UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
Far right and Media
Golden Dawn and the Greek sports newspapers
Anastasios Koutsogiannis student number: 10583548 Thesis supervisor: Joost van Spanje
12-Aug-14
This article examines the case of one of the most extremist political parties in Europe, the Greek party Golden Dawn. It sketches the sport media connection with the Greek far right, focusing on the extent of references of Golden Dawn in the three main daily sports newspapers in Greece two from Olympiakos (Gavros, Protathlitis) and one of Panathinaikos (Prasini). The article examines to what extent daily sport newspapers refer to Golden Dawn by taking into consideration two main factors. The first one is to what extent daily sports newspapers refer to Golden Dawn before and after Golden Dawn’s representation in the Greek parliament in June 2012 and the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-fascist rapper, who was killed by a Golden Dawn member in September 2013. The second one focuses on how these outlets refer to the party within this timeframe. At the end it discusses the shift in Golden Dawns coverage after the dramatic event of Fyssas’s murder. Key words: Golden Dawn, far right wing, media coverage, sports media
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Contents
Introduction ... 2
Theoretical Background- Hypotheses ... 4
The Greek Case ... 11
Methods... 15 Results ... 19 Discussion – Conclusion ... 26 Acknowledgements ... 31 List of References ... 31 Appendices ... 39
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Introduction
In the years since the economic crisis, far-right wing formations all around Europe have become more popular, expanding year by year their electoral support (Ellinas, 2013, p. 544). In the European elections of 2014, Europe witnessed an electoral success of far right parties. In France, Denmark, Austria and Greece the results of the elections took many by surprise. Greece’s case seems to be tougher though. Golden Dawn is not only one of the most extremist parties in Europe (Ellinas, 2013, p. 560), but also a neo-Nazi party that got an almost 10% of the Greek electoral body in the EU and holds now three seats in the European Parliament.
There are many factors which could have played key roles in the booming of the extreme far right in Greece. Previous studies have shown that clientelism and corruption in combination with the country’s deep depression offered extreme far right a chance to emerge (Ellinas, 2013; Psarras, 2012).
Football is the most popular sport in Greece, and sports media are among the most successful in the country. There is a considerable amount of people who choose to acquire information through daily sports newspapers, which, considering the total sales of daily newspapers, seem to hold a big share in the press industry in Greece. Official sales data show that sport newspapers consist almost 45% of the total newspapers issues sold in Greece per year (Europenet, 2013). Thus, it makes sense for the far right to seek visibility through the pages of the daily sports newspapers. To what extent extreme far right formations become visible in sport’s media thought? How could sports media be related to far right in Greece?
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There are numerous studies that draw connections between football culture and far right politics (Back, Crabbe & Solomos, 1999; Dunning, 2000; Garland & Rowe, 2002; Pavasovic Trost & Kovasevic, 2013). However little is known about any relations between sports media and far right politics. For that reason, it would be an interesting attempt to explore to what extent and how popular sports newspapers in Greece (which hold a big share in sales) refer to far right parties and especially Golden Dawn, assuming from the previous studies that sports and
especially football fans would be more open or interested in far right. In any mainstream, political or financial newspaper, anybody would expect to cross by even a few references to far right political parties, especially in the case of Greece, where Golden Dawn is represented in the parliament (Van Spanje, Burscher & Dinas, 2014). In sport newspapers though, references to politics are not common.
This paper discusses the connection between the media and the far-right. More precisely, it investigates the connection between Golden Dawn and the daily sports newspapers of
Panathinaikos and Olympiakos, the two most popular football clubs in Greece. In other words, it tries to find out to what extent and how Golden Dawn is referred to daily sports newspapers in Greece. The study is important because it examines how daily sports newspapers offered Golden Dawn the chance to communicate its ideas and become visible to an audience that is probably more interested in sports than in politics.
Moreover, this essay is an attempt to look inside daily sports newspapers and see to what extent sports and far-right politics are connected. In addition, this brings more details on how Golden Dawn is portrayed in the non-political outlets to the surface. All in all, this paper tries to shed some light on the phenomenon of Golden Dawn and give more information about the party. The research question is the following:
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“To what extent and how do Greek sport newspapers of the two most popular Greek football teams (Panathinaikos and Olympiakos) refer to Golden Dawn?”
With this research question I try to further investigate Greece’s far right, which still remains largely unexploredon an academic level. Furthermore, I will investigate the association between far right and sports media, by making use and translating data from Greek sports
newspapers. Last but not least I will try to provide more information about Golden Dawn, a party that gets more and more media attention both in Greece and the EU, but not much is known about it.
Theoretical Background- Hypotheses
A significant amount of research on the rise of far-right parties in Western Europe has been conducted by many scholars (Betz, 1994; Carter, 2005; Hainsworth, 2000; Kitschelt & McGann, 1995; Lubbers, Gijsberts & Scheepers, 2002; Mudde, 2007; Norris, 2005). Most of these studies focus on the electoral ascendancy of far-right wing parties, while others offer us an inside view of structural and institutional accounts, as well as attitudes, skills, and experiences of radical right wing (Art, 2007, 2011). However, the far-right wing political landscape in Southern Europe remains largely unexplored. Apart from some sporadic references (Ellinas, 2010, 2013; Mudde, 2002) there is still a lot to be known about Southern Europe’s far right. The low electoral support for Southern Europe’s far right could be explained by the fact that “the legacy of authoritarianism and the absence of post-industrial welfare states presumably limited the electoral demand for the far right” (Ellinas, 2013, p.543) to the late- democratized Southern European states (Kitschelt & McGann, 1995; Ignazi, 2003; Ellinas, 2010). Many Southern
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European far-right formations were either integrated with mainstream right or stayed in the shadow, gaining little electoral support over the years (Ellinas, 2013, p. 543). Because of this, the academic research focuses mostly on influence of far right parties in Western Europe.
