International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Current Issue

This article examines the semantics of populist rhetoric and conspiracy narratives in the Philippines to understand how they can be operationalized for governmental purposes. Focusing on Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency (2016–22), I argue that conspiracy narratives simplify socio-economic issues and aid the transformation of collective discontent into an instrument of governmentality. Evidence from public speeches, news articles and online ethnographic research shows that these narratives enable populist actors to emotionally charge the political landscape, framing society in moral binary terms: the virtuous people, depicted as victims of corruption, vs. a morally compromised elite. In this context, populism simultaneously forges an antagonistic frontier and promotes an elitist agenda, thereby silencing dissent and leaving little space for resistance. The findings suggest that while populism can inspire and mobilize marginalized communities, its co-option for governmental purposes can subvert its emancipatory potential.

The rise of fake news poses a significant challenge for governments worldwide, prompting the European Commission to address the urgency of combating disinformation. In the contemporary ‘market of attention’, where economic considerations often overshadow democratic and societal concerns, disinformation thrives. This study asserts that financial viability within news media markets is a critical yet overlooked factor in the fight against disinformation. The authors define financial viability as the capacity of institutions to balance income and expenses, positing that a financially sound news media market creates a resilient news landscape less susceptible to disinformation-induced harm. The research employs a comprehensive approach to assess this claim, commencing with a literature review on the financial viability of news media markets that leads to the development of a conceptual framework consisting of nine indicators to measure the financial viability of news media markets in relation to disinformation. Subsequently, primary and secondary data are collected from official and non-official data sources for each of the indicators across ten European countries and compared to the perceived exposure to disinformation in each country. Findings from the analysis reveal that financially viable news media markets exhibit greater resilience to disinformation. This underscores the significance of incorporating financial considerations into governmental efforts to counter disinformation. The article concludes by emphasizing the implications of the research for policy-makers, the news media industry and future research endeavours.

Investigative journalism is experiencing a new golden age facilitated by digital technologies for reporting and international, cross-border collaboration. Despite and often because of the vital role investigative journalism plays in democracy by holding powerful elites accountable, several challenges necessitate a deeper understanding of the obstacles investigative journalists encounter. This study applies the adapted hierarchy of influence model by Kunert et al. (2024) to investigative journalism in Austria. Investigative journalists’ capabilities as watchdogs of public interest are ascertained against the background of the so-called Ibiza affair as Austria’s Watergate scandal. The findings indicate that while the importance of investigative journalism over the past decades has grown in Austria, several obstacles on all five levels of the model still pose severe challenges to investigative journalism. Among the most significant problems are pressure from politics and the closeness between journalists and political actors in the microcosmos of Vienna.

The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable (2009) was written by two US ‘realists’ John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell who contended that the challenges which confronted the Corleone crime family in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic The Godfather (1972) were analogous to the geopolitical problems facing the United States in the early twenty-first century. Accordingly, when Don Vito Corleone becomes subject to a ‘hit’, the responses of his sons Tom Hagen (Liberal Institutional), Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone (Neo-Conservative) and Michael Corleone (Realist) provide options on how the United States could position itself in the multi-polar world. This article will situate Hulsman and Mitchell’s arguments within a growing literature concerning international relations theory and popular culture and provides a critique of their realist perspectives and considers whether such popular cultural analogies to US foreign policies have a validity.

This article examines the media coverage of the break-up and fall of the Espírito Santo banking group, Portugal’s biggest financial institution. Inspired by Dean Starkman’s analysis of the coverage by the US business press of the 2007–08 mortgage crisis, our study asks whether Portuguese journalism acted like the proverbial watchdog of investigative reporting in the years leading up to the collapse of the Banco Espírito Santo (2012–14). The results of our content analysis reveal the near absence of true investigative journalism during the period and the concentration of reporting in the few months before the collapse of the banking group. This analysis is complemented by an investigative reporting project of two authors of this article. The watchdog barked too little, too late.