Critical Perspectives on “the People” and the Popular in Networked Media Cultures

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel has two purposes that are often separated in academic treatments of populism and popular media. First, it engages empirically with the role of media practices in popular political movements around the world, from Italy to Cuba, the U.S. and France, asking to what degree access to new media technologies has helped alter the dynamics of traditional populist movements hierarchically organized around charismatic leaders. Second, it places the empirical studies in the context of a productive theoretical tension between Gramscian cultural studies approaches to national populars and more recent theories of the multitude.

Sub Unit

• Philosophy, Theory and Critique

Chair

• Jayson Harsin, CUNY-Baruch College

Individual Presentations

• From Demolatry to Demophila: New Media and the Remaking of Cuban Populism - Sara Garcia Garcia Santamaria, The University of Sheffield

• Networked Populisms: The Rise of the Net Parties and the Case of the M5S - Marco Deseriis, Northeastern U

• Populisms within Regimes of Post-Truth and Post-Political Strategies - Jayson Harsin, CUNY-Baruch College

• From the Multitude (Back) to the People: Emerging Figures in Technocratic Populism - Jack Zeljko Bratich, Rutgers U

Respondent

• Alison Hearn, U of Western Ontario