Bridging dominant and critical frames of the Greek debt crisis: mainstream media, independent journalism and the rise of a political cleavage

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents media and political frames on the debt crisis in Greece as revealed during the first two years (2010–2012) of the bailout program. Our goal is to discern the dividing line between dominant and critical frames as they were articulated between mainstream media and the so-called ‘independent journalism’ and powerful and powerless political actors. There are hardly any studies that have analyzed the emerging power of critical frames produced by less visible actors and that try to see the alignment of political and media frames. The analysis stands for the complexity of the framing process revealing three opposite narratives: the debt crisis as a situation of exception, as the moral and political bankruptcy of a model of development adopted in Greece and as a humanitarian and democratic crisis. Those frames undertaken by political actors, mainstream and ‘independent’ media are linked to a set of causes, responsibilities and solutions that shaped the major political cleavage between pro-memorandum/anti-memorandum that dominated Greece till 2015.