Authoritarian Populism and the Challenges for News Journalism

Authoritarian Populism and the Challenges for News Journalism: A Discourse Approach is a cutting-edge study of the practices of news journalism against the background of surging authoritarian populism.

This book traces key challenges for news journalism when reporting on authoritarian populism, or on topics (such as immigration and terrorism) that are typically leveraged by far-right actors and platforms as a way of attracting media attention and boosting their popularity with national electorates. It also offers in-depth analyses of how these challenges are responded to by news journalists in the actual, day-to-day practices of news production, as evidenced in the discourse of news. By placing qualitative, critical analysis of discourse at the heart of the systematic inquiry into authoritarian populism in the news media, this book applies a broad methodological framework for studying a) political performances and their mediated representations, b) the complex, and, often contradictory, normalizing processes at work in the news media, and c) the attendant challenges and critical tasks for contemporary news journalism. Based on detailed analyses of political and news discourse in various European contexts, and in the US, spanning a decade (2014–2024), this book makes a timely and relevant contribution — as liberal democracies could be facing a new turning point in the global rise of authoritarian populism.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of journalism, media studies, political communication, political science, sociology and discourse studies who are interested in authoritarian and right-wing populism, related discourses of nationalism and xenophobia, populist communication and the role of news media and journalism.