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Summary Articles Digital Media and Politics
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This is a summary of all the articles for the course Digital Media and Politics at Tilburg University. From Political Correctness to Ideology and Algorithms.
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Digital Media and PoliticsIndex
Fairclough, N. (2003) ‘Political correctness’: the politics of culture and language...........................................................2
Lempert, M. & Silverstein, M. (2012) Introduction of Creatures of Politics.....................................................................3
Maly, I. (2022) Populism as a Mediatized Communicative Relation: The Birth of Algorithmic Populism. Chapter 2........6
Sternhell, Z. (2008) How to Think about Fascism and its Ideology................................................................................10
Maly, I. (2022) Guillaume Faye’s legacy: the alt-right and Generation Identity.............................................................11
Lewis, R. (2018) Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube. Introduction........................13
Lewis, R. (2018) Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube. Part 1: The Alternative
Influence Network.........................................................................................................................................................13
Lewis, R. (2018) Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube. Part 2: Building an Alternative
Media............................................................................................................................................................................ 14
Lewis, R. (2018) Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube. Part 3: Promoting Ideology
through Influencer Marketing.......................................................................................................................................15
Lewis, R. (2018) Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube. Part 4: Facilitating
Radicalization Through Social Networking....................................................................................................................16
Maly, I. (2021) Ideology and Algorithms........................................................................................................................16
,Fairclough, N. (2003) ‘Political correctness’: the politics of
culture and language
Approach to controversy about ‘political correctness’ in 3 questions:
1. Socio-historical question
Why this apparently increasing focus in politics on achieving social and political change through changing
culture and changing language – what has happened socially that can explain the ‘cultural turn’ and the
‘language turn’ in politics, in social and political theory, and in other domains of social practice?
2. Theoretical question
How are we to understand the relationships among culture, language and other elements of social life and
social practices – how are we to understand the relationship between change in culture and language, and
social change?
3. Political question
For those who are politically committed to substantive social and political change (whether right or left),
what place can a politics centred around culture and language have in a political strategy which is to have
some chance of success?
Cultural politics = politics that is focused upon representations, values and identities.
1. Socio-historical context: Society, culture and language
Seeing culture as signifying systems helps clarify the relationship between culture and language: cultures exists as
languages (or discourses). But cultures are not only discourses, they are also systems and forms of consciousness,
and they may be ideologies. An increasing salience of culture and discourse in (an increasingly reflexive) social life is
a feature of modernity:
1. The ‘culture industries’, including broadcasting, have become increasingly important domains of social
practice, and their networking with other domains of social practice (the economy, politics, family life, etc.)
has become an increasingly significant feature of social life. Other domains of social practice (eg. politics,
family life, etc.) work more and more through the mediation of the culture industries, and cultural
representations and values play an increasingly salient role in the way in which they work.
2. Culture and discourse are increasingly significant in economic production and consumption. Respectively,
economic transformations have radically changed the social relations of work.
The controversy about ‘political correctness’ is located within the shift to ‘cultural’ politics, the politics of
recognition, identity and difference. A primary target of critiques of ‘political correctness’ has been attempts by
feminists, anti-racists and others to persuade organizations to adopt guidelines which ask people to think about how
they act and speak, to avoid certain behavior and language (eg. sexist language), and to adopt alternatives.
‘Political correctness’ and being politically correct are identifications imposed upon people by their political
opponents. But this in itself is also a form of cultural politics, an intervention to change representations,
values and identities as a way of achieving social change.
2. Theory: Language, social practices and social change
Social change is a change in the networking of social practices and the articulation of elements. Analytically different
elements are: activities, subjects, social relations, instruments, objects, time and place and discourse. Social practices
are inherently reflexive – people interact and shape and reshape representations.
Basis of discourse theory: processes of cultural and discursive intervention (including ‘political correctness’)
can be seen in these terms as attempts to change discourses on the assumption that changing discourses
will/may lead to changes in other elements of social practices through processes of dialectical
internalization.
o Eg. using the term ‘mistress’ instead of partner.
Changes of discourse are not merely re-labellings but shifts to different spheres of values.
2
, Discourse figures in social practices in three ways:
1. As discourses. Discourses are positioned representations – positioned in the sense that different positions in
the social relations of a social practice tend to give rise to different representations.
2. As genres. Ways of acting and interacting in their discourse aspect. Eg. interviewing, lecturing as genres.
3. As styles. Ways of being, identities, in their discourse aspect.
Discourses include not only representations of how things are, they can also be representations of how things could
be, or ‘imaginaries’. They can represent or imagine interconnected webs of activities, instruments, objects, etc. As
imaginaries, they may come to be enacted as actual webs of activities, subjects, values, etc. – they can become
actual ways of acting and interacting.
General point: a dialectical view of social practices should also include a recognition of the formation of
(relative) permanences, which may limit the dialectical flow between elements. These relative permances
are of 2 main types:
1. The relative permanence of institutions, organizations, etc.
2. The relative permanence of habituses. The habitus of a person is a set of dispositions, stances,
knowhows, which develops over time and can also be resistant to change.
3. Political strategy and tactics: The politics of culture and language
If politics of culture and language are to work as part of a political strategy with some prospect of success, they have
to be integrated within a politics of structures and habituses.
Lempert, M. & Silverstein, M. (2012) Introduction of Creatures of
Politics
What is ‘message’ in American politics?
Message = the politician’s publicly imaginable character presented to an electorate, with a biography and a moral
profile crafted out of issues rendered of interest in the public sphere.
It is often confused by the word ‘message’ in its everyday sense.
In politics, ‘message’ is not the topic, theme or proposition of a swatch of political discourse.
Candidates for office become personae who are believable/imaginable as officeholders, through critical
readings of what their signs (speech, pronunciation, etc.) ‘give off’ in the way of coherent ‘message’. This is a
complex, multitiered process.
Message aesthetics: plotlines and laugh/gasp lines
Transparent naturalism is not the Message-relevant aesthetic in American politics. Campaigns portray their
candidate’s virtues without care for preserving nuance and gritty biographical detail, unless they are part of a
coherent appeal the candidate can inhabit. The weaknesses will be exposed through media scrutiny. Old scandals are
being reframed into character-building on the way to today’s redeemed paragon.
In the way of contributing to Message, celebrity becomes a great asset in the realm of political life in several
respects:
1. How can a politician be made a celebrity through the art of personal association? By carefully assembling
signs of celebrity around a political figure, publicists seek to stimulate in the public sphere even an
unconscious appreciation of the Message-worthiness of the politician.
2. Politicians can also be recruited from the very ranks of established celebrities. (Recent example: president
Zelensky of Ukraine who used to be an actor/comedian). Or celebrity may emerge from being carefully
stimulated and fashioned anew for a politician as an important aspect of the biographical grotesque through
the intersection of many of the same techniques and organizational affordances as apply to Hollywood
personalities, talk-show hosts, or musicians. (Eg. giving a nickname, for example JFK).
3
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