Suchergebnisse

Digital, Political, Radicalis a siren call to the field of media and communications and the study of social and political movements. We must put the politics of transformation at the very heart of our analyses to meet the global challenges of gross inequality and ever-more impoverished democracies. Fenton makes an impassioned plea for re-invigorating critical research on digital media such that it can be explanatory, practical and normative. She dares us to be politically emboldened. She urges us to seek out an emancipatory politics that aims to deepen our democratic horizons. To ask, how can we do democracy better? What are the conditions required to live together well? Then, what is the role of the media and how can we reclaim media, power and politics for progressive ends? Journeying through a range of protest and political movements, Fenton debunks myths of digital media along the way and points us in the direction of newly emergent politics of the Left. Digital, Political, Radicalcontributes to political debate on contemporary (re)configurations of radical progressive politics through a consideration of how we experience (counter) politics in the digital age and how this may influence our being political. Natalie Fenton is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London

This chapter offers a critique of the ways in which we approach the study of civil society, and digital technologies through the notion of public sphere theory. In it, I question whether public sphere theory is up to the job of dealing with a democratic deficit so large that it challenges the notion that liberal democracy should always be our 'go to' democratic frame. Classical public sphere theory begins and ends with liberal democracy as its overarching premise and ultimate political institutional arrangement. But what if we start from a different position where we acknowledge that liberal democracy has been so dismantled that it is now eviscerated and unrecognizable to many in civil society? Can a concept so undone really offer a critical perspective suggestive of democratic futures or is it rather holding us back, capturing us in the comfort zones of liberalism that threaten ultimately to erode democracy yet further?

AbstractTransnational media corporations now wield enormous power and influence. Never has this been displayed so starkly and so shockingly as in the revelations that emerged during the Leveson Inquiry into the culture and ethics of the press in the UK. This paper considers the implications of the relationship between media elites and political elites for democratic culture and media reform. The paper argues that the culture of press–politician mutual interest in which media executives and party leaders collude will continue as long as the solutions proffered focus on the ethical constraints of professional journalists rather than wider structural issues relating to plurality of ownership and control and funding of news in the public interest.