Media, Democracy and Social Change Re-imagining Political Communications

In an age of ‘fake news’ and Facebook algorithims, it can be tempting to see politics now as all mediation. But there’s more to Trump than Twitter. This much-needed text puts politics back into political communications, refocusing on on the broader context of neoliberal capitalism that remains essential for understanding what political communications is, and can hope to be. We have to engage with democracy and capitalism, not just the digital ecology of social media, because focusing on the communicative can risk downgrading the political. Focusing on broad themes of structural inequality, technological change, political realignment and social transformation, Fenton and Davis explore political communications as it relates to debates around the state, infrastructures, elites, populism, political parties, activism and social movements, the legacies of colonialism, and more. This book provides both an expert introduction to the field of political communications, and a critical intervention to help re-imagine what a democratic politics might mean in a digital age, and a result it serves as essential reading for students, researchers and activists across both media and communication studies and politics.