Another important factor for far right’s electoral success is the role of media. While in Western Europe the role of media on far right parties has been extensively discussed (Atton, 2006; Boomgaarden, Vliegenthart, de Vreese, & Schuck, 2010; Bos, Van Der Brug & de Vreese, 2011; Quinn, 2002) in Southern Europe little has been documented (Ellinas, 2010). In this paper I focus on the Greek case, investigating to what extent and how Greek sport newspapers of the two most popular Greek football teams (Panathinaikos and Olympiakos) refer to Golden Dawn. In order to achieve this I focus on two main factors. First to what extent do Greek sports newspapers refer to Golden Dawn (visibility). Second, how these newspapers refer to Golden Dawn (tone).
Although most people get informed about politics through media and especially through television (Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999), newspapers still are one of the main sources of information (Druckman, 2005, pp.463- 464). “Most citizens never meet a politician in real life” (Bos et al., 2011), so people depend on media when it comes to acquiring information about a political party or a politician. Visibility on the news outlets is rather important for a party in order for people to get to know what it stands for. Previous studies have shown that visibility of parties in the news affect voting (Weaver, 1996; Oegema & Kleinnijenhuis, 2000; Hopmann, Vliegenthart, de Vreese & Albaek, 2010). So, in this paper I test Golden Dawn’s visibility in Greek sports newspapers.
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“Obviously, parties can be presented in the media in a positive or a negative fashion. Therefore, one also needs to consider the tone of the parties’ media presence” (Hopmann et al., 2010, p. 391). The tone of the parties’ media presence is an important cue in order for people who have no chance to meet any politicians or party representatives in person to shape a positive or negative opinion about a party. Previous studies show that the more positive the tone is towards a party the more people have positive evaluations of those parties (Norris, Semetko, Curtice, Sanders, & Scammell, 1999; Kleinnijenhuis, Hoof, Oegema & Ridder, 2007). Furthermore, tone is taken into consideration by people who decide to vote during the elections campaign period in contrast with those who already have decided or have a strong party identification (Fournier, Nadeau, Blais, Gidengil, & Nevitte, 2004). “Summing up, the tone toward, and not only the visibility of parties in the media seems to be important” (Hopmann et al., 2010, p. 391). In this paper visibility and the tone of the newspaper towards Golden Dawn is tested.
Hypotheses
H1
“In Olympiakos’ daily newspapers we expect to find more articles referring to Golden Dawn than in Panathinaikos daily newspapers”. According to the data coming from the Greek Ministry of Interior for the elections of May and June 2012 we can see that the electorate of Golden Dawn is bigger in Piraeus, which is Olympiakos’s home, than in Athens, which is Panathinaikos’s home. Golden Dawn got 7.8% and 6.3% of the votes in the two electoral zones of Athens and 8.3% and 9.3% of the votes in the two electoral zones of Piraeus (Greek Ministry of Interior, 2012a). Taking also into consideration that the number of Olympiakos’ newspapers
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sold in Piraeus is almost double to any other city in Greece (Europenet, 2013), we assume that the number of articles about Golden Dawn in Olympiakos’ newspapers (Gavros, Protathlitis) is higher than the number of articles in Panathinaikos’ newspaper (Prasini). As Golden Dawn’s electorate is bigger in Piraeus than in Athens, I argue that people who live in Piraeus and who support Olympiakos are more interested in Golden Dawn-related articles than those in Athens who support Panathinaikos. It makes more sense for the two Olympiakos’ newspapers to cover more of Golden Dawn’s stories, as their audience is more interested in such stories. As a result, the more frequent references to Golden Dawn could lead to an extension of their audience or to an increase in sales of issues.
H2
“The number of articles referring to Golden Dawn in the daily sports newspapers is higher after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas”. On 17 September 2013, an anti-fascist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, was murdered by Golden Dawn member Giorgos Roupakias. The reactions by the political and the media system in Greece were immediate and every single party in the parliament condemned the murder (In.gr, 2013). Fyssas’s murder has a lot in common with Theo van Gogh’s assassination on 2004 by a young Muslim extremist in the Netherlands. In van Gogh’s case, media started to operate in a “media hype mode” a fortified, self-referential system of extensive and magnified coverage of the event (Vasterman, Yzermans & Dirkzwager, 2005, p. 110; Kepplinger, Brosius, & Staab, 1991, p. 265). As a result they extensively covered the event (Boomgaarden & de Vreese, 2007, p. 356). We expect also that in Pavlos Fyssas’s case the media functioned in the same way and started to cover more stories related to Golden Dawn and the murder itself caused public’s attention for news.
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Pavlos Fyssas’s murder by a Golden Dawn member is a dramatic event, which adds up to what we call “bad news”. Studies in the past have shown that bad news sells better than good news. In a survey conducted by Michael J. Robinson (2007) for Pew Research Center called “Two decades of American news preferences” we can see that people tend to follow bad news more than good news. As noticed in the P.R.C.’s report “The index reveals that Disaster News — reports about catastrophes, man-made or natural — garners the greatest interest... Conflict` News — stories about war, terrorism, and social violence — consistently elicits much more news attention than does Tabloid or even Political News” (Robinson, 2007, ¶ 6). So it is expected that Fyssas’ murder, as a piece of “bad news”, would trigger the interest of the news outlets to cover stories both about him and about Golden Dawn, in order to increase their sales as far as research on the topic indicates that public interest is high for social violence and crime stories.
