Of little importance in the ballots, the Bloc Identitaire (BI) and CasaPound Italia (CPI) both invest much effort in the media. For them, media visibility is crucial to ensuring survival and building political legitimacy. But is all publicity good publicity? Do they adapt to media logics to craft visibility? To examine the complex interplay between media coverage and the success of far-right organizations, we use a mixed-methods approach to compare similar political organizations active in different media systems since 2003. A political claim analysis based on the content of six national and local newspapers (Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, and Il Messaggero) maps the visibility of BI and CPI and of the issues that they politicize. An in-depth qualitative analysis of the content of all articles illustrates how information about the groups diffuses in the media as well as the tone of the coverage. Participant observation was used to explore how leaders and activists professionalize offline and online communication to target journalists.
- media
- France
- Italy
- far right
- professionalization
- dependence