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Populism is a powerful force today, but its full scope has eluded the analytical tools of both orthodox and heterodox 'populism studies'. This book provides a valuable alternative perspective. It reconstructs in detail for the first time the sociological analyses of US demagogues by members of the Frankfurt School and compares these with contemporary approaches. Modern demagogy emerges as a key under-researched feature of populism, since populist movements, whether 'left' or 'right', are highly susceptible to 'demagogic capture'. The book also details the culture industry's populist contradictions - including its role as an incubator of modern demagogues - from the 1930s through to today's social media and 'Trumpian psychotechnics'. Featuring a previously unpublished text by Adorno on modern demagogy as an appendix, it will be of interest to researchers and students in critical theory, sociology, politics, German studies, philosophy and history of ideas, as well as all those concerned about the rise of demagogic populism today

Political communication studies has a long tradition of 'crisis talk' regarding the fate of public communication. Now, however, the field itself faces a kind of existential crisis as its core assumptions of 'normal' political communication are daily undermined. This 'liberal normalcy' shares much with orthodoxies in populism studies, most notably a tendency to bracket out demagogic communication, both in historical fascist regimes and democracies. Yet correcting these failings is not simply a matter of rejecting liberal models for left-populist ones. Rather, both fields need to broaden their historical parameters and deepen their theoretical frameworks. The article draws on the Weberian conception of modern demagogy and its revision in the wake of 'modern media' by Shils and Adorno. It further argues that a critical reworking of Hallin and Mancini's media systems approach could benefit both fields. For Hallin and Mancini's socio-historical use of Weberian ideal-typification complements Worsley's never-completed plan for an ideal-typification of modes of populism and demagogic leadership.

Major sociological work related to the culture industry thesis was undertaken by Adorno during his period as a 'refugee scholar' in the USA. It has been charged with a 'sociological deficit' by leading figures within critical theory, typically without reference to that US context. A dialogue with Márkus's work on Adorno and the Marxian production paradigm can redress failings in those critiques. However, such a task is complicated by the limitations of Márkus's own major essay on this topic. This paper thus conducts an immanent critique of Márkus: 'Márkus against Márkus'. Márkus's proposals for the application of the Marxian production paradigm to aesthetic culture and his prospective vision for critical theory are so found to be very compatible with Adorno's related work.

While early studies of populism, usually dated from the 1960s, were highly interdisciplinary, contemporary research in this field is dominated by political science and political theory. This current phase of research is narrowly focused on certain forms of political action and remarkably reluctant to pathologize the US case. Social theory plays at most a marginal role. Recent historicizations of this field have failed to recognize the significance of the prior 'missing first phase' of populism studies (1940–65) led by key sociological figures among the New York Intellectuals and the Frankfurt School. Social theorization was prominent then and US populism's contingent vulnerability to demagogic exploitation was a major research focus. This article provides an immanent critical reconstruction of these thinkers' key social-theoretical insights, building to a schematization of 'modern demagogy'.

Frankfurt School conceptions of culture industry and demagogy are employed in a synoptic historical analysis of the relation between demagogy and US culture industries. A recent New York Times editorial critique of Donald Trump's demagogy is placed in a 'tradition' of tension between US high journalism and demagogy dating from the 1920s. This period saw the near simultaneous codification of professional editorial newspaper ethics and the rise of broadcast demagogues like Father Charles Coughlin. The tradition reaches its most famous conflict point in the now heroicized struggle between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy. The state sought to redress the rise of culture industry demagogy via communications regulation known as The Fairness Doctrine. The latter's demise enabled the 1990s return to prominence of demagogic speech within the culture industries. The article argues, however, that what was pivotal to this history was the facilitation of the commodification of mediated demagogic speech at the advent of broadcasting, a path apparently unique to the USA amongst the major democracies. Rather than a return to the contentious 'burden on speech' of a Fairness Doctrine, decommodification is thus the most plausible means of reducing US culture industry demagogy.

Frankfurt School conceptions of culture industry and demagogy are employed in a synoptic historical analysis of the relation between demagogy and US culture industries. A recent New York Times editorial critique of Donald Trump's demagogy is placed in a 'tradition' of tension between US high journalism and demagogy dating from the 1920s. This period saw the near simultaneous codification of professional editorial newspaper ethics and the rise of broadcast demagogues like Father Charles Coughlin. The tradition reaches its most famous conflict point in the now heroicized struggle between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy. The state sought to redress the rise of culture industry demagogy via communications regulation known as The Fairness Doctrine. The latter's demise enabled the 1990s return to prominence of demagogic speech within the culture industries. The article argues, however, that what was pivotal to this history was the facilitation of the commodification of mediated demagogic speech at the advent of broadcasting, a path apparently unique to the USA amongst the major democracies. Rather than a return to the contentious 'burden on speech' of a Fairness Doctrine, decommodification is thus the most plausible means of reducing US culture industry demagogy.

This article examines the curious interplay between media sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Recent media research is increasingly drawn to STS, while STS analysts are increasingly drawn to research media technologies. While it is routine practice in STS to stress the 'materiality' of the objects under investigation, media technologies pose a challenge to this. Their 'materiality' is difficult to distinguish from their communicative/symbolic dimensions, the latter often being misframed as ideal/immaterial. By contrast, media research traditions have thought through these issues in terms of the concept of articulation and the related conceptual legacy of aesthetic modernism. While far more attentive to the specificity of 'the symbolic', these frameworks have been only partly informed by macro-social theoretical reflection. Here we advocate Calhoun's placement of communications within his 'infrastructure of modernity' as the most suitable overarching framework for discussion of this border communication. However, Calhoun's framework itself can benefit from re-invigoration by the socio-technical insights of both traditions.