Talk scandals

Political scandals are one of the most significant characteristics of modern democracy. Transgressions of social norms regarding sexuality, money and power made by politicians are recurrent. This article introduces and elaborates the concept of the talk scandal in order to provide a deeper understanding of the role of media talk in political scandals. Talk scandals represent a new step in the mediatization of scandals because they are not only communicated in the media, but also in most cases originate in the media. Media talk forms scandals in three respects: (1) first-order talk scandals: the scandals originate in speech acts, and it is discursive norms that are transgressed; (2) second-order talk scandals: the scandal originates in some other type of norm transgression, but during the media's review and revelation statements are made that in themselves contribute to the development of a scandal; (3) the staging of utterances and conversation is also more generally used in the dramatization of scandals.