In a positive sense, it involves crucial ideals, values and aspirations, such as informed democracy, citizens’ empowerment and social debate. The study of this intersection between politics and the media is perceived to be particularly important. Politicians and parties who have a strong media presence, or who attract lively media attention, are more visible, trigger stronger ←7 | 8→reactions, and perhaps receive more support, than those that do not. Currently, it seems that the symbiosis between the two spheres is such that political activity is almost inseparable from media communication (Engesser et al. Since the advent of digital communication, the relationship between new media and politics has now become a focus of intense interest and speculation on the part of politicians and academics alike. For many years, the focus was on the press, radio and television, and the way politicians and their audiences adapted to these different media (and vice versa). However, in more recent times with the rise of the different forms of mass media, attention came to focus anew on politics and language, looking not just at the rhetoric used to shape the message, but also at the means used to convey this to a wider public. Since Aristotle’s definition of the human being as a ‘political animal’ that is distinguished from the other animals precisely by his/her power of speech, it has been generally accepted that politics is interconnected with language not just superficially, but in its very essence.
There is, of course, nothing new about this. Language enables us to engage in dialogue with others, and through this, to share and negotiate visions and goals: together, these discursive activities form the essence of the human activity that we call ‘politics’. In Chilton’s words ( 2004: 19), through language, individuals have the capacity to “communicate, compare, align or dissent from one another’s mental representations of the present, future and possible worlds”. From the earliest times, the sphere of the political has been understood as a social arena in which power and influence can be garnered, and possible collective futures shaped, through persuasion – and persuasion is conducted through symbolic systems of social communication, that is, through languages. Politics is inextricably bound up with discourse and communication. Fernández Vallejo Introduction: Politics, populism, media Meléndez: Social networks and the construction of political culture: Where are we looking from? Nahla Nadeem: Politicizing collective identities: Online news commentaries in the Arab Spring Ruth Breeze: “Happy to be insulted”: Offensive language in online discussions of UK radical politics Badarneh: “You are not one of us!”: Online responses to the premier’s populist discourse in Jordan Section 2: People, Politics and Politicians across Modes and MediaĪline Schmidt: The discursive construction of Trump’s charisma on Twitter and Reddit Saqlain Hassan: Populism and popularity in Imran Khan’s 2018 election speeches The influence of populist discourses on the political communication of traditional parties in Romania. Maria Cristina Aiezza: #AmericaFirst vs #primagliitaliani: A Corpus-Assisted CDA of Trump’s and Salvini’s Twitter communicationsĭaniela Rovenţa-Frumuşani and Adriana Ştefănel: The populist contagion. Miguel Ayerbe Linares: Talking about populists in Twitter: Politicians’ linguistic behaviour in comments about populists in Germany and Austria A corpus-assisted CDA of the White House website under Trump’s presidency Giorgos Venizelos: Populism and the digital media: A necessarily symbiotic relationship? Insights from the case of SyrizaĪntonella Napolitano: Achieving results for the American people.
Ross: Trumpian tweets and populist politics: A corpus-assisted discourse analytical study Section 1: Politicians across Modes and MediaĪditi Bhatia and Andrew S. Fernández Vallejo: Introduction: Politics, populism, media