Friends, enemies, and agonists: Politics, morality and media in the COVID-19 conjuncture

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dc.contributor.authorPhelan S
dc.date.available31/05/2022
dc.date.issued31/05/2022
dc.description.abstractThe radical democratic theorist Chantal Mouffe has long criticized the moralization of politics in its neoliberalized Third Way form. The argument informs her analysis of the rise of the far right, which she suggests has partly been enabled by moralizing antagonisms that inhibit a culture of agonistic political contestation. This paper uses Mouffe to think about the current condition of mediatized public discourse, extending her critique of moralized politics to a wider set of targets. I illuminate the argument through an analysis of a BBC Newsnight report that thematizes the ‘toxic’ nature of public debate about the science of COVID-19. I show how the report internalizes sedimented ‘culture war’ discourses about the polarized nature of today’s public culture and, in the process, offers oblique insights into how far-right discourses are normalized. I end by considering some of the limitations of Mouffe’s work as a resource for thinking about how to counteract the far right.
dc.description.confidentialFALSE
dc.identifierhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09579265221095408
dc.identifier.citationDiscourse and Society: an international journal for the study of discourse and communication in their social, political and cultural contexts, 2022
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/09579265221095408
dc.identifier.elements-id453628
dc.identifier.harvestedMassey_Dark
dc.identifier.issn0957-9265
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10179/17170
dc.publisherSAGE Publications
dc.publisher.urihttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09579265221095408
dc.relation.isPartOfDiscourse and Society: an international journal for the study of discourse and communication in their social, political and cultural contexts
dc.subjectBBC
dc.subjectCOVID science
dc.subjectculture wars
dc.subjectfar-right normalisation
dc.subjectmedia
dc.subjectmorality
dc.subjectMouffe
dc.subjectneoliberalism
dc.subjectsedimented antagonisms
dc.subjectthe political
dc.subject.anzsrc16 Studies in Human Society
dc.subject.anzsrc17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
dc.subject.anzsrc20 Language, Communication and Culture
dc.titleFriends, enemies, and agonists: Politics, morality and media in the COVID-19 conjuncture
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.notesNot known
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University/Massey Business School
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University/Massey Business School/School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing
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