Another study conducted by Chip Heath argues that people prefer bad news compared to good news (Heath, 1996). “Bad news might transmit more effectively because it helps people prepare for the future better than good news. If it is “better to be safe than sorry,” then bad news may be transmitted—even if it paints an overly negative picture of the world—because it allows people to anticipate and avoid an occasional bad outcome” (Heath, 1996, p. 82). This way we can understand why newspapers tend to cover bad stories more extensively, in this case Pavlos Fyssas’s murder, because, after all, “bad news sells” (Heath, 1996, p. 82).
Another point of view comes also from Soroka’s paper (2006), arguing that “journalists will thus regard negative information as more important, not just based on their own (asymmetric) interests, but also on the (asymmetric) interests of their news consuming audience” (p. 374). When the audience is more interested in bad news, journalists will provide them with more information about it. Thus, we expect the sports newspapers of both teams to cover more
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topics related to Golden Dawn after Fyssas’s murder simply because people seek more detailed information about it.
Soroka (2006) offers an explanation for why bad news sells more than good news. “Media emphasize negative information in part because it is their job to do so” (p. 374). As Soroka puts it in his paper “It may be that media outlets’ emphasis on negative news reflects one of their principle institutional functions in a democracy: holding current governments (and companies, and indeed some individuals) accountable” (Soroka, 2006, p. 374). So, we can assume that media tend to cover negative news to a higher extent.
H3
“It is expected that the murder of Pavlos Fyssas brought negative media exposure to Golden Dawn”. To test this I will examine the tone of the sport newspapers towards the party. Pavlos Fyssas’s murder was the first political assassination committed by an extreme-right party in Greece after the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. It is plausible to assume that Pavlos Fyssas’s murder was an act of terrorism from a Golden Dawn member towards democracy. Paul Wilkinson claims that the main characteristics of a terrorist attack are: “It is directed at a wider target than the immediate victims and it involves an attack on a symbolic target” (Wilkinson, 1997, p. 51). In our case, the symbolic target was democracy and the actual target was the anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas. It was clear from Golden Dawn’s older official statements that the party will eliminate anyone who opposes the party’s ideology, targeting leftists and immigrants (Michaloliakos, 2012). Considering also the fundamental role of media in a well-functioning democratic state (Kang, 2010; Plattner, 2012), we expect Greek daily sports newspapers to cover
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Golden Dawn in a negative way after Fyssas’s assassination because they felt ethically and democratically obliged to do so.
Η4
“After Golden Dawn entered the Greek Parliament in June 2012, daily sports newspapers refer to the party more often than before”. Parliamentary representation enhances a party’s visibility (Van Spanje et al., 2014, p. 9). After Golden Dawn entered the Greek Parliament for first time I expect that, generally, Greek media, sports newspapers included, devoted more attention to the party. Golden Dawn started to communicate its ideas from the parliament this time, making it easier for journalists to position the party in pre-existing political schemes and to write about it. All in all journalists would not spend time writing about a party that is hard to classify (Van Spanje et al., 2014, p. 9). Golden Dawn made clear its statements on the political level and what it stands for in the parliament so we expect that the party gained more from the media in terms of visibility.
Another possible explanation for Golden Dawn’s exposure to media after the 2012 election is that people did not know much about the party before, so media were dealing with a relatively new party (Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999). Although the party exists since the early 1980s, it only gained a little media attention after the local elections of 2010 and more after the elections of 2012. Before 2010 not many people knew what Golden Dawn stood for, let alone its ideology (Ellinas, 2013, p.559). Golden Dawn became widely known a few months before its election in 2012, so the media had to deal with a “new” party that is doing well in the polls and not much information is available about the party. It is evident by Golden Dawn’s rates on the National Elections of 2009 (0.29%) that the party was representing just a tiny portion of the
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Greek electorate, so the mainstream media, and as a result the Greek community, were ignoring the party’s existence. So we assume here that there are more references to Golden Dawn after its election in June 2012, because not only media, but also the audience was more interested into knowing more things about “the new big thing” on the Greek political scene.
Moreover, previous research on parties and visibility on the media shows that there is significant association between the two. Parties with particular power position (Brants &Praag, 2006; Hopmann, de Vreese & Albaek, 2011, pp. 276-277) tend to receive more (media) attention. Similar to these studies, it can be argued in this case that the power coming from the parliament representation will increase Golden Dawn’s media visibility. Van Spanje, Burscher and Dinas (2014, p. 8) argue that parliamentary representation increases a party’s visibility using as an example the far right French Party, Front National. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the part at that time, “confirmed in an interview that his relations with the press were at their best when the FN represented in the parliament. This was partly because it opened many doors to Le Pen who visited several journalists to convince them that he was a respectable politician” (Birenbaum & Villa, 2003, p. 52).
The Greek Case
Trying to get a general idea of Golden Dawn’s breakthrough, anybody should take into consideration Greece’s condition over the last few years. Austerity measures, budget cuts, tax hikes and privatizations led the country to a deep depression. Actually, the deepest depression any democratically sovereign state has witnessed since World War 2 (Eurostat, 2012). As a result of the depression, the traditional party system in Greece collapsed. The two most popular parties
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in Greece, PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) and Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy), which together had almost 78% in the national elections of 2009 (Greek Ministry of Interior, 2009) , dropped to a 42% in June of 2012 (Greek Ministry of Interior, 2012b) , giving the chance to smaller and newer parties to emerge. One of these parties is Golden Dawn, which managed to enter for first time the Greek parliament in June 2012 with 7% and since then its rates have grown.
