Self-constructed and ascribed identity of the Greek protesters in Syntagma Square

Abstract

In this chapter we contrast our findings from a previous study of the textual, discursive and social practices of the Greek protester movements, based on data from the General Assembly proceedings and their resolutions (Goutsos and Polymeneas 2014), with how the protesters in Syntagma square were viewed by others, namely the Greek media in a series of articles coinciding with or following the protests. The protesters’ own linguistic and discursive practices are thus juxtaposed to their recontextualizations and representations by others. A pronounced difference is found between self-constructed and ascribed identity as indicative of the representational power of the media, which have attempted to interpret the protesters’ identity within the existing political context.

Corruption in a Greek context: Analyzing a newspaper’s discourse on a major political scandal

“…However, what is most significant here is the attribution of blame to a specific individual and the political party with which he is associated. This tendency to map major events onto the arrangement of left versus right political parties has already been found in the literature on Greek traditional media (Goutsos and Polymeneas, 2017: 214) and ties in nicely with how other major events in the period of crisis such as the December 2008 revolt and the 2011 squares movement were dealt with in them.…”

“…This translates in the Greek context to the incorporation of events into already existing oppositional schemas, mainly related to the existing political parties. As has already been found in the literature on Greek media (Fragaki, 2010; Goutsos and Polymeneas, 2017; Sakellariou, 2017), newspapers of the traditional Press rely on a ‘we’ versus ‘them’ distinction, which thoroughly permeates their discourse and often aligns them closely with left-wing versus right-wing parties. Traditional media seem thus to become eager custodians of people in power, as the Tsochatzopoulos case indicates in its reversal of fortune.…”