[Commlist] CfP- “Media & Populism” - Revista Media & Jornalismo

The scholarly journal Revista Media & Jornalismo (ICNOVA, Nova 
University, Lisbon) invite researchers to submit articles that discuss 
the contemporary populisms for a special issue on “Media and Populism” 
(Number to be published in 2022).

  * Deadline for submission: September 30^th , 2021.
  * Editors: Isabel Ferin Cunha (ICNOVA); Liziane Soares Guazina
    (Universidade de Brasília) and Gianpietro Mazzoleni (Università
    degli Studi de Milano).
  * Texts in Portuguese, Spanish and English will be accepted,
    addressing, from multiple geographical and political contexts, and
    from political and communication understanding, this complex issue.
  * Manuscripts must be submitted through the journal's website
    (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/mj
    <https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/mj>).
  * When accessing the RMJ for the first time, you must register to
    submit your article and accompany it throughout the editorial
    process. See the Authors' Instructions, Conditions for Submission,
    and the journal's Editorial Policies.
  * Media & Journalismo does not charge any fee from authors to articles
    submission, peer review, revision, journal publishing, and
    distribution, publication and download in the World Wide Web.
  * For more information, contact: (patriciacontreiras /at/ fcsh.unl.pt)
    <mailto:(patriciacontreiras /at/ fcsh.unl.pt)>

The “populist” label is almost always used to describe a wide range of 
individuals, parties, and movements, from left to right, who structure 
their political strategy around a dualistic and simplifying conception 
of reality. Concept of multiple semantic variations, depending on 
historical and political context in which it is employed, populism has 
been identified as a low-density ideology, quite sophisticated in terms 
of electoral effectiveness, which considers – in a Manichean perspective 
-society divided in two antagonistic groups: “the pure people” and “the 
corrupt elite” postulating the people’s unrestricted sovereignty. The 
populist assumes strategies of communication and rhetoric that value the 
perception of the existence of a monolithic people, whose identity would 
be threatened by the action of enemy groups -what some leaders call 
“Homeland enemies”. In this sense, populism is defined as discourse 
based on simplistic judgments and easy dichotomies, where the people 
(the crowd) are told what they hope to hear, polarizing society and 
dividing citizens between good and bad people.

Last decade we have witnessed the emergence of populist governments in 
several countries around the world, that threaten the rules of liberal 
democracy, especially regarding individual rights, freedom of expression 
and press. They are populist and authoritarian governments installed 
many times, based on the holding of free elections, followed by the 
attempt of constitutional changes, which aim to perpetuate the leaders 
in power and to condition civil and human rights. Contemporary 
populisms, or neo-populisms, seek to distort the notion of “volonté 
générale du people”, adulterating this democratic value, to attack, in 
the public sphere and through an anti-democratic rhetoric, instances of 
representation and mediation. The preferred targets have been 
parliaments and courts, knowledge institutions, scientific communities, 
social and humanitarian movements, and the media themselves. Thus, 
modern authoritarian populisms, embodied by leaders who are or have 
recently left power, such as Donald Trump (United States), Jair 
Bolsonaro (Brazil), Recep Erdogan (Turkey), Viktor Orbán (Hungary), 
Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines), Matteo Salvini (Italy) and others, 
increase, or have increased an attitude of contesting democratic values 
and their institutions of mediation and regulation.

In this scenario, the mainstream and new media assume an evident 
centrality both in creating the conditions for the emergence of the 
populist phenomenon and in offering the ideal technological equipment 
for the popular leader to be able to establish a direct communication 
with the “people”.

Social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) and instant messaging 
applications (WhatsApp, Telegram) gave to populists’ great visibility in 
the public sphere from the dissemination of extremist and conspiracy 
theories. Examples of this situation are the profiles of ghost users and 
the “shots” of false, uncharacterized and or modified information, based 
on programming technologies mastery and data misappropriation. The 
networks strategy of populist leaders also involves the denounce of “bad 
information” disseminated by traditional media that oppose to populist 
theses, accusing them of factional and false makers of news. The 
traditional media, despite being permanently attacked by populist 
rhetoric, have a direct relationship with the phenomenon. In fact, they 
have contributed last decade, directly, to the naturalization of 
populist rhetoric, by giving visibility to the messages of these leaders 
in the media coverage. This journalistic discourse encouraged political 
conflict and the growing discredit of democratic institutions, as 
happened in contexts of journalistic corruption scandals coverage.

The Media and Populism volume is included in the ongoing Research 
Projects “Freedom of Expression and the Press – a comparative analysis 
of electoral processes in Portugal and Brazil” (OBCOM-USP/IPA/ICNOVA) 
and “Observatory of Populism in the 21^st Century (ICNOVA, Institute of 
Contemporary History/UNL, Postgraduate Program in Communication/ 
University of Brasilia and Postgraduate Program in Communication/Federal 
University of Mato Grosso).The volume accepts studies that address one 
or more of the following topics: Historical contextualization of 
populisms; Representation of leaders and populist movements in 
traditional media; Populism and pandemic; Populism, digital media, and 
election campaigns; Populism media and political representations; 
Populism and disinformation in the post-truth context; Comparative 
studies between right and left populisms; Populism, media and democratic 
crisis.


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