The Media and Austerity ― Comparative Perspectives

The Media and Austerity examines the role of the news media in communicating and critiquing economic and social austerity measures in Europe since 2010. From an array of comparative, historical and interdisciplinary vantage points, this edited collection seeks to understand how and why austerity came to be perceived as the only legitimate policy response to the financial crisis for nearly a decade after it began.

Drawing on an international range of contributors with backgrounds in journalism, politics, history and economics, the book presents chapters exploring differing media representations of austerity from UK, US and European perspectives. It also investigates practices in financial journalism and highlights the role of social media in reporting public responses to government austerity measures. They reveal that, without a credible and coherent alternative to austerity from the political opposition, what had been an initial response to the consequences of the financial crisis, became entrenched between 2010 and 2015 in political discourse.

The Media and Austerity is a clear and concise introduction for students of journalism, media, politics and finance to the connections between the media, politics and society in relation to the public perception of austerity after the 2008 global financial crash.

Laura Basu is a research fellow in the department of media and communications, Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Utrecht University. She is the author of Media Amnesia: Rewriting the Economic Crisis published by Pluto Press.

Sophie Knowles is a senior lecturer and programme leader in journalism at Middlesex University. She has been a researcher at Murdoch University, Australia, City University, London, and the University of Cambridge. She has written on the reporting of financial crises in financial news and has published work in journals such as Journalism Studies. Her book, Mediating Financial Crises: Watchdogs, lapdogs or canaries in the coalmine, is being published by Peter Lang (forthcoming). Her research interests lie in the broad intersections between news, the public interest, politics and the economy.

Steve Schifferes has been the Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism at City, University of London where he developed and led a new MA in Financial Journalism. He is the co-author of The Media and Financial Crises: Comparative and Historical Perspectives (Routledge, 2014). His research interests include the role of the media in financial crises, trust and verification in social media, and the history of business journalism. He was formerly an economics correspondent at BBC News, where he covered the global financial crisis.