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I-Pistemology: Changing truth claims in popular and political culture

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I-PISTEMOLOGY: CHANGING TRUTH CLAIMS IN POPULAR AND POLITICAL CULTURE

Liesbet van Zoonen

Loughborough, July 19, 2011

Forthcoming in: European Journal of Communication, 27(1) - 2012

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘Everybody lies’, Dr. Gregory House – House

‘Trust no one’, Agent Mulder – X-files

‘I have spoken ... nothing but the truth’ – Geert Wilders

Today’s popular and political cultures are pervaded by epistemological suspicion, i.e. the
belief that claims to truth and knowledge are tied to particular social and material interests,
and therefore not to be believed, or at least taken with skepsis. While such a trope was
once particular to feminist, critical and postmodern theory , it now seems to have turned
into a dominant mindset1, at least that is what I will argue in this article. I will also argue
that such suspicion has gone hand in hand with the emergence of the self as the source and
arbiter of all truth. While, in this volume, Stef Aupers discusses how conspiracy theorists
know that ‘the truth is out there’, my argument is that there is a simultaneous assumption
that ‘the truth is in there’; in the self, in personal experiences and feelings, in subjective
judgment, in individual memory. I will introduce the notion of ‘I-pistemology’ to capture this
turn into the self as the origin of all truth. Others have used different terms, often with a
negative connotation: ‘truthiness’, ‘post-fact society’, ‘fact-free politics’, ‘age of suspicion’
and ‘civic narcissism’ are only a few of the buzz words that have emerged around the
personal truths that feed and dominate current political debates. In everyday life, I-
pistemology has expressed itself in phenomena that have also often raised criticism, for
example, in the still growing appeal of spirituality and new age movements, or the popularity
of reality TV programs inviting the personal assessments of audiences of true and false,
authenticity and fake in the candidates. Critics of these developments would probably see I-
pistemology as ‘postmodernism gone wrong’ 2, and much relevant political and cultural
theory has indeed been outright judgmental. Sennet (1974, p. 8) provided an early criticism
when he claimed that ‘the personal relevance of other people and outside acts is posed so
repetitively, that a clear perspective of those persons and events in themselves is obscured.’

1
I am well aware that this is an argument that is particular to Northern-Europe and the US, and may not apply
to other developed and developing countries and cultures.
2
As Cornell Sandvoss suggested, tongue-in-cheek, at the EJC seminar from which this issue originated.

1
Similarly, MacIntyre (1981) would see the self-as-the-source-of-truth as evidence of
‘emotivism’, which makes truth and morality a matter of individual taste and feeling.
However, I want to suspend the normative and political assessments of these developments
and analyse, instead, more precisely what I-pistemology entails, how it manifests itself and
how it is articulated with different kinds of media and politics. Whether, how and in which
contexts it works as a positive or negative force in politics, culture and society is – as I will
conclude - an empirical question that needs further, specific research.

Declines of trust in official knowledge?

Knowledge institutions like universities and other research and teaching institutions, but also
governments and media depend on people trusting their facts and outcomes to be relevant,
impartial and replicable; in other words they expect the information coming out of these
institutions to be true. There are many separate signs that such trust is no longer self-
evident. When, for instance, the Dutch government introduced a vaccination scheme in
2009 for girls of 12 and 13 years old against the HPV virus that is one of the causes of
cervical cancer, it met with widespread and unexpected resistance from mothers and
members of the public. They contested the information of the government about the
necessity and safety of the procedure, and produced alternative facts about the dangers of
the vaccine. While such vaccination controversies have been common, the effect of this
particular one was huge, and in the end only about 44 % of Dutch girls were vaccinated in
the first year of the program.3 Another sign of traditional knowledge institutions being under
siege, comes from the continuous controversies about the causes of global warming,
especially poignant in the ‘Climategate’ scandal in the UK: researchers of the University of
East Anglia were accused of manipulating academic results to prove that human behaviour
and pollution is the root cause of global warming. Although an independent review
exonerated the researchers, it was argued as well that trust in science had received a severe
blow (Russel, 2010). A third example of official knowledge being distrusted can be seen in
the continuous and sometimes successful attempts of proponents of intelligent design to
add their version of the emergence of the human race to the standard biology curricula, in a
straight challenge to evolution theory. Creationism is not reserved to the United States but
has its supporters in Europe as well, and such is their influence that the Council of Europe
found it necessary in 2007 to issue a resolution in which it urged its 47 member states to
firmly oppose including creationism in science and biology classes.4 It is quite possible to
expand this list of examples: history is another contested field in which the challenges to
official knowledge range from denying that the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide took