A closer look at the party’s history, activity, symbols, public speech, organization and ideology proves that Golden Dawn opposes democratic action, making the party one of the most extreme political formations in Europe (Ellinas, 2013, p. 560). Similarly to many other neo-Nazi or extreme right wing party in Europe, Golden Dawn’s electoral breakthrough both in the Greek national elections of 2012 and the European elections of 2014 took many by surprise. The party managed to gain almost 10% in the last elections, increasing its rates by 3 percentage points. Considering the party’s actions and the crimes committed by Golden Dawn members (the most heinous one was Pavlos Fyssas’s murder) in the period April 2012- May 2014, arguably one might expect the party to collapse in the light of the event. Surveys and opinion polls in between Fyssas’s murder and EU elections were indicating a significant decline on the party’s popularity.
Just two days after the murder, a survey was conducted by AlcoPolls on behalf of newsit.gr during the September 20-23/2013 period. Golden Dawn garnered 6.8% in the Alco poll, compared to 10.8% recorded in a previous poll conducted by the company last June. 81 % of participants believed Golden Dawn was not a democratic party, 69% felt it carried Nazi ideology while 74% thought that a series of violent incidents that took place across the country in the last few weeks were part of an organized plan. According to the AlcoPolls survey, 39% of Golden Dawn voters said their ballot choice had been a reaction toward the country's established
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political system, while 21% stated they considered Golden Dawn a Nazi party and their vote reflected this (AlcoPolls, 2013). The party did not decline in popularity. Rather, the party increased its rates and now has established itself as the party with the third largest parliamentary representation in Greece.
There are many reasons that can explain Golden Dawn’s electoral success. In this paper though, the role of media, more precisely the daily sports media and their relation to Golden Dawn is examined.
It can be argued that Golden Dawn became visible to a certain amount of people who get informed through sports media outlets. Greek daily sports newspapers’ main role is to inform their audience about sports. Politics is not a priority in these outlets. However, Golden Dawn was frequently mentioned, giving the party visibility to a certain amount of people who we could claim that they are more interested in sports than in politics. In the coded issues Golden Dawn was mentioned quite often, considering the non-political content of the newspapers. In the 153 issues coded, I found 24 references to Golden Dawn, which means that almost 16% of the three newspapers refer to Golden Dawn in a way. The percentage is quite high for non-political outlets. Especially if we consider that the pages in these newspapers referred exclusively to politics are hardly more than one in each issue. From the analysis I noticed that Golden Dawn was mostly mentioned in opinion and comment articles and less in the politics’ sector.
In the Greek national elections results of 2012 that in Piraeus, where Olympiakos has the most supporters, Golden Dawn scored approximately 8.5%, while in the European elections of 2014 its rate was about 10.5%. So it can be argued that the daily sports newspapers Gavros and Protathlitis helped in enhancing its rates. In these two outlets, Golden Dawn was mentioned in a
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balanced or more positive way, both before and after the elections of 2012. Even after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas neither of the two newspapers mentioned anything, keeping distance from the event and from criticizing Golden Dawn. In time, Gavros seems to be more positive towards the party, while Protathlitis stays balanced.
The results related to Gavros make more sense when we examine the profile of the newspaper. The owner and publisher of the newspaper Vangelis Marinakis, who is at the same time the owner of the football team of Olympiakos has been accused in the past for being one of the main sponsors for Golden Dawn (SkaiNews, 2013; SxedioB, 2013). Furthermore, the legal counsel of Olympiakos, T. Michalolias, is the brother of Golden Dawn’s leader Nikos Michaloliakos.
For Olympiakos second newspaper, Protathlitis, several things could be taken into consideration. Once again though, a detailed analysis on the profile of the newspaper brings interesting facts to the surface. The publisher of Protathlitis and famous Greek journalist, Themos Anastasiadis, is also connected with Golden Dawn. His main newspaper, Proto Thema, has helped Golden Dawn to reinforce its favorable “social media” image (Psarras, 2012, p. 377). On top of that, few months ago an official document leaked form “Proto Thema” proving that the ship-owner Anastasios Pallis, in whose house Greek authorities found a small museum of Nazi paraphernalia and weaponry, is a Golden Dawn’s sponsor. Pallis was also a major shareholder in Themos Anastasiadis’ media enterprises (ProtoThema, 2011).
On the other hand it can be seen that Prasini (Panathinaikos’s newspaper) criticized the party the day after Fyssas’s murder, giving Golden Dawn a negative tone. Prasini throughout this time (April 2012- November 2013) referred to the party more negatively than Gavros and
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Protathlitis did. Prasini made clear that Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi party that opposes democracy. Even though the newspaper was critical towards the party throughout the whole period, it didn’t seem that public opinion was affected at any point. Prasini was also the one out of the three newspapers, which acted immediately after the assassination of Fyssas and criticized the party. In the issue coded 18/9/2013, the day after Fyssas’s murder, the newspaper openly criticizes Golden Dawn, referring to the party as a dangerous neo-Nazi gang, which opposes democratic institutions. Prasini was also the only newspaper to keep a critical distance from the party.
Methods
In order for this study to be conducted a media content analysis was employed. More precisely, I randomly selected and coded articles and news pieces from two daily newspapers of Olympiakos (Gavros, Protathlitis) and one from Panathinaikos (Prasini). The reason why these three newspapers were selected is because they represent the fan basis of the two most popular football clubs in Greece, Panathinaikos and Olympiakos. All three newspapers refer exclusively to either Panathinaikos’ or Olympiakos’ supporters informing them about issues concerning the sport club they support.
