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Crisis and the Media: Narratives of crisis across cultural settings and media genres
Edited by Marianna Patrona
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 76] 2018
► pp. 85–106

Chapter 4
‘We – will – go – bank – rupt’

Interactionally constructing the Greek debt crisis on the news

This paper examines the discourse and interactional practices used by news journalists in the prime-time news of two major Greek national channels (one private and one public) during the political crisis that erupted between October 31st and November 11th 2011; namely, when the former prime minister of Greece, George A. Papandreou, announced his decision to hold a national referendum on the agreed-upon second eurozone aid package, infuriating both his European counterparts and his peers at home, with the threat of the country’s default imminent. The crisis ended on 11 November 2011, when Lucas Papademos was sworn in as the new interim prime-minister of Greece, and head of a new, unity government.

Through detailed discourse analysis of talk-in-interaction, the paper critically compares the rhetorical means through which crisis is constructed in journalists’ contributions in the private MEGA channel news vs. the public NET news. More specifically, the analysis compares the framing of the referendum announcement and the ensuing political developments, as instantiated through vocabulary and register choices, rhetorical figures and conversational practices in bulletin openings and conversational sequences in the two channels. Finally, the analysis explores possible shifts in the role of broadcast media in times of crisis, again, as enacted in and through news discourse and interaction.

Keywords: crisis discourse, rhetoric, framing, Greek economic crisis, television news, journalistic discourse
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • News framing, discourse and rhetoric
  • Discourse, crisis, and the ‘politics of fear’
  • Greek crisis news
  • Bulletin openings
  • Framing the crisis in conversational interaction: MEGA news vs. NET news
    • a.‘Reduction ad absurdum’ and constructed dialogue
    • b.The madman/madness metaphor
    • c.The ‘fear’ tactic : Predicting disaster
    • d.News journalists as influencers and facilitators
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 22 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.76.05pat
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