Abstract
The 2001 G8 meeting held in Genoa, Italy, arguably represented a turning point in the history of what was widely known as the “anti-globalization” movement, as it would be both its peak and, in many ways, its swansong. While much has been said about the widespread police brutality which led Amnesty International to call the event “the most serious suspension of democratic rights in a Western country since the Second World War,” much less attention has been devoted to the study of how the media contributed to the discursive construction and interpretation of Genoa’s events. The paper therefore sets out to critically analyze the discourse of opinion articles and editorials from four major, mainstream newspapers (the Corriere della sera, The New York Times, Le Monde, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine), each from a different Western country, published between July 19 and July 25, 2001, to assess how the concept of globalization, the protesters, and the movement were represented therein. In spite of differences in the amount and kind of attention that the four newspapers devoted to the issue, the findings indicate general, cross-national tendencies to banalize and dismiss the protests and their critique of neoliberal globalization, while foregrounding the episodes of violence and mainly blaming the protesters for them, in a clear example of what has come to be known as the protest paradigm. I argue that this discursive work contributed to discrediting the movement and rejecting the idea that “another world is possible,” ultimately causing its disappearance from public discourse.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—What to Make of Crises: Emerging Methods, Principles, Actions
KEYWORDS
Neoliberalism, Globalism, Anti-Globalization, Social Movements, Critical Discourse Analysis, International Communication
