Digital authoritarianism through discursive closures: The case of Gonzalo Lira as reported by U.S. and Ukrainian news media
This paper analyzes the media representations of the case of Gonzalo Lira, an American blogger of Chilean descent who died in a Ukrainian prison after being charged with producing and disseminating materials that justified Russia’s Special Military Operation. Investigating how Lira’s story was reported by Ukrainian and U.S. digital media, the article uses the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to analyze media texts; it also employs Nico Carpentier’s model of the discursive-material knot to evaluate the results of the investigation. They show that the majority of the media outlets with the largest audiences ignored the topic altogether — it was found that only 18 U.S. media and 5 news outlets in Ukraine covered Lira’s story within one week after his death. Meanwhile, the framing used by every outlet reporting on the issue was episodic. Even the U.S. media sympathetic to Lira presented his case without considering it in the broader context of increasingly authoritari...