Chapter / Transformations of the Media Sphere: Amplifying Opportunity Structures for Populism

The Complexity of Populism: New Approaches and Methods (ed. Paula Diehl and Brigitte Bargetz) is published by Routledge and includes a chapter by Mojca Pajnik entitled Transformations of the Media Sphere: Amplifying Opportunity Structures for Populism.

The chapter addresses the links between populism and the media by shifting the focus from understanding “media populism” as a political style to addressing structural changes in the media landscape. The author proposes a step-by-step analysis for understanding populism, which at the macro level encompasses the concentration of media ownership in the hybrid media sphere, the processes of deregulation, digitisation and platformisation of media and social networks. At the meso level, she critically examines the affective turn in the media and the consolidation of the precarious model of journalism, while at the micro level, she analyses the discursive elements of populism in their intertwining with ideological orientations. The aim is to show how the transformations of the media in recent decades have created “opportunity structures” for the rise of authoritarian populism.

The chapter is available here: Opportunity Structures for Populism