To comprehend the functioning of 'gender ideology', numerous approaches that unpack and investigate its role in current anti-gender mobilizations have been proposed. However, despite acknowledging the discursive aspects of 'gender ideology', a gap persists in scrutinizing the internal structure of its discourse, distinct from the perspective focusing predominantly on anti-gender actors and coalition building among conservative and right-wing forces. Our research aims to contribute to these debates by delving deeper into the internal structuring of anti-gender discourse, using the conceptual perspective of framing. Undertaking the analysis of 'frame repertoires' we point to the regularity in frame composition in the structure of 'gender ideology' as the master frame of anti-gender discourse. We identified four mechanisms of regularity, i.e. blending, simplifying, time-shifting, and relabelling which reveal how these structured discursive blocks traverse different topics and distort gender equality claims. Notably, our theoretical perspective proposes that the master frame of 'gender ideology' encompasses diverse themes, issues, and areas not because it is an 'empty signifier', but rather because it is built on a solid and regular structure that allows it to remain consistent across different themes. As such, it functions as a neoconservative symbolic violence.

This study examines the transformation of the Slovenian media field from the press crisis of the early 2010s to the present, focusing on horizontal and vertical integration strategies employed by media entities and their effects on public communication in an increasingly competitive attention economy. The research situates Slovenia’s media system within broader regional trends, including de-Westernization characterized by Western media disinvestment, the emergence of domestic oligarchs acquiring foreign ownership, and the proliferation of politically instrumentalized media networks (party press). Conceptually, the study contrasts the political economy of “hybrid” media companies—shaped by technological advancements, competitive pressures, and profit-driven imperatives—with the normative role of media as a democratic pillar that ensures credible information and fosters public participation. This tension highlights the inherent conflict between commercial priorities, which emphasize revenue and market dominance, and democratic ideals, which envision the media as a watchdog and a forum for public debate. Employing social network analysis—an underutilized method in media ownership research—the study reveals a highly concentrated media market with significant shifts in ownership over the last decade. Findings show a decline in print media, substantial growth in online media, and increasing ownership consolidation around a small number of individuals, resulting in a more centralized media landscape. By comparing data from 2010 and 2022, the study identifies key media clusters that dominate the field, including local conglomerates, regional media giants, and politically affiliated media networks, emphasizing their visibility and influence in shaping the Slovenian media landscape.

Across contemporary democracies, authoritarian populism is increasingly operating through media systems that combine traditional and digital platforms, yet research is failing to pay sufficient attention to how control is reconfigured under digital conditions. This study asks how authoritarian populists deploy a shared authoritarian playbook - a repertoire of legal, economic, institutional and discursive strategies - to appropriate media while preserving the appearance of democratic institutions. Drawing on authoritarian populism and emphasis on its ideological core, media capture is conceptualised as both a mode of governance and a process of ideological normalisation. The analysis shows how interventions in media ownership, regulation and public broadcasting are reinforced through online harassment and coordinated practices of delegitimisation. A comparative analysis of Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary focuses on these dynamics within Central and Eastern Europe, revealing shared patterns and variation in the deployment of the authoritarian playbook. In Hungary, Orb & aacute;n centralised media under pro-government control and reinforced this through systematic online harassment; in Slovenia, Jan & scaron;a defunded critical outlets, expanded biased media and pursued digital delegitimisation; and in Croatia, media capture operates through clientelism, regulatory interference and online attacks. Together, these cases show how authoritarian populists consolidate and normalise control across hybrid media.

This article examines the emotional dynamics underpinning journalists' professional transitions, positioning affect as central to the modality of governance in the media. We address a gap in understanding how journalists experience and manage work-related emotional dynamics throughout their professional trajectories. Drawing on the concepts of affective governmentality and manufacturing consent, we conceptualize affect as socially and institutionally regulated, embedded in governance structures that organize the media field and its work processes. Based on fifteen narrative-biographical interviews with journalists in Slovenia we show that professional trajectories are shaped not only by structural and economic pressures but also by affective attachments that regulate journalism. Emotional investments such as passion, resilience, and civic responsibility enable journalists to endure precarity and restructuring, yet they also normalize exploitation by converting enthusiasm into obligation and reframing burnout as professional commitment. At the same time, moments of resistance, refusal, and exit reveal the limits of affective governmentality, showing how emotional investments can both sustain and destabilize journalistic careers. This study contributes to media research by foregrounding how journalistic work is governed through affect.

This study explores media instrumentalization in Central and Eastern Europe through the perceptions of journalists in Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia. Using semi-structured interviews, the article argues for a historical perspective on media instrumentalization in post-socialist contexts, considering the legacy of transition and the impact of authoritarian populist rule, while emphasizing the intertwined nature of economic interests and political power. The research offers fresh insights into the mechanisms and consequences of media instrumentalization, highlighting significant challenges to media autonomy and journalistic integrity, including issues of polarization, de-professionalization, and loss of public trust.

