“Popular violence”, neoliberal-authoritarian ideology, and illusio in the journalistic field: television coverage of the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests), France, 2018

Abstract

This article analyses the reasons why French television media focused, through the construction of the event, on the “popular violence” attributed to the protesters and on the security response to the Yellow Vests movement in 2018. Based on a corpus of news reports and headlines compiled from the INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel), the television coverage of the protest period is studied using critical discourse analysis (CDA). It emerges that television narratives structured around the Yellow Vests and their violent demonstrations correspond to the prevailing social hegemony but are also characteristic of the doxa of the journalistic field (within the framework of the illusio), using familiar scripts and topoi emblematic of neoliberal and authoritarian discourse, guarantor of social order. In conclusion, it highlights the fruitfulness of crossing discursive approaches to hegemony (through analysis in “social blocks”) and the concept of play within the field, in the Bourdieusian vision of the illusio.