Post‐truth politics and discursive psychology

Demasi, Mirko A.

doi:10.1111/spc3.12556

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Rather than the analyst determining the truth value of an utterance, or what it does in terms of action, such an approach illuminates how interlocutors ensure that something comes across as (un)truthful, and how they themselves treat each other's utterances (cf. Demasi, 2020). To exactly understand what is at stake in COVID-19 policies, both for governments and citizens, it is essential to expose the routinely hidden moralities in debates about these policies.…”

Section: The Hidden Moralities Of Framing Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Light At The End Of The Tunnel? The Staging of Expertise During the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

Prettner,

Molder,

Hajer

et al. 2024

JDSR

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In this paper, we compare the governmental and public framings of expertise in the Dutch Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the period between January 1st and April 30th, 2021. Specifically, we collected all statements regarding vaccination on three interrelated stages: (1) the official press conferences; (2) Twitter, for responses to government policies; and (3) political motions that were put forward by Members of Parliament in the days following the press conferences. We combine an interactional framing approach with a discursive psychological perspective to get insights into how framings between stages modify, contest, or build upon each other. We argue that the press conferences show a persistent technocratic framing, in the sense that a direct line between science and policy is assumed and promoted. Unlike the first period of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, experts are not often quoted initially, but key political actors themselves act as responsible for the message that there is light at the end of the tunnel, if only citizens will get vaccinated. Once the AstraZeneca vaccine comes under fire, however, experts are again held accountable for the policy message. Throughout, governmental policies are disputed on Twitter and in Parliament, albeit in different ways, by making hidden moralities relevant, such as the government’s assumed complacency, rigidity, and inability to explain policies with the available evidence.

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Section: The Hidden Moralities Of Framing Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Light At The End Of The Tunnel? The Staging of Expertise During the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

Prettner,

Molder,

Hajer

et al. 2024

JDSR

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show abstract

“…The point of the questions is not to concern ourselves with the dilution of truth. Posttruth, as understood today, can be understood more as a rhetorical strategy of political communication of our times (Demasi, 2020) rather than a decline of truth in and of itself. If facts are rhetorical (Demasi, 2019) and not bound to a particular type of political communication (Burke & Demasi, 2019), then what values and actions do these facts advocate?…”

Section: Political Discourse and Discursive Peace Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I have previously argued (Demasi, 2020) that we should focus on what people do with the act of truth-telling rather than to check whether the claims are "factually accurate"-to explore, for example, what exactly makes truth-telling comes across as that. "Truth" does not determine how people speak (Gibson, 2018c); what is more relevant is the context and function of a given interaction.…”

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confidence: 99%

Accountability in the Russo-Ukrainian war: Vladimir Putin versus NATO.

Demasi¹

2023

Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology

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This article showcases a discursive peace psychological analysis of Putin’s declaration of war and North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO’s) subsequent response to it. By treating psychological categories as action-bound and occasioned, rather than cognitive features residing inside the minds of individuals, the analysis shows three rhetorical strategies used by Putin and NATO to manage their accountability in the context of initiating hostilities. First, both sides describe the events in a way that combines the factual and moral reading of them that favor them. Second, continuity is rhetorically established to justify the actions of both factions as rooted in their preconflict status rather than being seen as reacting to the war. Finally, both sides use threats and exhortations for others to act in accordance with their wishes and demands. These three strategies showcase how both sides rhetorically manage their accountability, moral rightness and, at the same time, work up the moral guilt of their opponents. Similarity between the literature on expressions and denials of prejudice are found here, in the case of discursively sanitizing military action. This, more broadly, is a part of analyzing discursive violence in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war: how language can be used to justify or challenge violence.

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“…Indeed, we should not lament that we live in an era of 'post-truth politics'. Rather, it is time that we recognise that 'truth', in discourse, is a rhetorical matter and, therefore, an empirically tangible one (Demasi, 2020). DP, with its strong history of recognised academic and empirical work in analysing public political discourse, can help generate new insights into the subtleties of public forms and manifestations of politics in the public sphere.…”

Section: Discursive Psychology Political Discourse and Situated Socia...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Discursive Psychology of Political Communication

Tileagă

Demasi

Burke

2020

Political Communication

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The first twenty years of the second millennium have been full of charged events that have changed society: 9/11, the second Iraq War, 2008 economic depression, the Syrian refugee crisis, Brexit, Donald Trump's controversial presidency of the United States, the COVID-19 global pandemic, the handling of racial tensions (particularly, but not exclusively) in the US.These events all have a particular type of political relevance -they all constitute sources of public political discourse.What Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) have called the third age of political communication, an age characterised by "media abundance", has brought important and longlasting changes in how people make sense of politics. This book is concerned with the question of how people engage with complex public political events and mediated communications in socio-communicative practices. This is a book about what researchers across disciplinary boundaries call "political communication."This book draws together a specific body of contributions to political communication: discursive studies that consider the various forms and empirical connotations of political communication. The chapters in this book are illustrations of various ways of doing discursive analysis in a wide range of contexts and with a wide range of sources. In order to be as inclusive as possible we took a broad approach to the context of political communication. Contexts range from naturalistic encounters in public spaces, and debates on social media, to everyday popular television programmes, parliamentary debates, political blogs and political cartoons.We begin by first addressing the crucial question of what is "political communication"? We then discuss the relationship between communication and discourse. This is followed by a discussion of how political communication can be conceived as a social accomplishment, outcome of, as well as influence on, complex forms and networks of social practices. We close by drawing out some general themes and concerns related to the advent of a discursive psychology of political communication. In the last section of this chapter we outline the structure of this book. What is "Political Communication"?Academic writing on political communication now spans a range of disciplines, including, most notably, political science, communication and media studies, and social and political psychology. When one engages even in a very cursory review of the meanings of "political communication", one immediately notices that political communication means so many different things to so many people. Depending on one's home discipline, the term may be used either in a more positive or negative sense. On the one hand, in a positive sense, the term is frequently used to refer to the science and conditions of effective communication in the service of progressive social goals. The focus here is on the link between communication and the organization of collective action (e.g., political mobilization) (Bennett, Breunig and Givens, 2008;Klandermans, 2003). On the other han...

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Post‐truth politics and discursive psychology

Cited by 8 publications

References 35 publications

Light At The End Of The Tunnel? The Staging of Expertise During the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

Light At The End Of The Tunnel? The Staging of Expertise During the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

Accountability in the Russo-Ukrainian war: Vladimir Putin versus NATO.

The Discursive Psychology of Political Communication

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