The politics of protest in newspaper campaigns: …

Dissent, populism and the rhetoric of authenticity

an article by Jen Birks (Department of Film, Media and Journalism, University of Stirling) published in British Politics (Volume 6 Issue 2 (June 2011))

Abstract

Newspaper campaigns embody newspapers’ most emphatic claims to speak for ‘the people’, and as such are generally regarded as populist. However, they can be oppositional, engaging in dissent of one sort or another, and often assume a certain amount of political engagement with that dissent on the part of the audience. This article examines the potential of newspaper campaigns to facilitate the political engagement of citizens through the politics of protest. It draws on qualitative content analysis of seven campaigns that ran in the Scottish press between 2000 and 2005, and semi-structured interviews with relevant journalists. The distinction between legitimate protest and manipulative populism is made in terms of: (a) the rhetoric and strategies of political representation, participation and influence and (b) the construction of political legitimacy in terms of the public interest and the moral authority of the ‘victim’. It is argued that populist impulses dominate, driving a tendency to use discourses of emotional authenticity and offence to legitimise demands for a plebiscitary response to popular or ‘victim’ preference and to close down controversy and debate, with the principle objective of marketing the newspaper as an influential community champion.

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