The international face of Thessaloniki

The “Greek crisis,” the entrepreneurial mayor, and mainstream media discourses

Bibliographic Data

ID8360916
AuthorsPhilipp Katsinas (0000-0002-3586-0989, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume51
Issue4
Pages788-796
Publication date2019-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArea (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-0894 • E-ISSN: 1475-4762
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/area.12545
OpenAlexW2919170967
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited32

Thessaloniki and its mayor have been portrayed quite favourably in international mainstream media compared to the Greek state after the 2008 economic crisis. The dominant (media) discourses on Greece interpret the crisis as the result of the failure of the Greek state to reform due to the prevalence of a traditional political culture over a modern one and the moral failures of the population. In the international media representations of Thessaloniki, the local government has been described as “exceptional” in its crisis management compared to the state and other local governments, and the city's mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, has been portrayed as a reform hero, due to the implemented entrepreneurial development strategy and the revamp of the city's image through place branding. Analysing the key role of international media in the production and reproduction of a place‐branding campaign of Thessaloniki in international media by employing critical discourse analysis, the paper questions the favourable representations of the city compared to the Greek state during the same period. I argue that the serial repetition of positive images contributed to Thessaloniki being perceived as an example to be followed by other Greek local governments and the central state, acting as a best practice example for transformations envisioned on wider scales. The paper contributes to place‐branding debates by illustrating the important role of international media in the dissemination of place brands, and by analysing how media representations of place may serve the legitimation of processes of neoliberalisation on scales wider than the concrete urban setting where they occur

Face (sociological concept) · Government (linguistics) · HERO · Legitimation · Mainstream · Media studies · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research · Law · Urban Planning and Governance

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