The Irish Press and populism in Ireland

This thesis draws on critical perspectives in media and development studies m order to explain the formation, evolution and decline of one of Ireland's national daily newspapers, the Irish Press. From the mid-1970's onward, media and development studies was dominated by the conceptual framework provided by Dependency theory. The crisis of dependency approaches in the mid-1980's led some writers towards a re-orientation of policy studies away from the question of external structural influences and towards a new consideration of class conflicts and the inter-relations between the state, industry and the media. In particular, the work of Latin American theorists Cardoso and Faletto wasre interpreted within media studies to provide a model for concrete studies of specific sociohistorical formations and their interaction with the institutions of the mass media in late industrialising countries. This thesis proposes a critical reading of the model of Cardoso and Faletto with reference to "nationalpopular" phases of development and shows how some of the insights can be used to explain the rise and fall of the Irish Press in Ireland. Hence, it possible to draw an analogy between populism in Latin America and the case of Ireland in the 1930's. The empirical section of the thesis seeks to demonstrate, at one end the political circumstances underlying the foundation of the Irish Press in 1931 and, at another, the construction of a populist discourse of development in the Irish Press. It shows how this discourse sought to incorporate sections of the industrial bourgeoisie, the working class and marginalised rural groups within the Fianna Fail project of 'tate-assisted industrialisation. Finally, the thesis consideis how the multiple contradictions of this populist projet t shaped and influenced the development of the Irish Press from the 1930's to the present In conclusion, the thesis seeks to show that the democratic expectation of the populist era and the radical challenge of the Irish Press were undermined not simply by economic dependency but by the tensions inherent within the populist project