Digital Media in Greece: A Cyberconflict Approach

This project examines the influence of digital media on the contentious politics in Greece, as well as, the political economic sphere’s impact on the formation of the digital mediascape. The research concentrated on the parallel evolution of the (debt) crisis and the digital communications in Greece, by examining four different online media platforms and covering a seven-years period (2008; 2011-12; 2015). The research employed cyberconflict theory to situate online mediated conflict (sociopolitical and ethnoreligious cyberconflict) in a geosociopolitical and historical context, indicating the dynamic relation between the online media and the offline world. This research suggests the use of online data for the examination of cyberconflict and updates the framework, so to efficiently support the study of social media platforms. The research reflected the evolution of the sociopolitical debates and the political transformations emerged in the Greek crisis context (anti-/pro- austerity debate to the euro-vs-drachma/or grexit discussion, the anti-/pro-governmental debate, and the anti-/pro-European discourse). The pre-crisis era and discourse online, had already indicate the debates, which later, shaped the crisis discourse online and offline. Then, the SYRIZA network rides the mobilization wave of Aganaktismenoi, offering a platform and promising representation of all the included actors. During the referendum. polarization helped to the formation of less fluid identities online and offline, which further developed focusing on the division between the political Us and Them. In the crisis context, the internet used as a magnifying glass, pointing out conflict, opposition and supporting polarization. The research concludes that, indeed, digital media use supported the development of collective action and alternative structures of mobilizations, as well as political discourse, challenging both the dominant media and the traditional political structures. However, online media discourse didn’t manage to dominate public sphere, but instead it resulted to fragmentation. Overall, online media reproduced existed polarization and historical discursive continuities and limitations.