ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the manner in which a particular discursive device was deployed in the national news media coverage of protests against the introduction of water charges in Ireland. It uses this device – 'sinister fringe/sinister element versus reasonable people' – as a lens through which to examine discourses about the protests that were produced and circulated by politicians and the media, and as a means to interrogate divergences in the mainstream media's framing of the movement. Ironically, the neo-liberal values of private enterprise and profit-orientation which constrain media professionals in their reporting of dissent, feed coverage which threatens dissent against the extension of neo-liberalism into the realm of national natural resources. The dominant interpretation of the popular response to austerity was that the Irish population submissively accepted all of the 'mature sacrifices' that the government expected of them.
