Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics offers a systematic examination of the relationship between post-Marxist discourse theory and critical media politics. The volume interrogates discourse theory – as read via the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe – through an engagement with major approaches to critical media politics, including autonomist Marxism, Bourdieuian field theory, cultural studies, Habermasian public sphere theory, and semiotic theory. Contributors draw from a range of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds to critically explore key theoretical issues in media politics, including the relationship between media practices and political practices, discourse and materiality, discourse and institutions, discourse and affect, the media and mediality, media and radical democracy, and the politics of new social movements. The book concludes with a chapter by leading international media studies scholar Peter Dahlgren, which in light of the book's contributions assesses the value of discourse theory to a critical media politics.
Table of Contents:
Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics: An Introduction; S.Phelan & L.Dahlberg
Discourse Theory as Critical Media Politics? Five Questions; L.Dahlberg
From Media to Mediality: Mediatic (Counter-) eApparatuses and the Concept of the Political in Communication Studies; O.Marchart
What Does Democracy Feel Like? Form, Function, Affect, and the Materiality of the Sign; J.Gilbert
Ideology and Politics in the Popular Press: The Case of the 2009 UK MPs' Expenses Scandal; Wei-yuan Chang & J.Glynos
The Media as the Neoliberalized Sediment: Articulating Laclau's Discourse Theory with Bourdieu's Field Theory; S.Phelan
Post-Marx beyond Post-Marx: Autonomism and Discourse Theory; J.Zeljko Bratich
Multiplicity, Autonomy, New Media, and the Networked Politics of New Social Movements; N.Fenton
Mediated Construction of the People: Laclau's Political Theory and Media Politics; J.Simons
Mobilizing Discourse Theory for Critical Media Politics: Obstacles and Potentials; P.Dahlgren
LINCOLN DAHLBERG is Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research is focussed on media politics, critical theory and digital democracy. He has published extensively in these areas, including as co-editor of Radical Democracy and the Internet (Palgrave, 2007).
SEAN PHELAN is Senior Lecturer at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. He has published mainly in the areas of critical media politics and journalism studies, including several essays informed by discourse theory. He has a particular research interest in exploring the relationship between critical political theory and media studies
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