Imogen Richards - Böcker

Criminologists in the Media presents the results of a cross-national study examining the structures that shape criminologists’ contributions to news and social media discourse.Drawing on interviews with criminologists and a survey of 1,211 criminologists working in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, this book represents the first cross-national study exploring how, why, and to what extent criminologists working in these countries engage in newsmaking and digital public criminology. Through examining the predictors of criminologists appearing in news media, the research presented in this book demonstrates that newsmaking practices within criminology are not reflective of equal access, interest, or opportunity. Rather, newsmaking operates within ‘fields of power’ shaped by the political economy of higher education, and researchers’ academic rank, gender, and areas of research expertise. Together, these factors generate several ‘situational logics’ that predispose criminologists to pursue particular courses of action in promoting their personal projects. Key among these logics, Wood, Richards, and Iliadis argue, are a ‘social logic’ informing criminologists’ moral-political views on newsmaking and an ‘industrial logic’ responsive to the demands of academic capitalism and the rise of the ‘entrepreneurial’ university.With its focus on the practicalities, challenges, and inequities of newsmaking in the post-broadcast era, Criminologists in the Media will appeal to researchers interested in the public role(s) of criminology, as well as researchers concerned with the challenges of communicating social scientific knowledge beyond the academy.

Criminologists in the Media presents the results of a cross-national study examining the structures that shape criminologists’ contributions to news and social media discourse.Drawing on interviews with criminologists and a survey of 1,211 criminologists working in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, this book represents the first cross-national study exploring how, why, and to what extent criminologists working in these countries engage in newsmaking and digital public criminology. Through examining the predictors of criminologists appearing in news media, the research presented in this book demonstrates that newsmaking practices within criminology are not reflective of equal access, interest, or opportunity. Rather, newsmaking operates within ‘fields of power’ shaped by the political economy of higher education, and researchers’ academic rank, gender, and areas of research expertise. Together, these factors generate several ‘situational logics’ that predispose criminologists to pursue particular courses of action in promoting their personal projects. Key among these logics, Wood, Richards, and Iliadis argue, are a ‘social logic’ informing criminologists’ moral-political views on newsmaking and an ‘industrial logic’ responsive to the demands of academic capitalism and the rise of the ‘entrepreneurial’ university.With its focus on the practicalities, challenges, and inequities of newsmaking in the post-broadcast era, Criminologists in the Media will appeal to researchers interested in the public role(s) of criminology, as well as researchers concerned with the challenges of communicating social scientific knowledge beyond the academy.

Global Heating and the Australian Far Right examines the environmental politics of far-right actors and movements in Australia, exploring their broader political context and responses to climate change.The book traces the development of far-right pseudo-environmentalism and territorial politics, from colonial genocide and Australian nationalism to extreme-right political violence. Through a critical analysis of news and social media, it reveals how denialist and resignatory attitudes towards climate change operate alongside extreme right accelerationism, in a wider Australian political context characterised by reactionary fossil fuel politics and neoliberal New Right climate change agendas. The authors scrutinise the manipulation of environmental politics by contemporary Australian far- and extreme-right actors in cross-national online media. They also assess the political-ideological context of the contemporary far right, addressing intergovernmental approaches to security threats connected to the far right and climate change, and the emergence of radical environmentalist traditions in ‘New Catastrophism’ literature. The conclusion synthesises key insights, analysing the mainstreaming of ethnonationalist and authoritarian responses to global heating, and potential future trajectories of far-right movements exploiting the climate crisis. It also emphasises the necessity for radical political alternatives to counter the far right’s exploitation of climate change.This book will be of interest to researchers of climate change, the far right, neoliberal capitalism, extremism and Australian politics.

Global Heating and the Australian Far Right examines the environmental politics of far-right actors and movements in Australia, exploring their broader political context and responses to climate change.The book traces the development of far-right pseudo-environmentalism and territorial politics, from colonial genocide and Australian nationalism to extreme-right political violence. Through a critical analysis of news and social media, it reveals how denialist and resignatory attitudes towards climate change operate alongside extreme right accelerationism, in a wider Australian political context characterised by reactionary fossil fuel politics and neoliberal New Right climate change agendas. The authors scrutinise the manipulation of environmental politics by contemporary Australian far- and extreme-right actors in cross-national online media. They also assess the political-ideological context of the contemporary far right, addressing intergovernmental approaches to security threats connected to the far right and climate change, and the emergence of radical environmentalist traditions in ‘New Catastrophism’ literature. The conclusion synthesises key insights, analysing the mainstreaming of ethnonationalist and authoritarian responses to global heating, and potential future trajectories of far-right movements exploiting the climate crisis. It also emphasises the necessity for radical political alternatives to counter the far right’s exploitation of climate change.This book will be of interest to researchers of climate change, the far right, neoliberal capitalism, extremism and Australian politics.

