Suchergebnisse

This article explores how non-elitist discourse of members of a political party can be considered as rhetorically well-equipped and ideologically powerful in legitimising a party's controversial political narrative. By drawing on a well-known contentious political project – the New Labour 'project' of the UK's Labour Party – the article proposes a way for party members' discourse to be considered for this mode relatively autonomous rhetorical agency. Incorporating conceptualisations and methodologies of rhetorical and discursive psychology, the analysis of Labour Party members' reflections on New Labour reveals how rhetorical power operates beyond the level of people consistently drawing on particular linguistic or grammatical repertoires. The article concludes that that rhetorical agency is not confined to those with sophisticated access to and knowledge of language's workings and postulates that discourses of legitimisation may be as characteristic for their contradictions and inconsistencies as they are for their universal principles and grammar-like organisation.

In a context of highly visible and politically influential populist movements, this study considers the online self-representation of the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) in the United States and the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands. A multi-methodological approach was adopted to compare the discursive manifestation of key populism concepts: leadership characteristics, adversary definition and mobilizing information. Analyses reconstruct and account for similarities and differences in discursive framing strategies of 'double differentiation' through which both movements attempt inclusion in and exclusion from the political establishment, and, in doing so, mobilize communities of support. Altogether, this study advances the understanding of what constitutes 'unmediated' content that is presented through user-generated media production, and how self-determined media spaces have facilitated shifts in populist media legitimation and political representation in two politically unique countries.

In January 2009, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) denied a request from the Disaster's Emergency Committee (DEC) to broadcast an emergency appeal to relieve human suffering in Gaza in the wake of the Israeli ground offensive 'Cast Lead'. The decision marked the first time in the over 40-year relationship between the two organisations that a request was refused by the BBC, but an appeal went ahead. BBC Executives argued that airing the appeal could pose a threat to public confidence in the BBC's impartiality. This article, both descriptive and exploratory in scope, first reconstructs a chronology of this 'impartiality argument', providing a detailed overview of the key players, the (historical) relationship between them, and the run-up to and aftermath of the BBC's decision. The second part of the article analyses the BBC's denial of the DEC request and explores how the BBC's concerns over impartiality articulate its new 'wagon wheel' approach to impartiality. Finally, the authors study the BBC's decision and the – rekindled – centrality of impartiality within the context of the BBC being increasingly bound by the nature of its brand and the visibility of the Middle East conflict.