ABSTRACT

The Media and Austerity examines the role of the news media in communicating and critiquing economic and social austerity measures in Europe since 2010. From an array of comparative, historical and interdisciplinary vantage points, this edited collection seeks to understand how and why austerity came to be perceived as the only legitimate policy response to the financial crisis for nearly a decade after it began.

Drawing on an international range of contributors with backgrounds in journalism, politics, history and economics, the book presents chapters exploring differing media representations of austerity from UK, US and European perspectives. It also investigates practices in financial journalism and highlights the role of social media in reporting public responses to government austerity measures. They reveal that, without a credible and coherent alternative to austerity from the political opposition, what had been an initial response to the consequences of the financial crisis, became entrenched between 2010 and 2015 in political discourse.

The Media and Austerity is a clear and concise introduction for students of journalism, media, politics and finance to the connections between the media, politics and society in relation to the public perception of austerity after the 2008 global financial crash.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

The media as messenger

part I|83 pages

The UK experience

chapter 1|15 pages

The UK news media and austerity

Trends since the global financial crisis

chapter 2|13 pages

Media amnesia and the crisis

chapter 4|17 pages

The economic recovery on TV news

chapter 5|16 pages

The ‘Geddes Axe’

The press and Britain’s first austerity drive

part II|58 pages

Continental perspectives

chapter 6|14 pages

Covering the Euro crisis

Cleavages and convergences

chapter 7|15 pages

Austerity policies in the European press

A divided Europe?

chapter 8|12 pages

Safeguarding the status quo

The press and the emergence of a new left in Greece and Spain

part III|54 pages

Journalistic practice and the crisis

chapter 10|13 pages

Whose economy, whose news?

chapter 11|13 pages

‘Mediamacro’

Why the news media ignores economic experts

chapter 13|13 pages

Reform in retreat

The media, the banks and the attack on Dodd-Frank

part IV|53 pages

Social media, social movements and the crisis

chapter 15|11 pages

Narrative mediation of the Occupy movement

A case study of Stockholm and Latvia

chapter 16|11 pages

Facebook and the populist right

How populist politicians use social media to reimagine the news in Finland and the UK

chapter 17|14 pages

#ThisIsACoup

The emergence of an anti-austerity hashtag across Europe’s twittersphere