Contested Legitimacy between Mainstream and Outsider Journalists and Politicians

The next ICA 2018 session is on journalism under attack, and starts with Arjen van Dalen. He notes that journalists and politicians have traditionally been seen as societal actors who are closely interlinked and indeed mutually dependent, but that the emergence of outsider politicians and journalists has disrupted that relationship.

That relationship is also based on certain normative aspects – seeing journalists as watchdogs on behalf of citizens, for instance. But such norms are themselves founded in mutually accepted values, and the societal consensus that governs those values may be breaking down. Indeed, we may no longer be able to regard the media, or politicians, as only one set of institutions, and they may no longer be mutually dependent since politicians are now also able to bypass the journalistic media altogether by using social media that connect directly with citizens.

This means that we might need to introduce a new distinction between mainstream journalists and politicians on the one hand, and outsider journalists and politicians on the other. Such outsiders often seek such outside status deliberately in order to distinguish themselves from the politico-journalistic establishment.

These groups also interact with one another, however. In the mainstream, conventions from traditional political communication might still exist, while on the outside a new set of conventions are also emerging – but when these groups interact with each other things get more complicated, and there is considerable conflict. This is largely centred around the question of legitimacy, with the two groups challenging each other’s legitimacy.

Outsider politicans are deligitimising mainstream media by refusing interview requests, for instance, while mainstream media are refusing to cover outsider politicians in the same way they would mainstream actors. This is evident from analyses of these politicians’ and journalists’ communicative strategies, even across ideological boundaries – outsiders are engaging in attacks on the character of mainstream journalists, for example; they attack perceived alliances between journalists and other groups in society; they question the mainstream media’s ethical standards; they suggest that journalists work in the interests only of specific societal groups, not of the general public; and they question the overall societal benefits of mainstream journalism. All of these are attacks on the legitimacy of mainstream opponents, of course.