3
Information of the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezonheid en Milieu (RIVM, Government Institute for Health and
the environment), responsible for the vaccination program:
http://www.rivm.nl/Bibliotheek/Algemeen_Actueel/Nieuwsberichten/2010/Opkomst_HPV_vaccinatie_tot_nu_
toe_53
4
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2809619,00.html, last accessed May 19, 2011.

2
place, to more innocent objections to national historic canons; medicine and the growing
belief in alternative therapies could be added as another symptom of a waning public trust
in what official knowledge might achieve.

Yet, despite these signs of public disbelief occurring with some regularity and intensity,
many statistics about trust in science (e.g. Critchley, 2008), education (reference) or
medicine (reference) are relatively stable and high (reference), although – in line with the
current cultural climate - none of these numbers are uncontroversial. The distinction
between primary and secondary trust, as made in Stephen Coleman’s contribution to this
volume, may explain the paradox of a general trust in the main knowledge institutions, but
specified distrust in some of the things they claim to be true. This distinction would also
explain why trust in government is generally declining in many European countries
(Eurobarometer 74) and the US (reference) but trust in democracy is relatively stable. Trust
in media is a similarly complicated issue. Longitudinal data from the Eurobarometer show
that trust in media varies per country and per medium but has been relatively stable over
the past decade. In successive surveys the following question was asked: “I would like to ask
you a question about how much trust you have in certain institutions. For each of the
following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?” In figure 1
below, the data for radio, television the press and the internet for aggregate of the EU
countries are presented5:

Figure 1. Trust in media in EU

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

TV Radio Press Internet

Figure 1 shows clearly that radio is most often said to be trusted by about 60 % of the
people, while the internet and the press are least often said to be trusted (around 40%), with
television in between. With the exception of the 2008 to 2009 period, there is no systematic
downward trend in the percentage of people saying to trust particular kinds of media. There
are, inevitably, significant national variations. As Figure Two shows, in the UK, most notably,

5
The data were collected from the Eurobarometer Interactive Search System, which enables different
univariate descriptions and representations of the survey data:
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/cf/step1.cfm?keyID=2827&nationID=16,&startdate=2006.09&enddate=20
09.11, last used May 20, 2011.

3
the percentage of people saying they trust the press is extremely low (18 %) compared to
other Northern European established democracies (39 % and up). A closer look at the
longitudinal development in the UK (not presented here)6, shows no significant trend down
or upwards (17 % trust for the press in 2003). The Brits don’t express similar extreme levels
of distrust towards television and radio however; those figures are in line with the general
EU trends.

Figure 2. Trust in the press

60
50 UK
40 Ireland
30
20 Finland
10 Sweden
0
Danmark
Netherlands
Germany

In addition to these general and stable levels of (dis)trust in media, many countries have
witnessed particular media scandals: in the UK, at the time of writing this essay, the News of
the World scandal was in full swing, bringing down a newspaper and its personnel to begin
with, but quickly expanding to the police, and to the US and Australia (see Golding in the
introduction to this volume). Even a prestigious institution like the BBC has been involved in
a sequence of scandals, beginning with the Kelly Affaire in 2003, followed by suggestive
editing of footage of the Queen and manipulating the outcomes of TV competitions. As a
result, trust in the BBC has waned, according to a poll commissioned by The Guardian that
also showed that only 37 % of the respondents said they thought the BBC was more likely to
tell the truth than its competitors (Glover, 2007). Globally visible journalism scandals in the
US, involving fabricating stories and faking sources, have received prominent coverage, and
have likewise been claimed to have decreased the trust in US news media. One
commentator moaned after US leading anchor man Dan Rather had to resign because of a
false slant at George W. Bush: ‘Bluntly, if you can’t trust Dan Rather, whom can you
trust?’(Stone, 2005, no page).