The articles I coded were published three months before Golden Dawn entered the Greek parliament (April 2012) until three months after the death of Pavlos Fyssas (November 2013). So I tested my hypotheses using data collected within this time frame (April 2012- November 2013). I started on April 2012, namely three months before the party succeeded in entering the Greek parliament and I stopped three months after the assassination of Fyssas, November 2013,
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which resulted in the first party’s popularity breakdown. The volume of issues published in this timeframe (April 2012- November 2013) is approximately 1530 issues, so it was necessary to narrow it down by randomly selecting 3 issues per month from each newspaper.
153 issues were coded in total (3 issues per month X 3 newspapers X 17 months), from April 1st 2012 until November 30th 2013. The 153 issues coded made up 10% of the total amount of the three newspapers. In total, approximately 6120 pages were coded. Because the archive of Greek newspapers in Athens is not digitalized yet this had to be done manually. All of the issues coded were hard copies of newspapers which were randomly chosen out of the Greek Daily Press Archive in Athens. All newspapers were coded as hard copies including the front and last page, editorials, sports news, opinion/comment and (if any) political sections. All coding took place in the Greek Daily Press Archive in Athens and lasted for seven days. Coding was conducted manually, according to the codebook’s guidelines, which were designed in advance.
Following the random selection, the chosen issue was scanned in order to check whether it was referring to Golden Dawn or not. The publishing date was noted as well in order to test hypothesis 2 “The number of articles referring to Golden Dawn in the daily sports newspapers is higher after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas” and hypothesis 4 “After Golden Dawn entered the Greek Parliament in June 2012, daily sports newspapers refer to the party more often than before”. After coding of each issue, it was returned to the archive in the right order, according to the date that it was published. In order to secure the inter-coder reliability of my analysis a second coder was assisting me, coding a 10% of what I had already coded, namely 15 issues. The second coder was provided with the codebook and he was following the instructions and the questions that were included there.
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So as to test the inter-coder reliability I used the KALPHA calculation (De Swert, 2012). KALPHA is the suitable test for inter-coder reliability in this analysis because it takes into account the expected disagreement, not only the observed disagreement. I used the KALPHA calculation on both items, namely visibility and tone and the results were exactly the same.
KALPHA = 1 – (Observed disagreement)/Expected disagreement
KALPHA judges = Koutsogiannis 2ndCoder/level = 2/detail = 0
KALPHA= 1.00 which means that there is maximum reliability between the second coder’s results and mine both in visibility and tone. This can be explained by the fact that there were no differences in the results I got from his coding of the 10% of the issues.
In order to address the research question the issues the visibility and the tone were measured. First, the visibility of Golden Dawn in these three newspapers addresses the hypothesis 1 “In Olympiakos’ daily newspapers we expect to find more articles referring to Golden Dawn than in Panathinaikos daily newspapers”, hypothesis 2 and hypothesis 4. Second, the tone of the newspapers towards the party addresses hypothesis 3 “It is expected that the murder of Pavlos Fyssas brought negative media exposure to Golden Dawn”. The questions formed in order to code the articles are the following:
Visibility
Testing the issues for visibility I counted the amount of times Golden Dawn was mentioned in the issues coded. In this first level I counted the times the party was mentioned no matter the tone. What was important in this level is just the frequency of Golden Dawn related articles in the issues. In order to measure visibility I formed the following question:
18 1) Is this article referring to Golden Dawn?
In this question the answer was “yes” or “no”. Any article including the party’s name was marked. An example of this could be: Golden Dawn entered the Greek Parliament with 6.9%.The coder was putting (1) if Golden Dawn was mentioned in the issue and (0) if the party’s name was not mentioned in the issue at all.
Tone
Testing the issues for tone I moved further to the analysis of the articles. In order to measure tone I formed the following question:
2) How does this article refer to Golden Dawn?
With this question I tried to measure the tone of the article towards Golden Dawn. In order to measure tone I used a 5 point scale. The article was evaluated with: -2 (exclusively negative), -1 (more negative than positive), 0 (neutral or balanced), 1 (more positive than negative), and 2 (exclusively positive). Examples for all tones were provided in advance (see appendix A). The positive tone (H3) was present only if (1) the article or somebody in the article argues that one’s team or Greece (as a state in total) has had any kind of benefits from Golden Dawn or that the situation in one’s team or Greece has improved or will (potentially) improve because of Golden Dawn or (2) the article presents figures, and/or statistics that indicate that one’s team or Greece has benefited from Golden Dawn. On the other hand, the negative tone was present only if (-1) the article or somebody in the article argues that one’s team or Greece has had no kind of benefits from Golden Dawn or (-2) the article presents Figures, and/or statistics that indicate that one’s team or Greece has not benefited from Golden Dawn (Van Spanje & de Vreese, 2014, p. 332). For more detailed examples see appendix A “Codebook Content
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analysis”. Chi-squared tests were applied in all hypotheses, in order for the association between the variables to be tested. The Cramer’s V was also calculated in order to measure the association between the nominal variables as well.
Results
The results of the content analysis of the three daily sports newspapers (Prasini, Gavros and Protathlitis) give an insight to what extent and how the daily sports newspapers in Greece refer to Golden Dawn. The party is mentioned relatively often, considering that daily sports newspapers in Greece refer exclusively to sport news and events and remain detached from politics. In the 153 issues coded, I found 24 articles referring to Golden Dawn. 17 of them were in Olympiakos’ daily sports newspapers (12 in Gavros and 5 in Protathlitis), while the remaining 7 were found in Prasini (Panathinaikos’s daily newspaper).
