Financialisation, media and social change

Abstract

This article uses a circuit of communication framework to examine the role of the media in shaping public debate of the financial system and the way in which this impacts on audience response and related societal impacts. It is founded in debates about neoliberalism and financialisation which highlight the shift of power from, or through, the state to large corporations. One result of this structural shift is an increasingly integrated political, media and corporate culture which promotes the interests of the 'market' in public and private lives, and operates to limit the information available to audiences. Alternatives to economic policies and solutions to problems are marginalised in public debate, as illustrated by media coverage of the financial crisis. This limiting of alternatives is decisively implicated in the development of sympathetic attitudes to 'preferred' perspectives and related policy moves, which constrain the potential for effective resistance at the level of collective and individual responses.

Dimensions and Determinants of Financialisation: Comparing OECD Countries since 1997

“…CPE deals with the impact of finance on social and cultural norms. 5 Financialisation of everyday life in this view is a cultural process constructing new subjectivities (de Goede, 2004;Langley, 2007;Happer, 2017). Due to its methodological approach CPE has not given rise to an analysis of the economic mechanisms associated with the financialisation of households, but rather focused on its impact on the construction of identities.…”

The resonance of moderate feminism and the gendered relations of austerity

“…These factors were accompanied by a financial bail‐out of banks by the state, a fall in tax revenues and rises in unemployment benefit expenditure as a result of the recession, and the implementation of fiscal stimulus plans which further increased public deficits (Karamessini, ). The financialization of economies leading up to these events involved ‘material processes and structures that are crucially interdependent on the systems of meanings and beliefs which support (or contest) them’ (Happer, , p. 437). Analyses of media discourse uncover such systems of meaning which, in an environment of heightened and complex uncertainty, allowed particular responses to global financial events of 2007–2008 to ‘make sense’.…”

“…This transmutation was facilitated by an ideological reworking of an economic problem: ‘how to “rescue” the banks and restore market stability’ to one that is political: ‘how to allocate blame and responsibility for the crisis’ (Clarke & Newman, , p. 300). Happer (, p. 446) concludes the media were ‘instrumental in sustaining the material culture of financialisation’ by marginalizing the ‘critical analysis required to take a different path in response to it’.…”

The economy. How do the media cover it and what are the effects? A literature review

“…The financial crisis (2008)(2009)) has served as a fruitful test case for the analysis of existing biases in financial and economic news reporting. Often departing from the question why the media did not see it coming (e.g., Fraser, 2009;Lashmar, 2008;Starkman, 2009), scholars scrutinized the way in which the crisis was covered (Arrese & Vara-Miguel, 2016;Berry, 2012;Damstra & Vliegenthart, 2016;Happer, 2017;Pirie, 2012;Schifferes & Knowles, 2014) in multiple contexts. It is concluded that media covered the crisis rather uncritically, depriving the audience from a diverse array of possible solutions to it (Arrese & Vara-Miguel, 2016;Berry, 2012;Happer, 2017;Mercille, 2013;Pirie, 2012).…”

“…Often departing from the question why the media did not see it coming (e.g., Fraser, 2009;Lashmar, 2008;Starkman, 2009), scholars scrutinized the way in which the crisis was covered (Arrese & Vara-Miguel, 2016;Berry, 2012;Damstra & Vliegenthart, 2016;Happer, 2017;Pirie, 2012;Schifferes & Knowles, 2014) in multiple contexts. It is concluded that media covered the crisis rather uncritically, depriving the audience from a diverse array of possible solutions to it (Arrese & Vara-Miguel, 2016;Berry, 2012;Happer, 2017;Mercille, 2013;Pirie, 2012). The fact that even the most encompassing crisis of our times did not evoke more radical and critical responses underscores the dominance of the neoliberal paradigm in economic news reporting (Happer, 2017) and the difficulty for journalists to forge new ways to analyze outside the prevalent market-driven consensus (Arrese & Vara-Miguel, 2016, p. 150).…”