In this article, we propose a theoretical reconceptualization of the hybrid media system model by introducing structural and material conditions of contemporary media sphere with reference to critical theory. Our main thesis is based on the principle of historicization and the concept of social relations. Using this framework, we demonstrate that those who wield dominant power within the neoliberal capitalist economy also have influence over the logic of the hybrid media system. Following the premise that the “agency” is constrained by hierarchical social relations, we enhance the hybrid media system model to explicate not only cases where digital media have enabled successful civic activism leading to social change but also cases where newer digital technologies reinforce pre-existing social relations of power and subordination. The main contribution of the article is to show that critical theory strengthens the explanatory power of the current eclectic-empirical media models without fundamentally undermining their foundations.

This concluding chapter explores the transformative potential of social movement organizations across Europe, particularly in response to intersecting crises. By analysing ten cities in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, and Switzerland, the authors of this book demonstrate how movements reframe and repoliticize solidarity, emphasizing its role as a relational and contentious practice. The book highlights how organizations working on housing, migrant rights, and care work challenge neoliberal policies, resist far-right backlashes, and create new discourses and practices of solidarity. These movements critique the commodification of social goods, advocate for systemic changes, and promote collective organizing and mutual aid. Through frame analysis, this book reveals how these groups not only diagnose social problems but also propose radical alternatives, shaping new political imaginaries and collective identities. The conclusion underscores the importance of solidarity as both a practice of mutual aid and a tool for challenging exclusionary policies and neoliberal governance, ultimately contributing to a more just and inclusive society.

In response to the multiple global crises and current challenges facing European societies, new practices of solidarity and citizenship have emerged at the local scale, deeply rooted in experiences of social struggle. Arguing that research addressing the local scale and its multiscalar entanglements can be useful in addressing the pressing challenges of our time, this book analyses how social movement organizations and civil society initiatives across ten European cities (in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, and Switzerland) reimagine and transform solidarities in three contentious social fields that have been particularly impacted by these crises: migrant rights, housing, and care. The debate in this book is focused on contemporary movements’ framing of social issues in the context of multiple, intersecting crises, thus intervening in the fields of social movement studies, urban studies, political communication, and frame analysis, as well as broader theoretical and public debates on concepts of solidarity and citizenship. Featuring an international group of scholars working on social movements, solidarity, and citizenship, this book investigates how dynamics of the polycrisis not only generate new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of solidarity, political activism, and citizenship.

This study explores the structural imbrications between gendered news media ownership and masculinist authoritarian populism from the lens of a feminist political economy of communication. The existing literature offers useful insights into the authoritarian-capitalist restructuring of media but fewer into how these processes are gendered. Drawing on primary data and secondary resources of ownership ties in Austria, Slovenia, and Turkey, we explore the masculinist configuration of news media ownership in countries that saw the rise of authoritarian-populist politics in recent years, albeit in varying degrees. We employ the concept of structural masculinism and the perspective of feminist political economy of communication to reveal the ways in which news media ownership structures are gendered. We argue that female underrepresentation coupled with patriarchal family business models, ownership concentration, and clientelist-masculinist ties between politics and the media create a fertile ground for media influence and control by masculinist authoritarian populists.

The analytical current of researching emotions and affectivity has accelerated in the last decade, examining the social dynamics of emotions, which has also been referred to as the 'affective turn' in late capitalism. This paper contributes to the theorization of the affective in the field of social movement analysis, which has remained a neglected field of inquiry in attempts towards a 'normalization of affects,' beyond the traditional binaries (rational-emotional, public-private) in addressing social issues. We consider emotions to be part of the social and cultural processes that assist social movements; they widen the scope of new imaginaries and forms of belonging. For this reason, we place emotions at the focus of analysis, as discursively expressed 'moral batteries' that foster action. Empirically, we conduct frame analysis by examining public documents in selected cities in five European countries (Denmark, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland) on topics related to migration. We compare the framing processes across these multiple local sites, and we investigate if and to what an extent the documents exhibit affective communication, which distinctly impacts the documents use, and how these affects form movements' 'affective discourse': i.e. how emotions are attached to formulating problems and solutions in movement's public appeals with respect to migration and migration policy. Our findings show how movements use different strategies in mobilizing affects. On the one hand, they engage in empathy and compassion with migrants vis-& agrave;-vis border and detention regimes, and on the other hand, they exhibit anger and frustration when discussing harmful actions taken by state officials. This contributes to a high degree of 'affective resemblance' among solidarity social movements.

