Media discourse and the Danish monarchy: reconciling egalitarianism and royalism

This article investigates the role of the mass media as the dominant form o f publicness in contemporary western societies, through a theoretical analy sis of the impact of mediated publicness on relations between the state and the people, and an empirical study of a particular media event: the media representation of the wedding of the younger son of the Queen of Denmark, P rince Joachim, to Alexandra Manley on Is November 1995. I analyse the weddi ng as a media construction based on a particular type of royalist discourse . This discourse is fundamentally modern in its incorporation of elements o f egalitarian discourse and high modem or postmodern in its use of irony. W ithin the terms of the discourse, it is possible to express mild critique f rom a position of ironic distance, but open resistance lies outside its bou nds. The media construction of the wedding within this discourse, therefore , provides part of the answer to the anomaly of the continued popularity of the monarchy in Denmark, a country with a strongly egalitarian political c ulture.