ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we analyse the coverage of two political parties – SYRIZA and Podemos – that have famously captured civic indignation against the wide embrace of austerity policies. Through a discourse analysis of Greek and Spanish newspapers, the chapter examines the journalistic construction of the two parties in the run-up to different elections (2014 European Parliament elections, 2015 general elections in both countries, and 2015 Regional and Local elections in Spain). It shows that in both countries the left parties were predominantly constructed as a threat to political stability and their anti-austerity policies as extreme political positions. In this way, newspaper coverage indirectly contributed to the legitimisation of the imposed austerity policies and neoliberal narratives of the Euro crisis.