Such complex articulations of general trust and specific distrust need to be seen in the
context of wider social and cultural developments, specifically those related to ‘modernity’,
‘risk society’ and ‘fear culture’. Briefly summarized, these concepts cover the idea that
economic and technological progress have made it possible to bring much of societies’

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/cf/showchart_column.cfm?keyID=2187&nationID=15,&startdate=2003.11
&enddate=2010.11

4
earlier problems under control. However, progress itself has created new issues that we are
much less able to manage; economic growth also causes environmental damage; (the desire
for) financial growth led to the banking crisis; globalization also brought terrorism; and we
are still faced with more traditional risks of pandemic diseases, natural disasters and
poverty. Beck (1986/1992) and Giddens (1990) have written extensively about the
transformation of modernity into risk society, and have pointed out how a continuous
collective and individual reflection on what might happen is a central feature of the risk society.
Furedi (2007, no page) adds that such reflections tend to take the form of fear, ‘often said to be the
defining cultural mood in contemporary society’. The institutions that we would like to turn to for
knowledge and reassurance about the risks facing us, have problems of their own. Our governments
are obviously not in control of , for instance, the banks. Moreover, many of the current risks are tied
into unclear global corporate networks who escape easy accountability. In fact, we even are not sure
anymore whether all these risks are true, because, as discussed, academics do not agree on the
causes of global warning, the predicted global swine flu pandemic never took place and – especially
in the wake of the NotW scandal – news media cannot be trusted to begin with.

Epistemological transformation

What do people do in this situation of high epistemological insecurity, of not knowing what is true or
who can be trusted to have access to the truth and tell it. In the current cultural climate, and
especially with respect to knowledge and ‘truth’, it seems they have done two things. First, they have
found someone or something to blame; in his contribution to this volume, Stef Aupers analysis how
conspiracy theories offer an illusion of knowledge and control, of causal connections in a chaotic
world, and of clearly identifiable actors (Muslims, ‘the Left’, Jews) or institutions (Big Pharma, ‘the
Government’) to blame. Second, people have turned into themselves as alternative source of
knowing and understanding. The simultaneous growth of therapy (finding oneself), spiritualism
(improving oneself) and personal media (expressing oneself) are only some of the signs of this
movement that was denigrated as a culture of narcissism in the 1970ies already (Lasch, 1979) but has
nevertheless only grown ever since, finding an epitome probably in the selection of ‘YOU’ as the
person of the year 2006 by American magazine Time. I suggest to bring the range of phenomena
that put the self at the centre of knowledge under the heading of ‘I-pistemology’. Where
epistemology is concerned with the nature, sources and methods knowledge, then I-pistemology
answers these questions from the basis of I (as in me, myself) and Identity, with the Internet as great
facilitator.

Me, myself and I

In political and popular culture it seems quite obvious that ‘I’ has become the privileged position to
speak from. Politics is thoroughly personalized, with politicians routinely evoking their own personal
histories to claim their access to the right political course. While this tendency is stronger in political
systems where citizens vote for individual candidates rather than for parties, the usage of the life
history as a metaphor for the candidate’s political program is common to all systems. The emergence
of the multimedia campaign that forces candidates to master repertoires of talk that comply with
divergent needs of the news sound bite, political discussion programs, popular talk shows, interactive

5
weblogs and social network presence has created an unavoidable imperative to present a consistent
and authentic self that keeps these repertoires together (cf. Van Zoonen, 2005; 2006). Journalists
covering such self-presentations, especially those working in popular journalism, tend to prefer a
personalized angle to make sense of candidates, political programs and political conflicts. Stories of
rivalry, tragedy and secrecy in the political bubble all put the private feelings and behaviours of
individual candidates, office holders and member of parliament in the spot light.