In the coded issues Golden Dawn was mentioned quite often, considering the non-political content of the newspapers. In the 153 issues coded, I found 24 references to Golden Dawn, which means that almost 16% of the three newspapers refer to Golden Dawn in a way. The percentage is quite high for non-political outlets.
20 Figure 1Tone in the total amount of newspapers
Overtime in the collected data show that daily sports newspapers refer to Golden Dawn in a balanced way, or in way that is more negative than positive (Figure 1). Connecting this to what Ellinas claims, “most media kept a critical distance from the party” (2013, p. 559), it can be noticed that in daily sports newspapers examined in this paper, that there was also positive coverage of Golden Dawn. Even though most of the references were either balanced or negative, the fact that Golden Dawn received some positive mentions is suggestive.
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Connecting this to the theory, the first hypothesis (H1) which states that “in Olympiakos’ daily newspapers I expect to find more articles referring to Golden Dawn than in Panathinaikos daily newspapers” is not confirmed. In Gavros (Olympiakos’s newspaper) there are 5 references more to Golden Dawn than in Prasini (Panathinaikos’s newspaper). In Protathlitis (Olympiakos’s newspaper) there are 2 less than Panathinaikos’s daily newspaper. Ιn the two Olympiakos’ newspapers combined the total amount of references to Golden Dawn is more than double the number in Prasini. Golden Dawn is mentioned in the 14% of the 51 Prasini issues coded. There are more references to Golden Dawn in Gavros compared to Prasini. Gavros refers to the party in 24% of the issues coded. Protathlitis has fewer references to the party in comparison with the other two newspapers. In Protathlitis issues, Golden Dawn is mentioned in 10% of the issues coded. However, in the two Olympiakos’ newspapers together, the percentage of references is about 17%, while in Panathinaikos’ newspaper is 14% of the total amount of issues coded. As a result, it can be argued that from the random sample (10%) of all the issues coded there are more articles referring to Golden Dawn in Olympiakos than in Panathinaikos newspapers.
Table 1 Mentions of Golden Dawn in the newspapers
Newspaper Mentions yes Mentions No Total
Prasini (Panathinaikos) 7 44 51 Gavros+ Protathlitis (Olympiakos) 17 85 102 Total 24 129 153
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In order to test for significance in the above findings, I conducted a chi square analysis to test for association between newspaper and mentions of Golden Dawn. I combined data for Olympiakos’ newspapers Gavros and Protathlitis and compared number of mentions of Golden Dawn. Based on calculations using a contingency table from http://vassarstats.net the values were as follows: χ2
(1,153)= 0.06 p>0.05, Cramer’s V = 0.0379. The result suggested no significant association between these newspapers and mentioning Golden Dawn.
Moving to the second hypothesis (H2) which states that: “The number of articles referring to Golden Dawn in the daily sports newspapers is higher after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas” I notice that it is also not confirmed. Before Fyssas’s murder, there are twenty references in the issues coded, starting from the 1st of April 2012, until the 17th of September 2013. After the assassination (18 September 2013 until 30 November 2013) we have four references to Golden Dawn, three from Prasini and one from Gavros. The total amount of references in Golden Dawn before and after Fyssas’s murder is illustrated in Table 2.
Table 2 mentions of Golden Dawn before and after Fyssas's murder in the newspapers
Newspapers (all three) Mentions Yes Mentions No Total
Before 19 111 130
After 5 18 23
Total 24 129 153
In the 130 issues coded before Fyssas’s murder we have 19 references to Golden Dawn. On the other hand, in the 23 issues coded after Fyssas’s murder we have 5. Golden Dawn is mentioned in the 22% of the issues coded after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas, while before
23
it, is mentioned in the 15% of the coded issues. Based on calculations using a contingency table from http://vassarstats.net the values were as follows:
χ2
(1,153)= 0.31 p>0.05, Cramer’s V = 0.07. The result suggested no significant association between the references to Golden Dawn and the murder of Pavlos Fyssas.
With hypothesis three (H3) “It is expected that the murder of Pavlos Fyssas brought negative media exposure to Golden Dawn” the tone of the newspapers towards the party is tested. After Fyssas’s assassination there are four references to Golden Dawn. One in Gavros and three in Prasini. All of them are either more negative than positive 1) or exclusively negative (-2) and one is neutral or balanced (0). In Protathlitis case there are no references to Golden Dawn in the issues coded after the murder. In 130 issues from the period before Fyssas’s murder there are 19 mentions to Golden Dawn. More precisely, before Fyssas’s murder Gavros mentions Golden Dawn 11 times in the issues coded. Three of them are more positive than negative (1), one is exclusively positive (2), while seven are neutral or balanced (0). At the same time, Prasini mentions Golden Dawn three times, two times negatively, namely one time more negative than positive (-1) and one time exclusively negative (-2), while the third mention is balanced (0). Protathlitis stays neutral with all its five references to be neutral or balanced (0).
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Table 3 Tone of the newspapers towards the party before and after Fyssas's murder
Tone Exclusively negative (-2) More negative than positive (-1) Balanced or neutral (0) More positive than negative (1) Exclusively positive (2) Total Before 1 1 13 3 1 19 After 1 3 1 0 0 5 Total 2 4 14 3 1 24
From Table 3 can be concluded that Pavlos Fyssas’s murder brought negative media exposure to the party. There is not even one positive reference to Golden Dawn after Fyssa’s murder. There is only one which is balanced. Daily sports newspapers tend to give Golden Dawn a more negative than positive exposure after the assassination, while there is one case that the coverage is exclusively negative. It can be noticed from the table that there are 5 negative mentions to Golden Dawn after the assassination. On the other hand, before the assassination, newspapers remain mostly neutral towards the party, although it seems that there are more positive (4) than negative (2) references to Golden Dawn.
