It is often claimed that political disinformation is more abundant than ever, that populists are ... more It is often claimed that political disinformation is more abundant than ever, that populists are particularly prone to lying, and that we live in an era of post-truth or epistemic relativism. Contrary to these views, we interpret this historical trend as a shift from objective to authentic forms of political truth claims. We develop a diagnostic framework that captures different types of political truth claims and their distinct elements. This framework enables interrogation and understanding of the current state of epistemic contestation and change. The rise of both populist and deliberative approaches to democracy, which we use as key examples, are indicators of a gradual shift towards a greater importance of authenticity in the public sphere. We nuance this proposition by distinguishing between different forms of authenticity employed by populist and deliberative politics: communicative authenticity in deliberative politics and original and personal authenticity in populist politics.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. D... more This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. Disruptions take ownership of and re-present the past to evaluate and contest established forms of power in the post-transitional present. They thereby potentially engender conflict that can redirect the future path to consolidation. An illustrative case is the radical opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF’s) disruption of the South African State of the Nation Address in 2015, which descended into violence. The author adopts a mixed-methods approach that prioritizes interpretive analysis and thick description. An analysis of videos of the disruptive performance in parliament is complemented by investigation of its media coverage and the real-time public reaction on Twitter. She finds that the form of the performance engenders conflict; but performance is also its subject, for it seeks to expose the vacuum of democratic substance behind the regime’s masquerade of power. While th...
Let us first consider populism as a set of mental constructs or concepts. Imagine the inside of N... more Let us first consider populism as a set of mental constructs or concepts. Imagine the inside of Nigel Farage's head. Thought bubbles float around in there; one bubble contains an idea of ordinary people, another of the immoral elite, a third of himself as exceptional. How do these mental representations play out? First, they are relational (Wirth et al., 2016, p. 8). Each idea or concept is shaped by the other ideas within Farage's head. If the elite are mind-numbingly tedious bureaucrats, Farage's idea of himself is as a mischievous rascal. Second, they take material form through processes of representation. As the concepts emerge from Farage's brain, back into the world that inspired them, they gain material form-the word 'them', a pointed finger, a naughty chuckle, a pint of bitter. Through this process of becoming embodied in symbols, the concepts adopt form and adapt their meanings to the norms and conditions of the world they enter. Ordinariness may manifest itself as a pint of bitter in the cultural context of the UK, and the symbol of the pint adds to the meaning of ordinariness the values of the traditional working-class. The concepts also change their meanings as they are transmitted and experienced through media. Words, gestures and other symbolic actions are captured in video clips and print, posted on Twitter, retweeted in modified or original form, cited in the press and contextualised, recirculated, recontextualised or perhaps ignored. The meanings of a
In this study I investigate how populism can be understood and explained from a communication per... more In this study I investigate how populism can be understood and explained from a communication perspective. Most literature constructs a dichotomy between populist ideology and style. A communication perspective instead emphasises that ideological content and stylistic form are inseparable in populist performances of political representation. For this purpose I compare two populist parties: the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – a radical-left, explosive phenomenon in South African politics – and the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which paved the way for Brexit. These two cases have emerged from contrasting democratic contexts, yet both respond to fault lines in representative democracy and engage in similar practices of symbolic communication. My approach offers a reconceptualization of populism as a communicative process. I achieve this by conducting an in-depth analysis of populist disruptive performances as exemplary manifestations of populist ideology and identifying their key fea...
The changing terms of mediation place new demands, opportunities and risks on the performance of ... more The changing terms of mediation place new demands, opportunities and risks on the performance of the political persona. Visibility has become a double-edged sword, leaving representatives vulnerable to exposure while new tools provide opportunities for emerging entrepreneurial actors. This double risk to elites’ mediated personas—exposure and challenge from entrepreneurs—renders their armour of authenticity dangerously fragile, which nourishes a public sense of being inefficaciously represented. It is this climate in which populism currently flourishes around the globe. Three primary criteria of mediated self-representation by politicians—visibility, authenticity and efficacy—form the focus of this paper: how do populists negotiate such demands in different democratic contexts, and wherein lies the symbiosis between populism and the new media environment suggested by the literature?To answer this, the paper compares two populist cases responding to different democratic contexts: UKI...
