Media, Social Exclusion and Audience Empowerment

The power of the media comes from their ability to influence and shape public opinion. By way of fake news and disinformation, agenda-setting, stigmatization, and prejudiced representation, modern media have played a substantial role in social exclusion processes. Because of their greater ability to reach and interact with a wider audience, online and social media have been actively involved in the creation and dissemination of exclusivist rhetoric, such as populist and extreme-right discourses, which have been shamelessly normalized by crossing the boundaries of what was previously considered permissible and "sayable" in the political mainstream (Wodak 2021: 6).

The session aims to explore issues related to the media normalization of exclusivist discourses (such as nationalist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Gypsy or anti-Muslim) and the reawakening to new life of old stereotypes, frequently dehistoricized and resignified for different purposes in novel social and historical contexts (Wodak 2021: xiii). This also presupposes discussing different ways such dominant hegemonic messages have been encoded by the media and decoded by audiences, involving negotiated and oppositional interpretations (Hall 1973). Therefore, additional research is welcome on instances of counter-hegemonic discourses and strategies for empowering media audiences.