Bruised by the Invisible Hand. A critical examination of journalistic representations and the naturalization of neoliberal ideology in times of Industrial crisis.

Abstract

Abstract This dissertation revolves around questions that are central to the field of media and journalism research, questions about journalism and ideology, about journalistic agency and autonomy, and the room for maneuver and vulnerability of journalism today. The purpose of the study is to examine how neoliberal discourse operates in news media reporting of industrial crisis. Departing from critical theory and critical discourse analysis, the study suggests that how neoliberal discourse operates in the journalistic understanding of the relationship between state, labor and capital, becomes visible in the way that questions of rights and responsibilities connected to workers, politics and the business elite are shaped in a situation where mass unemployment is the expected outcome. The study therefore focuses on the negotiation and correspondence between the neoliberal and journalistic logic and comprises three empirical analyses of the journalistic representation of the working class, politics and business elite in the news coverage of the closing of a large Swedish factory in the early 2010s. The first substudy makes a historical comparison with news coverage during the textile industry crisis in the late 1970s and draws attention to how news journalism today dismantles the working class by the construction of discourses that prevent political and collective action. The second substudy identifies a firm neoliberal posture promoted by the right-wing government in conjunction with the first signs of crisis – and the disappearance of the question of political responsibility in the later news coverage concerning the closure of the factory. The third substudy illuminates how the clear labor perspective in the journalistic construction during the textile industry crisis in the 1970s is replaced by a dominant market perspective and a very lenient journalistic posture towards the economic elite in today’s news reporting. Taken together, the study suggests that the way the relation between state, labor and capital is understood and expressed in the representation of the working class, politics and the economic elite indicates a naturalization of the neoliberal ideology with few avenues for another understanding of rights and responsibilities in an industrial crisis. The study points to an ideological closure where alternative interpretations and representations seem to be beyond the reach or ability of mainstream journalism.