Entangled Media Histories

A research network for European media historians since 2013

“Mistrusting the media – now and then”

EMHIS member Patrik Lundell will present on the upcoming ECREA Communication and Democracy Conference, “Political Agency in the Digital Age: Media, Participation and Democracy”, in October 2015, addressing entangled issues. The paper is presented with Kristoffer Holt at Linnæus University and is titled “Mistrusting the media – now and then”. Here is the abstract:

“Characteristic of many contemporary far right movements is a deeply rooted scepticism and suspiciousness towards mainstream media. During the PEGIDA marches in Dresden, Germany, ‘Lügenpresse’ is a common slogan. The message is that hegemonic mainstream media conceal or distort information that does not fit the ‘politically correct’ agenda. In Sweden far right movements, ranging from right wing populist parties such as the Sweden Democrats (SD) to more extreme identitarian think tanks such as motpol.nu exhibit the same attitude (Holt, 2015). Radical right media channels therefore need to be analysed in the light of its position as a perceived corrective of traditional media and constrained public discourse. But is this a new phenomenon? In this paper we compare findings from two separate studies of radical right wing media criticism from different periods: the online contemporary identitarian wictionary Metapedia.org (Holt & Rinaldo, 2014) and the media criticism in the journal Sweden-Germany (1938 to 58) published by the pro-German National Society Sweden-Germany (RST) (Lundell, 2015). Our aim is to study historical antecedents to today’s far right media criticism and discuss contemporary far right media criticism in the light of what can be learned from history.

Keywords: media criticism; Riksföreningen Sverige-Tyskland: metapolitics; metapedia.org; motpol.nu; Sverigedemokraterna

Literature
Holt, Kristoffer. (2015). “media.criticism@metapedia.org: Populism, metapolitics and online participation.” Paper presented at the New Perspectives on Populist Political
Communication COST Early Stage Researchers Think Tank. Zurich (26–30 January 2015), Zürich, Switzerland.

Holt, Kristoffer, & Rinaldo, Mikael. (2014). Exploring the dark side of participatory online media : Online participation, identitarian discourse and media criticism at Metapedia.org: Journalism in Transition: Crisis or opportunity?

Lundell, Patrik. (2015). “De välvilligas rationalitet: Objektivitetsideal och mediekritik inom Riksföreningen Sverige-Tyskland 1938 till 1958”, in Maria Björkman, Patrik Lundell & Sven Widmalm (eds.) De intellektuellas förräderi? Relationer mellan Sverige och Tredje riket inom vetenskap och kultur, Arkiv: Lund, forthcoming.

June 23, 2015

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