The Media and Austerity
Comparative perspectives

The Media and Austerity examines the role of the news media in communicating and critiquing economic and social austerity measures in Europe since 2010. From an array of comparative, historical and interdisciplinary vantage points, this edited collection seeks to understand how and why austerity came to be perceived as the only legitimate policy response to the financial crisis for nearly a decade after it began.

Drawing on an international range of contributors with backgrounds in journalism, politics, history and economics, the book presents chapters exploring differing media representations of austerity from UK, US and European perspectives. It also investigates practices in financial journalism and highlights the role of social media in reporting public responses to government austerity measures. They reveal that, without a credible and coherent alternative to austerity from the political opposition, what had been an initial response to the consequences of the financial crisis, became entrenched between 2010 and 2015 in political discourse.

The Media and Austerity is a clear and concise introduction for students of journalism, media, politics and finance to the connections between the media, politics and society in relation to the public perception of austerity after the 2008 global financial crash.

Foreword Justin Lewis Introduction Laura Basu, Steve Schifferes and Sophie KnowlesPart I: The UK experience 1. The UK news media and austerity: trends since the global financial crisis Steve Schifferes and Sophie Knowles 2. Media amnesia and the crisis Laura Basu 3. Austerity, the media and the UK public Mike Berry 4. The economic recovery on TV news Richard Thomas 5. The 'Geddes Axe': the press and Britain's first austerity drive Richard RobertsPart II: European perspectives 6. Covering the Euro crisis: cleavages and convergences Heinz-Werner Niensted 7. Austerity policies in the European press: a divided Europe? Ángel Arrese 8. Safeguarding the status quo: the press and the emergence of a new left in Greece and Spain Maria Kyriakidou and Iñaki Garcia-Blanco 9. Race and class in German media representations of the 'Greek crisis' Yiannis MylonasPart III: Journalistic practice and the crisis 10. Whose economy, whose news? Aeron Davis 11. 'Mediamacro': why the news media ignores economic experts Simon Wren-Lewis 12. Financial journalists, the financial crisis and the 'crisis' in journalism Sophie Knowles 13. Reform in retreat: the media, the banks and the attack on Dodd-Frank Adam Cox Part IV: Social media, social movements and the crisis 14. Social media and the capitalist crisis Christian Fuchs 15. Narrative mediation of the Occupy movement: a case study of Stockholm and Latvia Anne Kaun and Maria Francesca Murru 16. Facebook and the populist right: how populist politicians use social media to imagine the news in Finland and the UK Niki Hatakka 17. #ThisIsaCoup: the emergence of an anti-austerity hashtag across Europe's twittersphere Max Hänska and Stefan Bauchowitz

Laura Basu is a research fellow in the department of media and communications, Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is the author of Media Amnesia: Rewriting the Economic Crisis (2018).

Steve Schifferes was the Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism at City, University of London from 2009 to 2017, where he directed a new MA in Financial Journalism. He is the co-editor of The Media and Financial Crises: Comparative and Historical Perspectives (2014). As a BBC economics journalist for 20 years, he covered many financial and economic crises around the world.

Sophie Knowles is a senior lecturer and programme leader in Journalism at Middlesex University, UK. She has been a researcher at Murdoch University, Australia; City, University of London, UK; and the University of Cambridge, UK. She has written on the reporting of financial crises in financial news and has published work in journals such as Journalism Studies.