Reasonable people v the sinister fringe: interrogating the framing of Ireland’s water charge protestors through the media politics of dissent

In this research article we explore the manner in which a particular discursive device, the “sinister fringe” was deployed in national news media coverage of protests against the introduction of water charges in Ireland. We use this analysis as a lens through which to examine news media treatment of the water protests more generally, and as a means to interrogate divergences in the mainstream media’s framing of the movement. We ground our interpretation in the contemporary Irish context of austerity and crisis, which we understand as linked to the overarching discourse of neoliberalism which dominates Irish political and economic life (Dukelow 2012). As such, this analysis of news media frames also references discourses about these protests which are produced and circulated by politicians. Our interest in how such discourses contribute to and reproduce hegemony is influenced by both Neo-Marxist and Foucauldian approaches (see Van Dijk, 1998; Deacon et al. 1999, p.147). Our conclusions speak to the currency of the protest paradigm as a means of understanding news media reporting of protest. We raise concerns regarding the effects of this dominant frame on deliberative democracy. We conclude that the media practices and values which lend this paradigm, (and the neoliberal status quo), its resilience, are in turn a product of the impacts of neoliberalism on the political economy of media organisations.