The argument for this article rests on exploring the significance of emotions and emotion-related forms of journalism that have historically been dismissed as improper reporting and flawed journalism. So far the emerging research on emotionality in the media, marking the so-called “affective turn” in communications, has mostly analysed emotional media performance in relation to its influences on the public. This article complements the existing research by exploring journalists’ own views and narrations on emotions with the aim of unravelling emotionality as a vital emerging journalistic practice in a hybrid media environment. Results of semi-structured interviews with journalists in Slovenia, where the media developed at the cross-roads of fierce commercialization and political instrumentalization, show how they craft emotionality as professional journalistic conduct, articulating emotions as “special effects” with potential for motivation and engagement, but also revealing criticism in using emotions when their only purpose is to boost a commercial interest, thus feeding the attention economy model of media development.

This article explores how the combination of the public health crisis and the authoritarian government of Janez Jansa's Slovenian Democratic Party, along with its tendency to politically instrumentalize and economically devastate the media, impacted journalism during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of central concern are how journalists understand their roles in communication relating to Covid-19 and how these roles are shaped when the pandemic and trends towards democratic backsliding coincide in time. The analysis is conducted in the theoretical frameworks of crisis communication, authoritarian influences on the media, and journalistic roles, while methodologically it is based on individual interviews in which journalists reflect on their professionalism amidst the pandemic and rising authoritarian control over media. The findings show that the facilitative role revealed in existing research of media functioning during a public health crisis may be interwoven with a watchdog role challenged by authoritarian tendencies. Indeed, interviews suggested the coexistence of general journalistic roles at a time of dual crisis, when the sense of responsibility to facilitate measures to confine the spread of the disease is coupled with critical monitoring, (self)reflection, and attempts to restore professional standards in both public and private media.

Studies have highlighted differences between right-wing populism in Western and Central Eastern Europe but suggested that discourses have been converging since the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015. This article examines this claim by focusing on right-wing populist frames and affective communication on migration in Austria and Slovenia. Taking a communication-centred approach, the study is based on a critical frame analysis of 70 speeches from far-right to centre-right parties in parliamentary debates on migration between 2015 and 2019. The results show that right-wing populist discourses in the two adjacent countries have aligned in appealing to affects, particularly to fear and in framing migration as a threat to security and culture. Despite differences in mobilizing affects, the findings indicate a mutual alignment of right-wing populism beyond borders, signalling a potential risk of a broader right-wing populist bloc unified by fear of migration.

The integration of new technologies into sex work has significantly transformed the industry, creating virtual marketplaces and facilitating new forms of sex work. This article examines the impact of information-communication technologies (ICTs) on sex work, highlighting the dual nature of digitalization as both a catalyst for empowerment and a source of new challenges for sex workers. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach that includes online surveys and focus groups with sex workers in Slovenia, the research explores the professional experiences, opportunities, and risks faced by sex workers in both online and offline settings. The findings reveal that while digital platforms offer increased visibility, autonomy, and access to broader markets, they also introduce risks such as privacy violations, digital violence, and techno-stress. Moreover, the study challenges the optimistic view of ICTs in sex work by uncovering how digitalization can perpetuate existing inequalities and introduce novel forms of exploitation and stigma. Through comparative analysis, this paper contributes to the discourse on sex work in the digital age, emphasizing the need for nuanced policies and support systems that address the complexities of sex work within the framework of platform capitalism.

This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussions on authoritarian populism and the media, from the lens of the political economy of ownership. In contrast to studies that consider the link between media and authoritarian populism by focusing on the discursive structures of populist communication, this study analyses changes in the structure of news media ownership in four European countries that have been subject to authoritarian populism. By employing social network analysis, a methodology rarely used in media ownership research, we reveal how news media ownership concentration as well as changes in ownership structures have provided favorable conditions for the rise and endurance of authoritarian populism. Our study covers ownership developments during the period 2000 to 2020, in Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Turkey where authoritarian populist tendencies have been evident, albeit to varying degrees. Conclusions are drawn to illustrate how authoritarian populist actors in the sample countries not only capitalize on prevailing news media ownership structures, but also proactively intervene in ownership relations in order to increase influence over the diffusion of information.

Approaching populism at the intersection of ideology and discourse, in this article we analyse how politicians in Slovenia responded to migration during and after the 'refugee crisis' (2015-2019). Based on a frame analysis of parliamentary debates that addressed migration, we explore differences and similarities in the speeches of different politicians and identify 'populist frames' that reveal how various actors speak about migration. We argue that distinct features of populist communication extend from exclusionary, ethnonationalistic populist frames to inclusionary solidary discourses, reflecting the transversal political logic of populism that fits the ideological maps of political actors.

This chapter argues that within the post-democratic condition, the populism of political parties and their leaders is closely intertwined with the media. It addresses communication as a political dimension affected by populism as it is identified by the editors and examines the role of media. The chapter focuses on conceptualizations of populism that recognize the institutional, structural, and policy changes in the media system as pivotal to understand the flourishing of populism and media populism in contemporary societies. It discusses conceptual and methodological debates on populism by shifting the focus to structural changes in the mediascape in recent decades. Methodologically, multi-scale analysis exposes the transformation of mass media conditions in recent decades in order to show where the developments comply with populism or where they have made it easier for populism to flourish.