements and explored the legitimation and frame-building processes as well as rhetorical and persuasive power in political discourse.

By applying both quantitative and qualitative methods, the authors identified five major thematic categories regarding preferred types of legitimations and discursive strategies: (i) exigence, (ii) a collective problem of shared responsibility, (iii) authority and leadership discourse, (iv) instrumental rationalization and (v) variations in political actors’ pandemic response. The authors conclude that strategic intentionality and legitimation are an integral part of the pandemic-related political