The normalization of far-right populism and nativist authoritarianism: discursive practices in media, journalism and the wider public sphere/s

Abstract

This article postulates broadening as well as deepening the agenda for critical research on the role of discursive practices in media, journalism and the wider public sphere/s in normalization of far-right populism and nativist authoritarianism. Our argument is that, on the rise since the early 2000s and especially from the 2010s onwards, authoritarian and nativist populism has posed some very significant challenges to contemporary media and journalism. This has made necessary the calls for in-depth, critical discussions about the norms and practices of journalism as well as for the systematic analyses of the sometimes obviously active role that news and opinion discourse have played in normalizing the nativist as well as radically-nationalist and authoritarian status quo. Through a set of empirically-based studies which outline how media carry as well as normalize far-right political and other discourse and ideology, but also how they become the tool and the target of far-right politics, we show that the entanglement between far-right ideas and actions on the one hand, and media and journalism on the other, has become ever stronger as well as ever more complex. At the same time, we also point to the practices in the wider public spheres where, inter alia, the pervasive presence of alternative far-right media and uncivil society and its news sources has posed wider and indeed numerous challenges. These have become evident in the ongoing radicalization of both online/offline media and journalism and of wider public opinion and imagination wherein the normalization of undermining of values and norms of liberal democracy has become increasingly prevalent and widespread.