Kurt Adam Sengul

Macquarie University · Department of Media, Music, Communication & Cultural Studies

The purpose of this entry is to introduce readers to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and explore its value in the study of political communication. The entry will start by defining CDA and outlining some of its most prominent approaches and key theorists (e.g. Ruth Wodak). It will then detail the theoretical underpinnings and key tenets of CDA, f...

This paper critically interrogates the role of news media in mainstreaming, normalizing and amplifying contemporary far-right political actors, parties, and movements in the twenty-first century. Through a critical interdisciplinary literature review and two qualitative case studies of high-profile media interviews with former Trump administration...

This chapter examines the use of political humor in the communicative and discursive repertoire of the Australian far right. Specifically, this chapter critically analyzes the co-constitutive and mutually informing relationship between far right political humor and Australian culture. Existing research has demonstrated the effective use of humor an...

As critical scholars of race implore us to consider the structural and systemic nature of racism and to move beyond individualistic and attitudinal understandings, the proliferation of the global far right has reinforced a ‘bad apple’ view of racism within the scholarship. The purpose of this chapter is to offer a reflexive account of conducting a...

In this article I critically examine the role of the Australian far-right in the racialisation of the COVID-19 pandemic. A Discourse-Historical Analysis of (n = 133) Facebook posts from Australia's most prominent far-right populist party, Pauline Hanson's One Nation, revealed a range of discursive strategies, linguistic and rhetorical devices, and...

This article critically examines the communicative and policy-framing response of Australia's Victorian government to the state's growing crisis of far-right extremism. Through a critical discourse analysis of the Victorian Andrews and Allan Labor governments' political communication from 2021 to 2023, we explain how the government discursively res...

The role of fear and anger in far-right communication is well-established. However, far-right actors are not mad all the time. As A.J. Bauer notes, "their feelings of racial and ideological superiority are often experienced as pleasure, joy, or levity". Humour can play an important role in far-right communications. Here, we examine the use of humou...

This chapter presents a comparative analysis of contemporary populism in Australia and Italy, reflecting on the similarities and differences of both. In Italy, populist parties have been playing a mainstream role since 1992. The country’s four populist parties have been in power, almost continuously, since 2010. They express different populist feat...

This paper critically examines the use of online humor and ridicule to promote and normalize far-right exclusionary discourses. Through a critical qualitative study of the Please Explain miniseries, a series of thirty-four short web cartoons produced by Australian far-right populist party, Pauline Hanson's One Nation, we explore the strategic use o...

This article examines one of the longest-standing populist radical right parties outside of Europe: Pauline Hanson's One Nation. The article outlines the party's development and position in the Australian political landscape, before explaining how it articulates the ideological features of the PRR (nativism, authoritarianism and populism); how thes...

The purpose of this chapter is to critically explore the use of debasing and ridiculing discourse by Australia’s most prominent far-right populist politician, Pauline Hanson. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this chapter analyzes four case studies that demonstrate the strategic use of debasement as a discursive strategy. This chapter a...

The proliferation, mainstreaming and normalisation of the far-right globally has sharpened our focus to the ways that historically powerful groups are increasingly being constructed as victims. This discursive construction of victimhood has particularly centred around two key themes: white and male victimhood. As Australia’s most prominent far-righ...

The purpose of this thesis is to critically explore the communicative, discursive and performative dimensions of Australian far-right populist politician Pauline Hanson’s political communication in the 45th Parliament of Australia (2016-2019). As suggested by Feldman and Jackson, ‘to holistically understand the contemporary far-right, we need to ‘b...

The purpose of this chapter is to critically explore the strategiesStrategy employed by journalists when interviewing the contemporary far-rightFar-right. Drawing on a Critical Discourse AnalysisCritical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (CDA) of three television interviews with Australia’s most prominent far-right populistPopulistpolitician, Pauline Hanson...

Drawing on a multimodal approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this research critically examines the 2017 "burqa stunt" of Australian far-right populist politician, Pauline Hanson. Adapting Scalmer's (2002) conceptualisation of the "political gimmick", this paper makes the following arguments: Firstly, that Hanson's "burqa stunt" must be un...

Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires of 2019–2020 were an unprecedented crisis in scale and impact. In response, Australian political leaders employed a collective understanding of purportedly unique cultural tropes in their rhetoric to make sense of the crisis to the public. Here we explore how and why these cultural discourses are utilized during m...

This paper critically examines the "It's OK to be White" Senate motion made by Australian far-right politician Pauline Hanson in 2018. Deliberately innocuous, the "It's OK to be white" slogan was designed by online white supremacist groups with the intention of "triggering liberals" and provoking outrage. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, I d...

This brief contribution explores how the 2020 COVID-19 crisis has been exploited by Australian populist radical right politician, Pauline Hanson. In particular, I discuss how Hanson, through her political communication on Facebook, has used the COVID-19 crisis to prosecute her longstanding nativist policies on issues like immigration. I further dis...

With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the public sphere in recent months and no aspect of social and political life left unaffected, it seems almost natural that this unprecedented public health crisis would soon be reflected on discussions around the other buzzword of our time: populism. This report aims at providing a concise yet rigorous global...

This paper critically examines the discursive construction of fear, crises, threat and dangerous Others in Pauline Hanson’s populist political communication from 2016–2018. Specifically, it looks at how a politics of fear manifests through the construction of Islam and Muslims as Others who pose an existential threat to Australia’s security and ‘cu...

The purpose of this paper is to showcase critical discourse analysis (CDA) in political communication research through an empirical case study of right-wing populist discourse in Australia. It is argued here that critical discourse analysis is a valuable resource for the field of political communication in understanding an increasingly complex medi...

This article critically reviews key interdisciplinary research on populism, focusing specifically on its various conceptualisations and the debates occurring within scholarship on its complex relationship with communication, democracy, and truth. These issues have been prone to haphazard analysis, with calls for a more nuanced treatment of the demo...

The primary aim of this research was to explore the public relations positioning used in the debate over electricity privatisation in the 2015 NSW state election. Guided by positioning analysing as proposed by Harré and Slocum (2003) and James (2014), this research sought to not only identify acts of positioning, but also to evaluate their effectiv...