This paper examines discourse, mythology and ideology in media coverage of the financial crisis. A critical discourse analysis examines representations of bankers in the Mail Online. I argue that the mythological trickster archetype contributed complications and paradoxical traits in discourses about the banking crisis. Whilst recollecting their heroic status in 2005 compared to the ridicule they have faced more recently, we see a shift in character traits attributed to bankers. Although the Mail's moral storytelling has called for some form of punishment or legislative reform, there has also been a reluctance to compromise free market values or discuss alternative models of banking. Complex characteristics of trickster mythology reflect current dilemmas and anxieties over the power and practices of financial elites. Whether bankers are providers of wealth or destroyers of economies, their ridicule highlights a sensitive balance of values and interests that operate through mythological storytelling.

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This study examines the metaphors used in the British press to characterize the payday loan industry in order to develop our understanding of organizational delegitimation. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and theories of moral panic, we show how the metaphors used in the press framed the industry as a ‘moral problem’. The study identified four root metaphors that were used to undertake moral problematization: predators and parasites, orientation, warfare and pathology. We show how these metaphors played a key role in the construction of a moral panic through two framing functions: first by constructing images of the damage and danger caused by the firms and second by attributing agency in such a way that moral responsibility was assigned to the organizations. We also extend the discussion of our findings to explore the ideological dimensions of the moral panic. We develop a critical analysis that points to the potential scapegoating role of the discourse, which served as a convenient moral crusade for the government and other neo-liberal supporters to pursue, while detracting attention away from the underlying socio-economic context, including austerity policies, the decline in real wages and the deregulation of the finance sector. From this critical perspective, payday loan companies can be seen as a ‘folk devil’ through which society’s fears about finance capitalism are articulated, creating disproportionate exaggeration and alarm, while the system as a whole can remain intact.

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We begin our introduction to this special issue by considering the interdisciplinary collaborations behind this project before reviewing previous research on political rhetoric, financial reporting and media coverage of austerity in transnational contexts. We consider aspects of moral storytelling that have arisen through the contextual complexities of societies in financial crisis and other moral tales of austerity in political rhetoric. Whilst much of the literature and debates covered here are concerned with UK economic policy and related British social contexts, we will expand to include examples from other countries that reflect similar concerns on the ideological operations of austerity and financial discourse. Finally, some critical theoretical approaches to ideology and political economy are discussed in relation to the socio-economic areas covered in this special issue. The multiple discursive contexts of austerity that are covered here demonstrate the breadth of social concerns and conflicts that have developed in societies and institutions following the recent global economic crisis. ARTICLE HISTORY

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