The far and extreme right in documentaries: euphemisation, exceptionalisation and humanisation

Recently there has been much debate on the way in which far right actors are portrayed by mainstream media. On the one hand, mainstream media have considerable discursive agency and can act as gatekeepers obstructing the far right's access to the political mainstream. On the other, media actors can be complicit in the normalisation of the far right by platforming, euphemising, and/or amplifying their politics. This has led to an increasingly animated discussion about journalistic practices when covering the far right. In this paper, we focus in particular on the role of documentary films about the far right as an under-researched medium. Whilst some contend that documentaries offer an important space in which the far right can be challenged, others suggest that they can amplify far right politics by offering a platform for their political demands and discourses. Using a corpus of transcripts from documentaries about far right parties and movements, we apply corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to address three questions: 1. Which actors, discourses, and political claims are presented in documentaries about the far right? How much air time is given to far right actors compared to other actors? 2. How are far right actors portrayed in documentaries? In how far are racist and reactionary claims made by far right actors challenged in documentaries? 3. How are people targeted by the far right portrayed in documentaries?