This study examines the reporting on legal cannabis in order to explore the operation of neoliberal ideology in journalistic discourse. Cannabis legalisation is here understood as a way for capitalism to create new market opportunities, besides being a turn away from the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The study understands neoliberalism as operating via market-based logics that are interrelated with other social logics, such as those pertaining to journalism (Phelan 2014). Critical discourse analysis is used for studying Swedish newspaper reporting on legal cannabis between 2013 and 2018. The study shows that a struggle between market-based logics and journalistic practices is visible, where journalism has difficulties in challenging core tenets of neoliberal ideology. The article concludes with a discussion of how the current conditions of journalism limit its ability to challenge neoliberal perspectives.

This study analyzes the journalistic construction of the ongoing international renegotiation of cannabis, with the aim of contributing to the theorization of how journalism mediates between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic positions at times of crisis of hegemonic values. The study perceives the many ongoing attempts of legalizing and decriminalizing cannabis for recreational use as providing a disequilibrium to the hegemonic view of the substance as a dangerous narcotic that is rightly banned, and as intensifying a hegemonic struggle over the meaning of cannabis. Swedish print news journalism about cannabis legalization in different countries and contexts is studied, using critical discourse analysis. The analysis shows that journalism allows for debate between positive and skeptic discourses about the effects of recreational cannabis consumption and its medical benefits, and that voices that argue for cannabis legalization to combat organized crime are given important framing power. This means that a measure of legitimacy is given to discourses that counter the prohibitionist hegemony in Sweden, which means that mainstream journalism in this specific case serves as an arena for challenging hegemonic values that are in crisis.

We are witnessing the renegotiation of cannabis substances in many parts of the world. After being classified as narcotics and subjected to a worldwide ban for several decades, cannabis has now been legalized in Uruguay and in several US states, and decriminalized in some other countries. This paper aims to study how the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis, which involves the legalization of the substance in different parts of the world, is constructed in Swedish print news journalism. This is done with the purpose of understanding how news journalism in a context of a traditionally strong drug prohibition (de)legitimizes different positions and perspectives in the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis, and to what extent journalism in such a context offers challenges to the reigning prohibitionist hegemony. Although cannabis and the media has been researched extensively, very few studies have been conducted by media and communication or journalism scholars, and contributions have been placed mainly in areas as for example drug policy, drug use and misuse, and public health. The current study, in contrast, wishes to contribute to the critical study of drug journalism. The paper draws on critical theory, understanding the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis as bringing disequilibrium to the hegemonic view of cannabis as dangerous drug that needs to be banned. Journalism is perceived as playing a key role in this context, since journalism is an arena where different discourses on cannabis struggle for prominence. Journalism can in this sense serve the strengthening of counter-hegemonic discourses on cannabis or the reinforcement of the prohibitionist hegemony. The study uses critical discourse analysis as a method to study 49 print newspaper items. The results show that the studied media invites opposed discourses regarding the health risks and the medical benefits of cannabis to be part of the news pages, which creates a somewhat pluralistic view on cannabis. The study also finds that the construction of cannabis legalization as a means to combat organized crime is given significant framing power. These results suggest that the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis in different parts of the world invites Swedish journalism to broaden the debate on the substance and to provide certain legitimacy to positive discourses on cannabis that are otherwise considered deviant in the Swedish drug debate. This serves as an example of how changes in distant political contexts affect the ways in which journalism ascribes legitimacy to specific discourses on drugs.

This paper discusses news journalism about inequality from a critical point of view, with the aim of contributing to the critical theorization of the relationship between journalism and sustainability. Sustainability and journalism on social inequality are perceived as intersecting in at least two ways. On one level, journalism can serve sustainable development by providing high-quality content that can help citizens to better understand the causes behind social inequality and how it can be overcome. On another level, journalism would itself gain much from sustainable development on a global level, since that would provide a good ground for a high-quality journalism characterized by its professional and democratic ethics rather than one that is strained by market-logics. The paper focuses on reification and problematizes the ways in which social inequality is reified in news journalism. Basing the argumentation on examples from international journalism, it is argued that although the existence of social inequality in a specific country can be acknowledged in the reporting – for example by the reference to rich and poor people and rich and poor geographic spaces – the social, political and historical causes of this inequality remain abstracted. In this sense, reification provides a rather objectivist account on inequality, which in turn limits the critique of the mechanisms that lie behind it. On the long run such constructions serve the legitimation of social inequality, which indeed ought to be seen as a sustainability problem. The paper also argues that for a more sustainable journalism to take place, a shift in the attitude towards social inequality and sustainable development must take place in the broader sociocultural context that surrounds journalism.

This study aims to explore the construction of difference in foreign news discourse on culturally similar but politically different non-Western subjects. Applying critical discourse analysis (CDA) together with a critique of Eurocentrism, the study examines difference in newspaper constructions of government supporters and oppositional groups in Venezuela. Discursive differences are evident in the strategies used for constructing the two groups with regard to political rationality and violence. Government supporters are associated with social justice, Venezuela’s poor, dogmatic behavior, and the use of political violence. The opposition, in contrast, is constructed as following a Western democratic rationale that stresses anti-authoritarianism. This group is primarily associated with victims of violence. While the opposition is conveyed as being compatible with Eurocentric values and practices, government supporters to great extent deviate from these norms. Such constructions serve to legitimize politico-ideological undercurrents of Eurocentrism, as the defense of liberalism.

Despite that the notion of democracy has a central place in the Western self-image, and also in media studies, research that focuses on how democracy is ideologically loaded in journalistic content is still in its infancy. In recent times, democracy has been used with great enthusiasm by Western political leaders, while the meaning of democracy perhaps is more fuzzy than ever. In times of economic and political crisis, and of a weak Left in most European countries, it is important to examine how journalism constructs notions of democracy, and how such notions reflect specific political positions and interests. This study, which is theoretically rooted in ideology critique, and methodologically inspired by critical discourse analysis, examines how news journalism in the coverage of Venezuela and the Ukraine conflict constructs notions of democracy. The study is specially interested in exploring and discussing the ideological interconnections between imperialism and geopolitical interests, and the journalistic construction of democracy.

Despite scholarly consensus about the importance of the media for democracy, scant attention has been paid to what democracy means to journalistic discourse and how discourses on democracy are interrelated with legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to explore how (il)legitimate democracy is constructed in newspaper discourse. By using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper examines foreign news items about Venezuela, a country that under the presidency of Hugo Chávez has challenged the dominant global political and economic orders. The analysis section focuses on two discourses about the Venezuelan government: the constructions of populism  and power concentration, which serve to mark deviance from what is perceived as a legitimate democracy. This paper argues that a liberal perception of democracy constitutes a central framework for the construction of (il)legitimate democracy, which is revealed not least by news discourse’s focus on what is morally unacceptable political conduct according to liberal democratic norms. In this respect, the media discourse serves to denounce potential abuses of governmental power but fail to recognize democracy in the context of a social struggle against the effects of neoliberalism and capitalism. In this case, the news media is hegemonic in the Gramscian sense, because it provides a framework of democracy that remains within the dominant economic and political structures.