Popular culture carries a similar partiality to the personal. Dovey (2000, p.1) argues that ‘subjective,
autobiographical and confessional modes of expression have proliferated during the 1990s – across
print journalism, literature, factual TV and digital media’. He uses the term first person media to
identify particular kinds of talk shows and the then emerging genre of reality TV, that are all revolving
around the disclosure of the self and its most intimate thoughts and experiences. Both candidate and
audience pleasures in these genres appeared to concern the personal challenge of ‘being oneself’ or
‘remaining true to oneself’ in artificial circumstances (Aslama, 2009; Aslama and Van Zoonen, 2006).
For audiences in particular, the question whether what one reads, hears or sees is ‘real’ or ‘fake’ is a
key pleasure of consuming reality TV. More generally, Gilmore and Pine (2007) argue that our current
commercial environments are so ridden with attempts to sell unnecessary products and fake
experiences, that consumers crave for authenticity, of products and of people. Subsequently and
paradoxically, companies and content producers have set out to fabricate more authentic products
and experiences., leading to an even stronger desire for ‘real authenticity’ (see also Quandt, in this
volume). The only escape from such a perplexing hall of mirrors is – again – the self as the arbiter of
authenticity, noting that evidently, authenticity is an attributed quality rather than an innate one (cf.
Ferrara, 2009).

How do such first person narratives and claims- or better - performances of authenticity play out in
everyday conversations and sense-making? Various audience researchers have found that when
having to choose between mediated and personal knowledge, audiences by and large give more
weight to their own experiences, or those of their close relatives than to those presented to them by
the media. Graber (1988 points to the relevance of personal perspectives in making sense of one’s
environment, which ‘are not readily altered or replaced, regardless of (...) current media coverage,
because rethinking and restructuring one’s conceptions is a difficult, often painful task’ (p.91).
Gamson (1992) similarly concludes, on the basis of ethnographic research among news consumers
that a combination of media information, personal experience and popular wisdom underlie the way
people make sense of events in the world around them. Yet, he adds that even on an issue where
people have little to no personal knowledge, ‘it seems to be brought home by a personal experience’.
(p.176). Livingstone (1999) on the other hand, argues that any opposition between mediated and
unmediated knowledge is bound to fail, if only because the media offer generalized ways of knowing
through which personal experiences may acquire meaning. Nevertheless, audiences themselves
sometimes actively construct a distinction between mediated and unmediated knowledge giving the
latter a higher ‘truth’ status than the former. The following quotes from research we did about
internet discussions touching on the war in Iraq (cf. Van Zoonen et al., 2007) are typical for the way
personal observations have replaced media information as holding the key to assessing the
American presence in Iraq. Media of any kind are distrusted, while the one poster would recommend
Fox News for ‘a balanced view’, the other would consider Fox to be ‘so pro-Bush it is ridiculous’.
More reputed media like the BBC would invite similar controversy. Some people would refer to
particular websites for others to ‘get their facts right’, which would lead someone else to say that ‘of

6
course there you find what you want to’. Truth claims on the basis of personal experience, however,
were differently contested, especially if they came from army personnel. These claims typically
started with: ‘I have a daughter in the military ... ; ‘I am a military spouse...’; or ‘my boyfriend is in
Iraq as a Marine ....’ and having thus established direct authority confident assertions about the
significance of the American effort would follow. Views that were not based on personal
observations were vilified by these posters: ‘AND I guess Maria, You don’t have two loved ones over
in Iraq, like a lot of us’. The only way to counter such first person declaration would be to introduce
one’s own, different personal truth, as is clear in the exchange below about what the Europeans
actually think about the war in Iraq.

