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Performing Economics: How Economics Discourse Gets Enacted In Radio News Interviews, Brendan O'Rourke, Joseph Fitzgerald

Conference papers

This paper analyses the performance of economics expertise on the main radio news show in Ireland. It does this through an analysis of the discourse used by known economics experts. This analysis will illustrate how the expert constructs a societally-legitimised economics discourse that builds their identity as an economics expert, constructs a particular representation of the economy, and gains societal legitimacy.

In advance of the Great Recession, the media played a key role in the prominence of economics expertise in public discourse (Mercille 2013, p.1). Both the lack of warning of impending economic crash and the elite nature of experts …