The international face of Thessaloniki: The “Greek crisis,” the entrepreneurial mayor, and mainstream media discourses

Abstract

Thessaloniki and its mayor have been portrayed quite favourably in international mainstream media compared to the Greek state after the 2008 economic crisis. The dominant (media) discourses on Greece interpret the crisis as the result of the failure of the Greek state to reform due to the prevalence of a traditional political culture over a modern one and the moral failures of the population. In the international media representations of Thessaloniki, the local government has been described as “exceptional” in its crisis management compared to the state and other local governments, and the city's mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, has been portrayed as a reform hero, due to the implemented entrepreneurial development strategy and the revamp of the city's image through place branding. Analysing the key role of international media in the production and reproduction of a place‐branding campaign of Thessaloniki in international media by employing critical discourse analysis, the paper questions the favourable representations of the city compared to the Greek state during the same period. I argue that the serial repetition of positive images contributed to Thessaloniki being perceived as an example to be followed by other Greek local governments and the central state, acting as a best practice example for transformations envisioned on wider scales. The paper contributes to place‐branding debates by illustrating the important role of international media in the dissemination of place brands, and by analysing how media representations of place may serve the legitimation of processes of neoliberalisation on scales wider than the concrete urban setting where they occur.

Professionalisation of short-term rentals and emergent tourism gentrification in post-crisis Thessaloniki

“…The city's economy has been in crisis since the 1990s (Karaliotas, 2017;Labrianidis, 2011) due to deindustrialisation, capital flight, and failed neoliberal reform attempts, in an era marked by corruption scandals in the local and regional administrations. The municipal government attempted to rebrand Thessaloniki during the last decade in order to attract tourists and investments (Katsinas, 2019) through the promotion of the city's historical and cultural heritage, the implementation of tourism-and leisure-oriented urban regeneration projects in the city centre, and agreements with low-cost airlines. This tourism offensive was crowned with success, leading to an 150% increase in the number of overnight stays by international visitors in the city's hotel industry since 2010 to over 1.3 million (Thessaloniki Hotel Association, 2020), to the opening of more than 30 new hotels and hostels, and to the flourishing of STRs.…”

A Study of Mainstream Media Communication and Audience Participatory Culture Based on Multimodal Analysis Approach

“…Traditional mainstream media like TV, radio, and newspapers have been transformed into new mainstream media due to the continuous development and popularization of mobile Internet. New mainstream media gradually become the current authoritative information release channel and mainstream public opinion position, which plays an increasingly important role in building media influence, guiding the direction of public opinion, and enhancing credibility [1][2].…”

“…Han Zhang, Qiongyu Zhu and Yajuan Zhu. Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences, 9(1) (2024)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] …”

The Influence of Self-Media on Mainstream Media News Dissemination in the Perspective of New Media

“…Christensen, D. J. et al noted that mainstream media companies adopt social media messages for recirculation due to the trust-reducing characteristics of social media messages in response to short-term competitive market incentives and that Trump's Twitter posts as an example can be used to confirm the argument [12]. Katsinas, P. et al illustrate the important role played by international media in place branding communication and provide an in-depth analysis of how the media can serve to legitimize the neo-liberalization process in a wider context to the point of positively affecting the place branding debate [13]. Wong, S. C. et al use the example of the anti-national education movement in Hong Kong to assess how social movements utilize the media and how media practices affect the outcome of the movement, pointing out that old (mainstream) and new (social) media strategies are interdependent and interact with each other in a hybrid symbiosis [14].…”