Trust me to know what most of Europe thinks I live in Belgium. . . . . . At Ramstein Air Base,
where the gate guards are all German . . . most of them state they wish they were helping in
Iraq. And most Germans feel bad that our country is in such turmoil.

Well, you must be living in the same bubble Bush is living in. I am Dutch. My whole family is
Dutch. I travel in Europe frequently. The Europeans do NOT like Bush. At all. And they do not
understand why people would support him.

Personal experience and observations are thus claimed to provide an authoritative position to speak
from, for a wide range of different people participating in political and popular culture, in media
consumption and in everyday conversations.

The (identity) politics of personal knowledge

Many observers consider this movement to personal experience as the privileged source of
knowledge as part and parcel of the new right wing populism that has emerged in a number of
European countries. The rise of the Dutch anti-Islam party and his leader is regularly cast as a victory
for uncivic egoism, acutely summarized in the popular saying ‘I, I, I and the rest can die’, 7 and the
Dutch ‘no’ to the referendum on the EU constitution has been similarly explained (Aarts and Van der
Kolk, 2006). Mazzoleni (2003), in addition, argues that popular media are likely to provide a
sympathetic arena for such populist actors, because of their preference for personality and personal
conflict, and the way they highlight the personal dramas of ‘ordinary people’ . Popular media and
populism thus find each other in their mutual evocation of ‘the people’. These ‘people’, according to
the right wing, populist perspective, are supposedly united through their common whiteness,
Christian values and Enlightenment ethos, and they have been seriously alienated by the excesses
and failures of multicultural politics, by the political and media elites, by ‘Europe’ and specifically by
‘Islam’ (cf. Bosman, 2010). The resulting politics of the respective populist parties is typified by a
paradoxical mix of welfare state social security agendas, libertarian proclamations of individual
freedom, and protectionist economic and cultural agendas. In addition, in their evocation of ‘the

7
My translation of a Dutch saying: Ikke, ikke, ikke en de rest kan stikken’ (where ‘stikken’ literally means
‘suffocate’)

7
people’ as their source of legitimation, Pels (2007, no page) argues, they resemble the ‘naive anti-
authoritarian conceptions of ‘basic’ or bottom-up’ democracy’, while at the same time blooming
because of the appeal of their successful leaders. Giroux (1994) similarly analyses the overlaps
between the claims and ideals of feminist, queer and ethnic identity politics that emerged from the
new progressive social movements of the 1060ies and 70ies, and the vocabulary of the US Neo-Cons
and Christian right.

Indeed, populist politics does not have a monopoly on I-pistemology; it has also been constitutive of
the progressive politics of feminist, civil rights and gay movements. For second wave feminism in
particular, the personal was not only political, it was also ‘true’. The individual experiences of
women were thought to add up to a collective truth of women’s subordinate positions. Confessional
literature, autobiography, consciousness raising groups, radical therapy and other cultural forms all
started from one woman’s life, and invited other women to share their stories and thus come to
mutual understanding and empowerment. With other social movements, second wave feminism
shared the conviction that official knowledge is produced from a male, white, heterosexual
perspective and that part of its political project was to produce the alternative knowledge coming
from the experiences of women, blacks and gays. In feminist theory this perspective was developed
in a range of writings, especially notable in the works of Sandra Harding (e.g. 1994), about ‘feminist
epistemology’, ‘standpoint theory’ and ‘situated knowledge’; in feminist methodology it was
translated into research that would give voice to the lived experiences of ‘ordinary’ women and let
them speak in their own words (cf. Reinharz, 1992). Yet, from the beginning it was clear that not all
of women’s voices were to receive equal interest. While the initial bias in favour of the experiences
of white heterosexual middle and working class women has been somewhat dissolved by queer and
ethnic studies, foregrounding ‘diversity’ rather than ‘gender’ (cf. .... ) a preference for the progressive
voice has remained. In media studies that is visible in the desire to interpret audience activities
‘against the grain’. Radway’s (1984) classic and innovative research about the reading of romance
novels and the resistance against patriarchy that would speak from it, for instance, has been
criticized as somewhat wishful thinking (Ang, 1988). Hermes (1995) argues, explicitly, that feminist
scholars need to acknowledge that women can also enjoy media, women’s magazines in particular,
precisely because it enables them to align with the dominant order of femininity. Nevertheless,
feminists often face deep personal and political challenges when they are confronted with women
whose claims to autonomy involve ideas, attitudes and behaviours that they consider conservative,
oppressive or outright misogynist. This is abundantly clear in the ongoing debates about Muslim
women and their headwear, and the way girls are supposed to deal with the ubiquitous sexualization
of western culture (cf. Duits and Van Zoonen, 2007, forthcoming), but also in the dismissal of the
‘tea-party’ feminism proclaimed by neoconservative politicians like Sara Palin or Michelle Bachmann
(cf. Harding, 2010), and previously in the feminist reservations about Margaret Thatcher (e.g. Rose,
1988).

