Ideology in the age of mediatized politics

What is it about?

Mediatized politics is often associated with a metamorphosis of politics; a shift from philosophical fermentations to effective media campaigning and from rational argumentation to personal appeals, sound bites and dramatic effects. The question this article raises is whether this alleged metamorphosis allows some space for ideology to emerge and play any role in contemporary politics and, if so, what the implications for the study of political ideology in the age of mediatization are? As I will argue, to study ideology in the context of mediatized politics is not to make big claims about the survival or demise of some ‘grand’ belief systems but to analytically address the potential of political discourse, as it is articulated through several media genres within specific socio-political contexts, to re-contextualize 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 mediatized politics, by the American Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election in the US, by the British Conservative party for the 2010 general election in the UK and by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement for the 2009 parliamentary election in Greece, respectively.

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Photo by Jordhan Madec on Unsplash

Photo by Jordhan Madec on Unsplash