JOUR90027 Chap.10 Populism and Politically Constructed Crises
Populism and Politically Constructed Crises
Week 10 asks how to report crises that are politically constructed. This chapter uses Benjamin Moffitt's argument that populists perform crisis, building on Hay's distinction between failure and crisis, and sets out his six steps from identifying a failure to keeping the crisis going.
It turns those steps and essay prompt 9 into a reporting method, then applies them to two population 'crises' fifty years apart and to the framing of refugees in Europe as invaders, terrorists and criminals, ending with a model paragraph on credibility under politically charged narratives. Along the way it connects demographic coverage to the Harvard Gazette report on Claudia Goldin's explanation of falling birth rates.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Failure versus crisis: Hay's distinction
- 02
Moffitt's six steps for performing a crisis
- 03
A five-step method for reporting a claimed crisis
- 04
Two population crises: The Population Bomb and falling birth rates
- 05
Refugees framed as invaders, terrorists and criminals
- 06
Essay prompt 9: credibility and politically charged narratives
Worked example · free
Separating a failure from a performed crisis
- 1Identify the underlying failure that could be measured, such as housing supply and prices.
- 1Show the elevation to crisis and the framing of newcomers as those responsible.
- 1Identify the simple solution offered with strong leadership.
- 1Recommend coverage that reports the claim as a claim and tests the causal link with evidence.
Key terms
- Spectacularization of failure
- The spectacularization of failure is Moffitt's phrase for the elevation of a failure into a crisis that demands immediate, decisive action.
- Failure
- A failure, in Hay's distinction used by Moffitt, is the structural precondition for a crisis, which becomes a crisis only once widely perceived and mediated.
- Threatening homogeneous collective
- A threatening homogeneous collective is the representation of refugees and migrants as one undifferentiated threat, which Cooper, Blumell and Bunce report in news studies.
- Simple solutions
- Simple solutions, in Moffitt's fifth step, are the crude, immediate fixes populists offer for a crisis, often by removing the group blamed for it.
Populism and Politically Constructed Crises FAQ
What does it mean to perform a crisis?
Moffitt argues populists do not just respond to crises but stage them: they identify a failure, elevate it to a crisis with urgency, blame an enemy of the people, use media to spread the performance, offer simple solutions and keep the crisis going.
How should journalists report a constructed crisis?
Essay prompt 9 names three duties: verify information, present balanced perspectives and resist sensationalism. In practice that means separating the measurable failure from the claim, testing the evidence, finding missing voices and attributing crisis language to its maker.
How were refugees framed in the 2015 coverage?
The lecture cites research finding refugees represented as a threatening homogeneous collective, often through metaphors of waves and floods, and illustrates frames that cast them as invaders, terrorists and criminals.
Is every crisis claim populist?
No. Moffitt distinguishes populist performance from ordinary crisis politics by the centrality of 'the people' and the need to perpetuate the crisis. A government announcing austerity may share some steps without those two features.
Why does the lecture discuss population?
Because the same subject has been framed as opposite emergencies. In 1968 The Population Bomb declared the battle to feed humanity over; by 2024 coverage warned of falling birth rates, such as 0.72 in South Korea. Separating measurement from alarm is the reporting skill at stake.
Assessment move
Learn Moffitt's six steps well enough to recognise them in a speech or headline, then practise on one current claim each week. For prompt 9, prepare two cases with different outcomes, one where outlets amplified a performed crisis and one where they tested it, so your essay can argue what responsible coverage changes rather than only condemning the bad case.
Practise rewriting one alarmist headline a week so that it attributes the claim and reports the measurable fact. Use the Week 10 essay workshop to test whether your chosen example really shows the two features Moffitt says mark the populist version, the centrality of the people and a crisis that never ends.
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