Education

Lecturer at the Department of Communication Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He has also taught at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Benjamin De Cleen is the co-director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Signification, and Resistance (researchcentredesire.eu), one of the coordinators of the Brussels Platform for Journalism (journalismplatform.be), and the former chair of YECREA, the Young Scholars’ Network of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).

His research is situated within discourse studies and focuses on political rhetoric and on the intersections between media and politics. He has analyzed populist radical right rhetoric and the fight against the radical right, and has also revolved around the discourse-theoretical conceptualization of populism, conservatism, and nationalism. Publications include Popular music against extreme right populism The Vlaams Belang and the 0110 concerts in Belgium (in International Journal of Cultural Studies), Contesting the populist claim on “the people” through popular culture: the 0110 concerts versus the Vlaams Belang (with Nico Carpentier, in Social Semiotics), Bringing Discourse Theory Into Media Studies: The Applicability of Discourse Theoretical Analysis (DTA) for the Study of Media Practices and Discourses (with Nico Carpentier, in Journal of Language and Politics), and “Flemish Friends, Let us Separate!”: The Discursive Struggle for Flemish Nationalist Civil Society in the Media (in Javnost – The Public).