Publications

Stylianos Papathanassopoulos & Ralph Negrine (2019) "Political communication, digital inequality and populism”, pp. 79-94. In Josef Trappel (ed.) Digital Media Inequalities. Policies Against Divides, Distrust and Discrimination. Gothenburg: Nordicom

The proliferation of internet-based forms of communication has had a dramatic impact on the way in which societies, media and political actors act and interact in the twenty-first century. Political communication is changing, but it is unclear how the changes relate to concerns about inequalities in the media sphere. More critically, the contemporary communication landscape is challenging the study of political communication itself as new forces come to play a part in producing and transmitting messages across a whole range of media. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the conducting of political communication in the light of the current developments. The first part of the chapter explores aspects of the “transformation” of political communication whilst reflecting on questions of inequality. The second part focuses on populism, a subject that has considerably re-energized researchers and, more significantly, polities.