Radical right-wing communication: media, propaganda and discursive strategies

Directors: Marcello Serra and Manuel Goyanes

Location: Classroom 1.0.A06 (Miguel de Unamuno Building). Colmenarejo Campus.

Target audience

This course is primarily aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate university students, teaching staff, and researchers in the fields of communication, political science, and the social sciences, as well as anyone interested in the critical analysis of contemporary political culture.

Speakers

Directors: Marcello Serra and Manuel Goyanes. Link to CV.
Speakers:

Manuel Goyanes (Associate Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
Marcello Serra (Associate Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
Rubén Romero Santos (Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
Rayco González (Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of Burgos).
Gérald Mazzalovo (Chulalongkorn University – Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration).
Beatriz Jordá (Adjunct Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
Ángela Paloma Martín (Adjunct Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
Araceli Mateos (Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Salamanca).

Programme

Monday, 29 June
10:00 to 12:00. Course introduction: The radical right’s culture war: discourses, platforms, and imaginaries. Manuel Goyanes (Associate Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
12:00 to 12:30. Break.
12:30 to 14:30. Uses of history and memory in radical right-wing propaganda. Marcello Serra (Associate Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).

Tuesday, 30 June
10:00 to 12:00. The ideological origins of the radical right in Spanish and international cinema. Rubén Romero Santos (Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
12:00 to 12:30. Break.
12:30 to 14:30. The figure of the enemy in the radical right. Rayco González (Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of Burgos).

Wednesday, 1 July
10:00 to 15:00. The evolution of radical right branding: The resurgence of virilism. Gérald Mazzalovo (Chulalongkorn University – Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration).
12:00 to 12:30. Break.
12:30 to 14:30. Constructing “the people” on the radical right’s social media: a semiotic analysis. Rayco González (Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of Burgos).

Thursday, 2 July
10:00 to 12:00. The global galaxy of radical right alternative media. Beatriz Jordá (Adjunct Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).
12:00 to 12:30. Break.
12:30 to 14:30. The Spanish galaxy of radical right alternative media. Ángela Paloma Martín (Adjunct Professor, Department of Communication, UC3M).

Friday, 3 July
10:00 to 12:00. Democracy under strain: Political participation and the rise of the radical right. Araceli Mateos (Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Salamanca).
12:00 to 12:30. Break.
12:30 to 14:30. Round table: The radical right as an object of study. Araceli Mateos, Marcello Serra, and Manuel Goyanes.

Course objectives and motivations

This summer course arises from the need to understand a phenomenon that today occupies a central place in the public sphere: the radical right’s communication strategies, which help explain its surprising rise. The course is conceived as a space for academic analysis, with the aim of understanding how such discourses are constructed, circulated, and acquire meaning in different media contexts. The course begins with a general theoretical introduction to the radical right and the importance of studying its communication strategies. The second part of the first day is devoted to a lecture on the uses of history and memory for propagandistic purposes by the radical right. The second day of the course addresses the construction of the radical right’s imaginary, focusing on the case of cinema and music. These initial sessions make it possible to situate the phenomenon in a broad perspective, showing how certain narratives, symbols, and cultural repertoires have been articulated and re-signified over time. From there, on the third day, the course delves into the brand-image building strategy of different radical right movements and the role played by their influencers. The fourth day is devoted to the study of alternative media in the international and national landscape. On the final day, an approach to the populist dimension of the radical right is presented, reflecting on the construction of “the people” on social media. The course concludes with a lecture on the communicative and political importance of understanding the radical right as an object of study. It is hoped that this can translate into a more critical and aware citizenry.

At the end of the course, students will be able to realise that the most emblematic value of the classical world is not the elitist nature of its education or a certain monumental aesthetic (to cite two typical categories of the interpretation given throughout the 19th century), but rather its ability to address every human problem, turning it into a source of personal and collective learning—fruitful and always enriching. From this experience, capable of turning the intimate drama of existence into a rational theme (thus enabling the birth of philosophy and Attic tragedy), or the difficulties of communal life into political reflection, or the imitation of nature into art and technique, emerges that freedom of spirit that permeates all humanisms throughout history and remains one of the foremost ideals of today’s world.

