Christina Krakovsky, Josef Seethaler, Christian Schwarzenegger,
Valerie Schafer & Gabriele Balbi

Populism and populist politics were seen to be on the rise for several years and extreme ideologies as well as radical politics were striving for power in many European democracies and around the globe. With the end of the Trump presidency, with Brexit fulfilled and the right-wing populist FPÖ no longer being a part of the Austrian government, there is also some indication that this constant rise has partly been stalled. Nevertheless, the seed of putting democracies in jeopardy and enforcing divisive politics is still there. During the global Corona pandemic new fronts of populism may be in formation and new movements are set in motion expressing their discontent with the current state of political affairs.

Sensationalism, misinformation, rumors and conspiracy myths also in this context and time provide a fuel to populist agitation, which often is circulated or amplified by media in its diverse forms. Public debate and political pundits suggest that there is a link between the proliferation of radical politics, trenches of polarization between political camps and across societies on the one side and contemporary media environments on the other. The hope that media will save democracy and will be sentinel to democratic processes, serve as harbourers of a critical public sphere and deliberative discourse has changed over the last years. Of late the question whether democracy can be saved from the media, and social media in particular has been raised in discussed with increasing concerns (Sunstein, 2001; Swart et al., 2018; de Vries, 2020).