From Grexit to Brexit and Back: Mediatisation of Economy and the Politics of Fear in the Twitter Discourses of the Prime Ministers of Greece and the UK
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article focuses on the Twitter discourse of the Prime Ministers of Greece and the UK during the Greek (5 July 2015) and the British (26 June 2016) Referendums, respectively. It explores the politics of fear and the relationship with economy discourses which dominated the political and media scene. Taking a multimethod approach, we provide a multilevel critical discursive analysis of the Prime Ministers’ tweets in their macro-ideological and political context, combining tools from content analysis, the discourse historical approach, and interactional sociolinguistics. Through this heuristic methodology we analyse the positioning work of the political leaders, as well as the argumentation schemes that were prominent in their discourse. We show that both Prime Minsters heavily draw on the 'economy,' constructed by reference to specific financial indicators, in their political rhetoric and reinforce a polarisation of positions. We conclude by revisiting the impact of Twitter as a political platform on the current political status quo.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Licensing and Reuse: Unless another option is selected below, reuse of the published Work will be governed by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ). This lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the Work non-commercially; although new works must acknowledge the original Language@Internet publication and be non-commercial, they do not have to be licensed on the same terms.