From Media Idiom to Political Argument: Uses of "Lifestyle" in the Early Years of the Greek Crisis, 2009–2015

In Greece from the 1980s to the 2000s, "lifestyle" was as an influential media idiom that promoted conspicuous consumption and was associated with cultural Westernization and sexual liberation. This concept acquired new political valence during the early years of the Greek crisis, as various media condemned lifestyle as responsible for the popularization of a frivolous culture largely blamed for new economic hardships. The concept was employed by media sympathetic to certain political parties that maintained or increased their power during this same period: the center-right New Democracy, the left-wing SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left), and the far-right Golden Dawn. Intertextual analysis combining print and electronic media reveals how these media established a common narrative, which suggested that lifestyle choices were partially responsible for the crisis. Such media approached such allegedly decadent choices in largely moralistic terms and identified them with the PanHellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). The above developments took place by means of: a) the historical relocation of the emergence of lifestyle from the late 1970s and the early 1980s to the 1990s; b) the simplification of the content of the lifestyle media idiom through overemphasis on consumption; c) the use of an approach adhering to theories of cultural hegemony, which attributed responsibility for the popularization of lifestyle to media producers and so neglected interactions between media and audiences; and d) the identification of lifestyle with journalist and publisher Petros Kostopoulos.