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Based on calculations using a contingency table from http://vassarstats.net the values were as follows: χ2
(4,24)= 10.79 p<0.05, Cramer’s V = 0.67. This suggests that there is a significant association between the murder of Fyssas and coverage of Golden Dawn.
To sum up with hypothesis 3, it can be argued that daily sports newspapers started to cover Golden Dawn negatively after Pavlos Fyssas’s murder. After the event happened there is no positive tone given to Golden Dawn in any of the issues covered, while there is mostly negative coverage. Only one neutral reference was noticed. As a result, it can be assumed that hypothesis 3 is confirmed.
Olympiakos newspapers’ case seems to be interesting. The overall results on tone show that the only positive references to the party were in Olympiakos’s newspaper Gavros. Of the 12 issues of Gavros which reference Golden Dawn, 4 of them mentioned the party positively. On the other hand, Prasini refers to Golden Dawn, mostly negatively.
Concerning hypothesis four ( H4) which states: “after Golden Dawn entered the Greek Parliament in June 2012, daily sports newspapers refer to the party more often than before”, almost all the articles in the issues coded referred to Golden Dawn after the party entered the parliament in June 2012. The only reference to the party before the elections was from Olympiakos’s newspaper Gavros on 6/5/2012. Considering the frequency of mentions to Golden Dawn before and after its entry to the parliament in the issues coded, the results are the following: the party is mentioned only in the 3% of the issues coded before its entry to the Parliament. After entry to parliament, the frequency of references is larger, namely 20%. In the 31 coded issues before the party’s entry to the Parliament there is only one reference to Golden Dawn. The remaining 23 are found in the issues after entry to parliament.
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Table 4 Mentions of Golden Dawn before and after its entry to the parliament
Before After Total
Mentions yes 1 23 24
Mentions no 30 99 129
Total 31 122 153
Based on calculations using a contingency table from http://vassarstats.net the values were as follows: χ2
(1,153)= 3.46, p> 0.05, Cramer’s V = 0.17. There is no significant association between Golden Dawn entering into parliament and newspaper mentions of Golden Dawn. In this case the “p” value is 0.06, which is slightly higher than 0.05.So, it is plausible to assume that hypothesis 4 is also not confirmed.
Discussion – Conclusion
In this essay I investigated the connection between the media and the far-right. Using Greece as a case study, I focused on to what extent and how daily sports newspapers of the two major sports clubs refer to Golden Dawn. To test my hypotheses I did a content analysis of three daily sports newspapers (one of Panathinaikos and two of Olympiakos) in the period from April 2012 until November 2013. In order to address the research question I examined both the visibility and the tone Golden Dawn gets in these three newspapers. Theoretically, even though far-right and media effects have been extensively discussed by scholars, there were only a limited number of studies fitting my case, either because far-right in Southern Europe still
27
remains largely unexplored, or because little research has been done on the field of sports media and far-right.
Concerning the first hypothesis “in Olympiakos’ daily newspapers we expect to find more articles referring to Golden Dawn than in Panathinaikos daily newspapers”, it can be argued that there is no significant association between the newspapers and mentioning Golden Dawn. The second hypothesis, which states that “the number of articles referring to Golden Dawn in the daily sports newspapers is higher after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas” is rejected as well. In contrast to the previous studies discussed in theoretical background in this paper which claim that bad news sells and that audience’s interest is higher to bad news as well as surveys that prove that people tend to follow bad news more than good news, it can be argued that these findings do not apply in this case. The third hypothesis “It is expected that the murder of Pavlos Fyssas brought negative media exposure to Golden Dawn” is confirmed in light of my findings. Media indeed covered Golden Dawn more negatively after the event. Examining the fourth hypothesis “after Golden Dawn entered the Greek Parliament in June 2012, daily sports newspapers refer to the party more often than before”, it can be assumed that the entry of Golden Dawn in the Greek Parliament on June 2012 did not trigger the number of references to the party in the daily newspapers. It seems from the results that the frequency level of Golden Dawn’s references in the daily sport newspapers is almost equal before and after the party’s parliamentary representation.
But how robust are the findings? First of all, I would like to stress that the variation that I explain concerns only the 10% of all the newspaper issues that were released in the period April 2012- November 2013. Given this limited amount, the fact that I find references to Golden Dawn at all is suggestive. The fact that daily sports newspapers are mentioning a political party (no
28
matter its ideology) is significant. The main function of the sport newspapers in Greece is to inform their audience about sport events and news and updates around sports. References to politics seldom happen. However, in the issues coded Golden Dawn seems to be mentioned frequently enough, which is surprising considering that the content of these newspapers is primarily sports. So, based on the findings one general and quite broad conclusion can be drawn. A dramatic event can cause negative media attention (H3).
