Keywords
populism, democratic backsliding, comparative politics, autocratisation, state capture
Abstract
A decline in journalistic standards and increased media control, are well recognized hallmarks of increased autocratisation and democratic backsliding. This paper investigates the impact of populism on the media landscape in two different countries, Brazil and Serbia. It argues that despite the radical differences in structural factors (wealth, relationship with the EU, history of democracy, political system, etc.), these countries have witnessed a similar decline in media quality, as well as a decline in the quality of democracy. Using the Serbian case as a ‘standard’ case of populist control and drawing on interviews with Brazilian journalists as a ‘surprising’ case, this paper argues that populist aspiring autocrats will use both ‘hard’ mechanisms of legal control, as well as ‘softer’ methods of ‘anticipatory steering’ to control private media. Overall, this highlights the relevance of research into the structures of media systems themselves in understanding such outcomes.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments.
Funding
This article received no funding
The cost of editing selected articles published in the Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies in the 2022–2024 is covered by funding under the program “Development of scientific journals” of the Ministry of Education and Science under agreement No. RCN/SN/0324/2021/1. Task title: “Verification and correction of scientific articles and their abstracts”. Funding value: 36 298,00 PLN; The task consists of professional editing of articles published in English.
Declaration of Conflict of Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.
Declaration about the scope of AI utilisation
The author did not use AI tools in the preparation of this article.
Recommended Citation
Ribeiro Ferreira, R., & Mesarovich, A. (2024). Speaking Power to the People: Serbian and Brazilian Media Systems in Populist Times. Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies, 17(30), 171-198. https://doi.org/10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2024.17.30.7
First Page
171
Last Page
198
Page Count
28
Received Date
08.02.2024
Accepted Date
15.11.2024
DOI
10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2024.17.30.7
Publisher
University of Warsaw
