Tagungen 

Jahrestagung 2025

Populist Backlashes around the World: 
The Role of Media and Communication
 

13 - 15 November, 2025 | University of Erfurt
Call for Papers (download below)
You will find updated conference details on the conference website.

Abstract

The world is witnessing a time of political backlashes and renewed power claims by illiberal populist forces. This crisis is noticeable both in the global North and South and pervades various political formations ranging from democracies to hybrid and autocratic political systems. Right-wing populism in such different places as the US, Europe, Brazil and India, polarization in electoral democracies during the Arab Spring, hard-authoritarian backlashes as in Russia, China or Myanmar and religious-ethnic fundamentalism as in Indonesia are different types of the same phenomenon of political backlashes. Populist backlashes in particular are obviously reflected in democratic rollbacks to authoritarianism, but they can also take the form of more subtle erosions of human rights, liberal values and challenges to dignity, decency and tolerance in free or partly free political systems.

Even if the media is based on the principle of free speech, as a societal subsystem it can become a co-party of populist backlashes if it is negligent to defend human rights or does not counter processes such as tabloidization, misinformation, misrepresentation or hate speech. Moreover, the representation function of legacy media becomes disregarded when minorities still lack access to fair public representation while illiberal forces with their conflict-driven populist news values tend to be overrepresented. In turn, the so-called “social media” has not fulfilled the euphoric promise of its compensatory function for minority groups as they lend themselves to hate speech and polarization all too easily and as they are limited by often untransparent platform logics.

There are also further dynamics, which enhance disruptive tendencies within societies: For example, social and political cleavages reflected in media discourses and effects, which can be manipulated by political elites and counter-elites for divide-and-rule political games, or communication cultures, which can be challenged by lacks of media literacy, deficits in societal participation or their own uncertainties in dealing with global, multi-/and transcultural realities, which can obviously be captured by populist politics.   

The conference aims to reflect on the multifaceted role of media and communication in contemporary backlashes by considering and comparing examples and perspectives from around the world. Contributions can focus on the following thematic issues in an international or transcultural perspective:

• Populist media coverage (e.g. racist, sexist etc. stereotyping and misrepresentation)
• Populist political interventions into media
• The role of law, accountability and (co-)regulation frameworks
• The role of commercial and ownership structures in populist backlashes
• Media ethics and their role to counter populism
• Populist public spheres and counter public spheres, including legacy and new media
• Communication culture and populism, including mediated and non-mediated phenomena.

The conference includes an international keynote session and roundtable discussion as well as regular thematic panels. The panels will be organized in the form of a combination of paper presentations and subsequent dialogic and moderated roundtable formats, which will give enough time to deepen the academic conversation beyond mere requests.

To support early career scholars in the field of international comparative, cosmopolitan and/or transcultural media and communication research, the conference includes a PhD world café. Here, up to three PhD candidates each will be given the chance to get into an intense thematic f2f-discussion with two expert academics in their respective field.

The conference will start on Thursday evening with a get together, it will include a conference dinner on Friday evening and will end around Saturday lunchtime. 

Organization
 

Prof. Dr. Kai Hafez
Chair for Comparative International Media and Communication Research                          

Dr. Anne Grüne 
Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Media and Communication

Contact

Conference Email: project.backlashes@uni-erfurt.de

Dr. Anne Grüne 
University of Erfurt 
Department of Media and Communication Studies
C18.02.25
Alfred-Weber-Platz 4
99089 Erfurt

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