To my knowledge this study is the first of its kind. As such, it comes with considerable limitations. Three of them are listed here. First of all, I was unable to take into account all Greek daily sports newspapers. Instead, I studied only those of the two most popular sports clubs, Panathinaikos and Olympiakos. There are yet another ten sports newspapers, which could have been examined for mentions of far right parties. The selection of these newspapers was done in the basis of sales and popularity (Europenet, 2013). All three newspapers aim to inform the fans of Panathinaikos and Olympiakos, namely the two sport clubs with more fans than any other in Greece. Second, I could only examine Golden Dawn, because LAOS, the other Greek far right party, did not manage to get re-elected in the National Elections of 2012. Third, the available data consist of newspaper articles only. Relevant studies have shown that visibility has generally been larger in TV than in newspaper coverage (Hopmann et al., 2012, p. 246), so it can be argued that visibility is actually larger in TV sport shows as well. Maybe a further investigation of more newspapers or TV shows, internet and/or radio would provide me with more precise data on how and to what extent far right (and not only Golden Dawn) is referred to the Greek sports media.
Based on my findings, some recommendations can be made to students of far-right and media. To begin with, not only the effects of visibility and the tone but also the effect of framing
29
is important for such analyses (Chong & Druckman, 2007). If the effects of framing were examined as well, they could have given more insights into how Golden Dawn is mentioned in the newspapers and lead to more results concerning far right parties and media exposure. Also the time framing is rather important for such analyses. Maybe in this case a wider time frame before Golden Dawn got to Parliament and after Pavlos Fyssas’s murder could offer more data of both the visibility and the tone of the party in the newspapers examined.
In this paper I focused on the degree to which and how media cover far right parties. Future research could also address the question of whether these parties are framed in favorable or unfavorable ways. Connected to this, how similar parties are framed after their parliamentary representation? For example, less anti-immigrant, less extremist, more responsible? The framing of parties has hardly been studied (Schafraad, d’ Haenens, Scheepers & Wester, 2012), let alone the framing of far right parties. Studying of visibility, tone and framing in media coverage could lead the further discussion of the role of media, in this case sport media, as political actors.
On a final note, some of the findings seem to contradict some findings from previous research on the far-right. Although the newspapers examined in this paper seem to keep a distance from Golden Dawn, strangely enough the party seems to have an uprising development regardless of the negative publicity. Unlikely to other Western European countries where the association of the parties with violent acts seems to deter voters, in Greece the opposite happens (Ellinas, 2013). Golden Dawn’s electoral success to the EU elections in May 2014 seems to suggest this.
All in all, Golden Dawn does not seem to be a unique case. The results of the last European elections show that the far right is doing well all across Europe. This means that
30
further research is needed on the field of media effects and far-right. The research besides the analysis of the traditional mainstream media, could also take into consideration alternative media that possibly could connect with far right. Even though these parties seek visibility through mainstream media as previous research has shown, these parties often turn to alternative media in order to achieve this goal. The above paper discusses and indicates that references to the far right can be also found in outlets that have no relation to politics. Historically, far and extreme right wing parties’ tactic is to keep a distance from mainstream media, trying to communicate their ideas through alternative means. In this paper, some connections between sport newspapers and the far right were noticed, but of course further investigation is needed. Sports and politics could be associated with each other at some points, presenting an interesting field for future research.
31
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank first of all my thesis supervisor Joost van Spanje, because without his guidance this thesis project wouldn’t have been possible. I would also like to thank Thanos Sarris and Dimitris Psarras, who helped me conducting the research. On a final note I would like to thank Zara Bamdad ,Machi Vouimta and Santiago Saez for helping me edit this paper.
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Appendices
Appendix A: Codebook Content analysis
The coding, as with the coding of the causal reports, was performed manually. All newspapers coded are hard copies and can been found in the Greek Daily Press archive in Athens. The coding procedure took place there. The numbers indicate the sequence that had to be run through for each article that was to be coded.
A.1 - Selecting which articles must be coded.
All articles expect those listed below must be coded, as well as any political advertisements.
Articles that must not be coded are:
- Articles in Weather.
- Non-political advertising.
- Letters from readers
- Cartoons with no accompanying text.
A.2 - Step 1: Article characteristics.
First, the date of the newspaper must be added, as well as the newspaper title.
A.3 - Step 2: Coding Golden Dawn’s references.
40 A.4 - Step 3: Coding Issues
Though difficult, the easiest way of coding tone is asking the question: is this article good or bad news for the party?
For each article Golden Dawn is mentioned you indicate the tone with: (-2) exclusively negative, (-1) more negative than positive, (0) neutral or balanced, (1) more positive than negative, and (2) exclusively positive way. When the tone is unclear, simply use the “balanced or neutral category” (0). Keep on mind that you always have to address the question: How this article refers to Golden Dawn? Examples of negative and positive mentions are provided in the tables below.
41 Examples of more negative than positive mentions (-1): -An article that is clearly critical of Golden Dawn.
-An article in which the electoral score of Golden Dawn is said to be diminishing
-Articles that blame Golden Dawn, associate the party in a negative way with e.g scandals, corruption etc.
-The article or somebody in the article argues that one’s team or Greece has had no kind of benefits from Golden Dawn.
Examples of more positive than negative mentions (1):
-Generally speaking, any political add will mention Golden Dawn in a positive tone (note that other politicians / parties may be attacked in the add, resulting in a negative mention).
-The article or somebody in the article argues that one’s team or Greece (as a state in total) has had any kind of benefits from Golden Dawn.
- The situation in one’s team or Greece has improved or will (potentially) improve because of Golden Dawn
-Articles in which the electoral score of a politician is said to be on the rise. -Generally positive articles towards Golden Dawn.
Examples of exclusively negative mentions (-2):
-The article presents Figures, and/or statistics that indicate that one’s team or Greece has not benefited from Golden Dawn
Examples of exclusively positive mentions (2):
-The article presents figures, and/or statistics that indicate that one’s team or Greece has benefited from Golden Dawn