These contradictions illustrate not only how the personal is political, but also that the preceding
question whether a personal experience construes a legitimate voice is part of a political struggle.
Second wave feminism and other new social movements have successfully battled to get their
personal experiences count as valid sources of politics. Reversely, nowadays, right wing populists and
their supporters claim to speak from their feelings of marginalization in multicultural societies, and
they want to have those experiences recognized. The I-pistemology on all sides of the political
spectrum thus, inevitably leads to the uncomfortable question whether collective identities based on

8
personal allegiances - of women, of gays, of African-Americans, of British Asians, of white working
class men, of upper class conservatives, of Muslims, of Christians, etcetera –provide equally valid
claims to the recognition of one’s issues, culture and politics. Giroux (1994, p. 34) argues that this
dilemma has moved left critics into a ‘short sighted willingness to abandon identity politics at a time
when right wing conservatives are reappropriating progressive critiques of race, ethnicity and
identity and using them to promote rather than dispel a politics of cultural racism.’

Conclusion

Neither of these two developments - unstable trust in knowledge institutions and I-

pistemology – is completely new. Political scientists have worried about variable trust and
irrational distrust in institutions (e.g. Coleman in this volume), psychologists have identified
mechanisms of selective perception, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias that all
point to the way people see and believe what suits their personal needs and knowledge (cf.
Klayman, 1995) and – as discussed above - philosophers have been troubled more generally
by a ‘culture of narcissim’, ‘a tyranny of intimacy’ and ‘emotivism’. What does make a
substantial difference, however, is that the truth claims that come from I-pistemology now
have much wider and much more intense platforms than ever before. Internet is a great
multiplier that not only offers easy access to everyone who want to vent her or his truth, but
also enables quicker connections between these truths. Yet, as much research has found,
these connections tend to take the form of demonstrations; dialogue, deliberation,
discussion or even confrontation seem to be more uncommon than simply posting a
comment or video for others to deal with, performing one’s identity without much interest
in the one of others. The extensive research we conducted about YouTube video responses
to the anti-Islam video Fitna shows this process in much detail: thousands of young people
posted a video of their own in protest or support of the film but rarely took their
intervention any further, by, for instance, commenting on other videos, engaging in a
discussion with their viewers or sharing a video with others. We concluded, therefore, that
YouTube produces a multiplication of assertions and denials of individual truths about Islam,
and that the few interactions about these truths took the form of antagonism or – at best –
of ‘agonistic pluralism’ as Chantal Mouffe has called it (cf. Van Zoonen, Vis and Mihelj, 2011).

