The contemporary outbreak of right-wing populism in combination with increasing migratory flows toward Europe raises concerns about the social construction of migrations and migrants and the policy orientations toward them. Research indicated worrying tendencies to perceive migrations negatively and criminalize migrants. However, this paper focuses on a different tactic adopted by a number of populist forces: the criminalization of sea-rescue NGOs. In particular, it presents the case-study of Sea-Watch 3, an NGO sea-rescue vessel which docked in Italy with several migrants on board in June 2019, after a long struggle with Minister of Internal Affairs Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League (a right-wing, anti-migrants populist party). By means of content analysis, the paper discusses Salvini’s Facebook communication strategy about the event. The aim of this study is to cast new light on how the criminalization of NGOs can be exploited to reinforce other aspects of right-wing populism, such as anti-elitism, nationalism, exclusionary politics, personalization, and polarization. In this respect, the implications of criminalizing sea-rescue NGOs for policy orientations and policymaking are also highlighted.

This study offers an analysis of print news media coverage of the 2016 New Zealand Local Body elections, focusing on reportage around issues of diversity. This study builds upon a prior project by the Media Observatory group at Auckland University of Technology of the 2014 New Zealand General election that also examined issues of diversity. The function of news media in democratic societies is crucial. For a nation-state that is as cosmopolitan and diverse as New Zealand, issues of inclusivity and representation are critical considerations for news media. This study employs content analysis and examined news coverage of local body elections and analysed 198 Local Elections newspaper articles from the eight weeks prior to 8 October 2016 in one nationwide newspaper and four Auckland community newspapers. It focuses on The New Zealand Herald, East & Bays Courier, Manukau Courier, North Shore Times, Central Leader and the Western Leader. The analysis of the 2016 Local Election news coverage demonstrates a predominant focus on the mayoral candidates to the detriment of other aspects of local election voting, and a focus on campaign strategy over social issues impacting the electorate. The Local Election coverage placed particularly strong focus on "youth" as a social group in contrast to other classified groups such as Māori, Asians, Pacific Islanders, the elderly, and dependents. The Local Election coverage also represented a diversity of social issues, from housing, transport, to business and economy, environment, and law and order. The coverage provided ample space for words and perspectives from the electoral front-runners, local government representatives, and for public voices but it also paid minimal attention to non-mayoral voting categories, non-front runner candidates, and non-Auckland geographical locations, although this latter point was perhaps unsurprising, given the newspapers sampled in the study.

This article is the third in a series investigating media reporting of New Zealand elections. Based on content analysis of 510 articles published in the New Zealand Herald, and thematic analysis of a subset of news stories related to young people, the study examines media coverage of the 2017 elections by looking at the topics of news stories, presence of party policies, diversity of sources and references to social groups. Comparing the 2017 results with the results of the Herald's coverage of 2014 elections, we register a shift towards a stronger presence of policy issues, more female voices in the reports and significantly higher reference to young people. We further investigated the high number of references to young people by conducting qualitative analysis on the subset of articles mentioning young people.

The article conceptualizes character assassination (CA) as a tactic of populist communication on social media by using the case study of Italian politician Matteo Salvini. CA consists of personal attacks aimed at damaging the reputation of individuals, used as political means to attack the “enemies of the people.” By means of CA, populists operate a shift from issues and arguments toward individual traits and behaviors. CA’s importance is linked to the features of social media communication (i.e. disintermediation, speed, virality, fragmentation, emotionality). The article uses content analysis of tweets, and qualitative analysis of relevant examples; it demonstrates the strategic nature of CA in Salvini’s communication and identifies five functions (i.e. polarizing, personalizing, symbolic, discriminating, emotional) of CA in right-wing populist communication. CA’s logic is unpacked, by showing how the delegitimization of individuals is used to reinforce a populist communication strategy. Potential implications and responses to CA are discussed.

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