Ideology in the age of Mediatized Politics

• In Event: Political Discourse, Ideology, and the Media

Abstract

This paper raises a question regarding the alleged metamorphosis of politics in the age of mediatization and, more particularly, the place and role political ideology may reserve in this context. As I will argue, to study ideology in the context of mediatized politics is not to study the survival or demise of some ‘grand’ belief systems but the potential of political discourse, as it is articulated through several media genres within specific socio-political contexts, to recontextualize symbolisms from the past serving the effective exercise of political power in the present. I will further illustrate this attempted revisionism by briefly examining three televised political advertisements, which I take as an example of mediatised politics, by the American Democratic party for the 2008 presidential election, by the British Conservative party for the 2010 general election and by the Greek Panhellenic Socialist Movement for the 2009 parliamentary election, respectively

Author

• Angelos Kissas, London School of Economics and Political Science