Many different question emerge from the current transformation of a the traditional
regimes of knowledge to I-pistemology, but I want to address two challenges in particular.
First is the question as to how as to how knowledge institutions can realize trustworthiness
among all these contending truth claims. ‘The all-too-obvious struggle of public office
holders in a mediatised environment’ Hajer (2009, p. 4) says, ‘calls for an answer of what it
is that makes particular claims authoritative’. Obviously this is first and foremost an
empirical question, but from the present analysis it may be clear, in any case, that such
authoritativeness is no longer attributed automatically; it has to be deserved, advanced and
maintained. In the case of the failed cervical cancer vaccination campaign in The

9
Netherlands, the responsible government agency decided the next year not to launch a
general campaign again, but to keep a continuous and active presence in all the websites,
forums and social media where the issue would come up. It countered anti-vaccination
claims with bespoke response, information and links. Apparently, it was thought necessary
to replace the traditional public health campaign with such an interactive approach. Such a
strategy of permanent accountability, may provide a way for all kinds of research (for
applied, policy or academic purposes) to acquire a status that extends beyond being ‘just
another opinion’. 8

A second challenge comes from the plurality of voices that claim access to ‘truth’ on the
basis of personal knowledge, experience and opinion. Much theoretical work explores the
notion of ‘voice’ but only in so far as it offers a critique of the political status quo (e.g
Coleman, 2006) or of neoliberal politics and culture (Couldry, 2010). The question whether
all voices are equally valid and need to be heard and recognized, is as pertinent if not more,
especially in societies confronted with unexpected popularity of the populist right (US,
Flanders, Danmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, to name just a few) that uses the
vocabulary of personal experience and entitlement just like progressive forces do. While this
is as much a theoretical as a political question, convincing approaches, let alone answers
have not yet been produced. The Left, in particular, has lamented its own failures to come
up with alternatives to the current right wing populist tides (cf. Bale et al., 2010), and left
wing leaders often blame the media logic of personalization and popularization as
favourable to right wing political leaders in particular(cf. Van Santen and Van Zoonen, 2010).
There is to date only sparse research that examines how the populist extreme right has
managed to impose its claims on common sense, truth and direct representation of ‘the
people’s voice’, how they have used particular media and campaign strategies, and how
different kinds of media operate in this highly polarized context (but see Mazzoleni, Stewart
and Horsfield, 2003). In addition, there is also little research that would offer an insight in
‘best practices’ for social and political actors trying to oppose the I-pistemological
steamrollers of right wing populism. Carpentier and De Cleen (2010), exceptionally,
analyzed how Flemish youth and artists organized a range of events to reclaim the notion of
‘the people’ that the populist party Vlaams Belang had monopolized. Through the
mobilization of popular Flemish singers and a neutral political agenda proclaiming
‘tolerance’, they managed to open up the notion of ‘the people’ and show that ‘the man and
women in the street’ not all adhere to right wing populist politics. Similarly, when Geert
Wilders construed a fictional couple ‘Henk and Ingrid’ as symbols of his formerly silent
constituency, real Henks and Ingrids across the country stood up to say they did not support
Wilders or his party (De Jong, 2010).

8
This was at least the outcome of a session I had with representatives from different Dutch knowledge
institutions, Dutch School for Public Administration, Learning Studio for Policy Analysis, The Hague, December
16, 2010.

10
The changing truth claims in popular and political culture, their continuous and relentless
contestation, in other words the move towards a regime of I-pistemology, thus offers
multiple challenges to media theory and research to date have not been able to deal with
satisfactorily yet.

11
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the Elite. PS: Political Science and Politics, 39(2), p. 243-246.

Ang, I. (1988). Feminist desire and female pleasure. On Janice Radway’s Reading the
Romance. Camera Obscura, 16, p. 179-190.

Bale, T., Green-Peders, C., Krouwel, A., Luther, K. amd N. Sitter (2010). If You Can't Beat
Them, Join Them? Explaining Social Democratic Responses to the Challenge from the
Populist Radical Right in Western Europe. Political Studies, 58(3), p. 410-426.

Beck, Ulrich (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Originally
published in German, 1986.

Bosman, M. (2010). De schijn-elite van de valsemunters [The false elite of the

counterfeiters]. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.

Carpentier, N. and B. de Cleen (2010). Contesting the populist claim on ‘‘the people’’ through
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