Moreover, the classical tradition is much closer to the paradigms of digital culture than one might imagine: if the “digital humanities” constitute, in a way, a form of reimagining the traditional humanities—rethinking human development in relation to history and culture through new possibilities for creating and disseminating knowledge—it is well known that the legacy of Greco-Roman civilisation has been performing this same task for centuries, renewing itself in every era in line with the urgencies of societies that return to the study of Antiquity in order to find in it answers about their own time.

CV

Directors: Marcello Serra and Manuel Goyanes

Marcello Serra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His research focuses on the semiotics of culture and media theory. His recent scientific output highlights political discourse and the communication strategies of the new right. He has published in internationally recognised journals in Spanish, English, Italian, and French. He has participated in three national research projects and has been awarded two six-year research periods and two five-year teaching periods. Between 2022 and 2024, he served as Secretary of the Spanish Association of Semiotics (AES), where he is currently a member of the Board of Directors. He is a member of the GESC research group at the Ortega-Marañón Foundation and the AGORA group at the University of Burgos.

Manuel Goyanes is an Associate Professor of Research Methods in Communication at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Director of the MITCOM Research Group (Methods, Innovation and Theories in Communication Research). He has two recognised five-year teaching periods and one active six-year research period. His main research interests focus on the development and validation of new methodological protocols (both quantitative and qualitative) aimed at understanding complex social phenomena. He has participated in and led competitive research projects and has published regularly in internationally recognised scientific journals in the fields of communication and the social sciences.

Teaching team

The teaching team for the course “The classical world in the digital age: new challenges” consists of six people, including the Directors, with equal representation of men and women (3+3). Coming from different but complementary disciplines such as Philology, Law, Archaeology, and History, they have been collaborating for many years, working together on the research lines of the UC3M Institute of Classical Studies “Lucio Anneo Séneca”. This institute is at the forefront in Spain and internationally in the field of the “digital humanities”, developing a series of projects for the online publication of databases and the digitisation of documents related to the classical world and its legacy throughout history. With regard to teaching activity related to the promotion, updating, and scientific presentation of various aspects of the classical world, the six lecturers on the course have extensive teaching experience, among which the following activities stand out:

Francisco L. Lisi Bereterbide was for many years coordinator of the Classical Studies area in the UC3M Department of Humanities and taught the undergraduate courses “Classical culture” and “Transmission of the classical legacy”, as well as the postgraduate course “The transmission of the classical legacy”. Founder and first director of the Institute of Classical Studies “Lucio Anneo Séneca”.

Rosa M. Carreño Sánchez has been teaching, in both Spanish and English, the Humanities course “Vida cotidiana y norma en Roma/Daily life and norms in Rome” for more than five years. This course is taught on the Getafe and Colmenarejo campuses and is offered to students of different nationalities and from a wide range of degree programmes (Law, Economics, Business Administration, Computer Engineering, etc.). She has experience in creating digital libraries and participated in the digitisation and publication of the historical legal collection “Antecessores” of the Library of the University of Girona.

Ana M. Rodríguez González was coordinator of the Conference on Greco-Roman Criminal Law: crimes and punishments in antiquity, organised by the Institute of Classical Studies “Lucio Anneo Séneca” as early as 2008. Since then and to this day, one of the strands of her teaching activity has been devoted to disseminating how criminal justice was perceived and organised in ancient history. On this topic and others also related to Roman culture, society, and law, she has taught numerous Humanities courses and has published several teaching works aimed at explaining these subjects through a careful selection of texts. She has also participated in various research projects aimed at analysing the relationship between law and religion in the past of Greece and Rome.