This book examines how far-right politics and news media shape one another, exposing, contesting, and at times inadvertently legitimising white supremacist, violent misogynist, and other far-right ideas. It situates these dynamics within the economic and structural transformations associated with the neoliberal restructuring of media industries, demonstrating how commercial imperatives, audience capture, and shifts in journalistic practice intersect with deeper histories of inequality, coloniality, and exclusion to structure contemporary news environments.Drawing on research from Australia, the United States, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, the book analyses how newsroom routines and editorial practices interact with far-right strategies to influence coverage and, over time, recalibrate the parameters of public political debate. Case studies of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, the Christchurch terrorist attack, electoral breakthroughs in Iberia, and German reporting on "incel" online spaces show how the pursuit of immediacy, spectacle, and a narrow performance of balance can, for susceptible audiences, render far-right narratives increasingly visible and, in some contexts, implicitly legitimate. While the chapters do not offer sustained exemplars of alternative practice, they signpost the potential for a historically informed and critically engaged journalism to disrupt these dynamics and to produce more accurate, accountable, and contextually rigorous reporting on the far right.Integrating insights from media studies, political communication, and cultural sociology, this volume provides a theoretically grounded and empirically rich resource for scholars, journalists, activists, and policymakers. It offers conceptual and analytical tools for examining how far-right ideas gain traction in contemporary political discourse and how media practices might more effectively respond to and resist the political and social challenges presented by far-right mainstreaming.

This book examines how far-right politics and news media shape one another, exposing, contesting, and at times inadvertently legitimising white supremacist, violent misogynist, and other far-right ideas. It situates these dynamics within the economic and structural transformations associated with the neoliberal restructuring of media industries, demonstrating how commercial imperatives, audience capture, and shifts in journalistic practice intersect with deeper histories of inequality, coloniality, and exclusion to structure contemporary news environments.Drawing on research from Australia, the United States, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, the book analyses how newsroom routines and editorial practices interact with far-right strategies to influence coverage and, over time, recalibrate the parameters of public political debate. Case studies of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, the Christchurch terrorist attack, electoral breakthroughs in Iberia, and German reporting on "incel" online spaces show how the pursuit of immediacy, spectacle, and a narrow performance of balance can, for susceptible audiences, render far-right narratives increasingly visible and, in some contexts, implicitly legitimate. While the chapters do not offer sustained exemplars of alternative practice, they signpost the potential for a historically informed and critically engaged journalism to disrupt these dynamics and to produce more accurate, accountable, and contextually rigorous reporting on the far right.Integrating insights from media studies, political communication, and cultural sociology, this volume provides a theoretically grounded and empirically rich resource for scholars, journalists, activists, and policymakers. It offers conceptual and analytical tools for examining how far-right ideas gain traction in contemporary political discourse and how media practices might more effectively respond to and resist the political and social challenges presented by far-right mainstreaming.

This ground-breaking book examines the political-economic characteristics of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century ‘neo-jihadism’. Drawing on Bourdieusian and neo-Marxist ideas, it investigates how the neo-jihadist organisations Al Qaeda and Islamic State engage with the capitalist paradigm of neoliberalism in their anti-capitalist propaganda and quasi-capitalist financial practices.An investigation of documents and discourses reveals interactions between neoliberalism and neo-jihadism characterised by surface-level contradiction, and structural connections that are both dialectical and mutually reinforcing. Neoliberalism here is argued to constitute an underlying ‘status quo’, while neo-jihadism, as an evolving form of political organisation, is perpetuated as part of this situation.Representing differentiated, unique and exclusive examples of the (r)evolutionary phenomenon of neo-jihadism, Al Qaeda and Islamic State are characteristic of the mutually constitutive nature of ‘power and resistance’. Just as resistance movements throughout modern history come to resemble the forms of power they sought to overthrow, so too have Al Qaeda and Islamic State reconstituted the dominant political-economic paradigm of neoliberalism they mobilised in response to.

This ground-breaking book examines the political-economic characteristics of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century ‘neo-jihadism’. Drawing on Bourdieusian and neo-Marxist ideas, it investigates how the neo-jihadist organisations Al Qaeda and Islamic State engage with the capitalist paradigm of neoliberalism in their anti-capitalist propaganda and quasi-capitalist financial practices.Richards reveals interactions between neoliberalism and neo-jihadism characterised by surface-level contradiction, and structural connections that are both dialectical and mutually reinforcing. Neoliberalism here constitutes an underlying ‘status quo’, while neo-jihadism, as an evolving form of political organisation, is perpetuated as part of this situation.Representing unique and exclusive examples of the (r)evolutionary phenomenon of neo-jihadism, Al Qaeda and Islamic State have reconstituted the dominant political-economic paradigm of neoliberalism they mobilised in response to.