Populist Backlashes around the World: The Role of Media and Communication

Program Overview

9.30 - 11.00 a.m.  
Keynote Session and Discussion  

Rethinking the Resistance: Responding to Hate and Polarization
_{Cherian George, Hong Kong Baptist University}

11.30 a.m. - 1.00 p.m.
Panel I – Conceptual and Methodological Challenges

Racist vs. Cosmopolitan Populism? Reflections on Reclaiming Social Debate for Common Good
_{Anne Grüne (University of Erfurt)}

The Epistemic Crisis using the Example of the AfD in Germany
_{Johannes Gemkow (University of Leipzig)}

The 'Equivalency Problem' in Middle Eastern-Western Comparative Perspective: How to Situate Populism Research in Relevant Socio-Political Contexts
_{Kai Hafez (University of Erfurt)}

2.00 - 3.30 p.m.
Panel Session II – Comparative Perspective from the Global North and South

From Pools to Prayers: How Local Incidents Become National Populist Panics in Germany and Malaysia
_{Melanie Radue (University of Passau), Gayathry Venkiteswaran (Nottingham University Malaysia)}

Interdiscursivity within a Semi-Authoritarian Global Governance Framework: How Close Are BRICS Countries to Fostering a South-South Exchange of Ideas and Populism?
_{Augusto Junior da Silva Santos (University of Erfurt)}

Cross-Context Challenges: Media and Press Freedom under Populist Pressure in Ethiopia and Hungary
_{Bereket Hasen Beddecha, (University of Erfurt), Gabor Polyak (University of Pécs), Sven Joeckel (University of Erfurt)}

4.00 - 6.00 p.m.
Panel-Session III – “Western” Perspectives on Populism and Anti-Populist Responses

Digital Forms of Extreme Right Violence against People with Disabilities from a Transcultural Perspective
_{Lina Brink (Hochschule Düsseldorf)}

Comparing the Mediated Othering of Dominant and Minoritised Groups in Europe and the U.S.
_{Gwendolyn Mingham (TU Munich)}

Representation Reconsidered: Two Decades of Minoritized Groups Portrayal in the U.S.
_{Valeria Ariza Gómez (TU Munich)}

Foreign News Reporting as an Anti-Populist Tool: The Political Media Reality of DER SPIEGELs pioneering International Project ‘Globale Gesellschaft’
_{Julia Walter, Anne Marie Gorski, Janis Brinkmann (Hochschule Mittwaida)}

Detailed Program Schedule

Please find attached the detailed program of the conference. 

Detailed Program: 

Populist Backlashes around the World: The Role of Media and Communication

Conference Abstract

The world is witnessing a time of political backlashes and renewed power claims by illiberal populist forces. This crisis is noticeable both in the global North and South and pervades various political formations ranging from democracies to hybrid and autocratic political systems. Right-wing populism in such different places as the US, Europe, Brazil and India, polarization in elec-toral democracies during the Arab Spring, hard-authoritarian backlashes as in Russia, China or Myanmar and religious-ethnic fundamentalism as in Indonesia are different types of the same phenomenon of political backlashes. Populist backlashes in particular are obviously reflected in democratic rollbacks to authoritarianism, but they can also take the form of more subtle erosions of human rights, liberal values and challenges to dignity, decency and tolerance in free or partly free political systems. 

Even if the media is based on the principle of free speech, as a societal subsystem it can become a co-party of populist backlashes if it is negligent to defend human rights or does not counter processes such as tabloidization, misinformation, misrepresentation or hate speech. Moreover, the representation function of legacy media becomes disregarded when minorities still lack access to fair public representation while illiberal forces with their conflict-driven populist news values tend to be overrepresented. In turn, the so-called “social media” has not fulfilled the euphoric promise of its compensatory function for minority groups as they lend themselves to hate speech and polarization all too easily and as they are limited by often untransparent platform logics. 

There are also further dynamics, which enhance disruptive tendencies within societies: For ex-ample, social and political cleavages reflected in media discourses and effects, which can be manipulated by political elites and counter-elites for divide-and-rule political games, or communication cultures, which can be challenged by lacks of media literacy, deficits in societal participation or their own uncertainties in dealing with global, multi-/and transcultural reali-ties, which can obviously be captured by populist politics.   

The conference aims to reflect on the multifaceted role of media and communication in contemporary backlashes by considering and comparing examples and perspectives from around the world. Contributions can focus on the following thematic issues in an international or trans-cultural perspective: 

• Populist media coverage (e.g. racist, sexist etc. stereotyping and misrepresentation)
• Populist political interventions into media
• The role of law, accountability and (co-)regulation frameworks
• The role of commercial and ownership structures in populist backlashes
• Media ethics and their role to counter populism
• Populist public spheres and counter public spheres, including legacy and new media
• Communication culture and populism, including mediated and non-mediated phenomena.

The conference includes an international keynote session and roundtable discussion as well as regular thematic panels. The panels will be organized in the form of a combination of paper presentations and subsequent dialogic and moderated roundtable formats, which will give enough time to deepen the academic conversation beyond mere requests.  

To support early career scholars in the field of international comparative, cosmopolitan and/or transcultural media and communication research, the conference includes a PhD world café. Here, up to three PhD candidates each will be given the chance to get into an intense thematic f2f-discussion with two expert academics in their respective field.