How can we make sense of the current age of global political disruption when populism leaves norm... more How can we make sense of the current age of global political disruption when populism leaves norms overturned and the future form of democracy unpredictable? Political representatives are no longer elected for their experience and expertise but out of a desire for an ephemeral sense of authenticity, a direct connection to citizens, and the certainty of the truths they tell. But when populists project these ideas and claim to represent the citizenry, what is reality and what is strategic performance for the media? This conceptually rich book explores the performative strategies of the populist politicians who disrupt the normative order with acts of ‘truth-telling’. It disentangles their complex use of media—from their appeal to news values through spectacular disruptions to sophisticated social media commentary—in repertoires of mediated performances. Based on vigorous empirical research in both established and transitional democracies, it develops a theoretical framework of populist communication in the new media environment
Media, Communication and the Struggle for Democratic Change, 2019
This chapter investigates the use of social media as a channel of communication between citizens ... more This chapter investigates the use of social media as a channel of communication between citizens and government. It draws on the concept of ‘listening’ in democratic communication (Couldry, N., Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2010; Dobson, A., Listening for Democracy: Recognition, Representation, Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). In the run-up to the 2015 State of the Nation Address, the South African presidency conducted a listening exercise on Twitter, which failed on all counts. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses of Twitter conversations, the chapter evaluates the quality of listening and identifies the reasons for the collapse of the conversation. The findings suggest that while poorly performed listening campaigns can result in spiralling frustration among citizens, social media platforms like Twitter can also provide opportunities for governments to listen in a manner that serves a more posi...
This paper investigates the influence of democratic context on how populist political actors comm... more This paper investigates the influence of democratic context on how populist political actors communicate on social media. In particular, it focuses on representations of ‘the people’: how does democratic context shape populists’ definitions of ‘the people’ when represented in ‘the people’s media’? I compare two populist parties: the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa and the UK Independence Party in the UK. These cases contrast across democratic context and history and associated trust in political institutions and actors, yet both use social media very effectively. I present a pre-study of a qualitative analysis of populist politicians’ representations of ‘the people’ on Twitter. Social media platforms are arguably suited to a populist communication style, yet allow for different communication strategies in populists’ relationship with the people. Inter-regional comparative studies of populism are all but non-existent, especially across different democratic contexts. Yet this study avoids the traps of Western-centric research on populism that too often entangles the concept with local political and cultural factors. It simultaneously places social media firmly on the populism research agenda. Populists’ definition of ‘the people’ is constructed through both discourse and strategic media choice. In turn it constructs the populist identity and legitimizes a domesticated notion of democracy. In Western Europe populism is generally regarded as an exclusionary phenomenon. It exploits and deepens the current crisis of democracy with a less-than-liberal definition of ‘the people’, who are increasingly mobilized via social media. Yet populist representations of ‘the people’ can under certain conditions have an inclusionary effect on democratization. In newer democracies such as South Africa, populists increasingly use social media for supposedly inclusionary outreach, despite digital divides. Populists’ utilization of the medium’s democratizing image in both contexts begs the question: democracy for whom?
This chapter further develops the concept of populist performance based on the preceding empirica... more This chapter further develops the concept of populist performance based on the preceding empirical analysis. It fills out the populist mode of representation as a set of forms and functions of exposure and representation. Disruptive forms transgress conventions of speech, behaviour and appearance of formal politics. The functions are to expose elites’ untrustworthiness, unresponsiveness and selectivity in who is represented and to perform populists’ own self-connected and responsive authenticity. Populism therefore performs a claim to truth-telling. This chapter also discusses the performative impact of bringing into being a political reality characterised by a crisis of representation and a people lacking in feelings of political efficacy. It makes populism highly consequential and contextual. Its meanings and implications are shaped by the dominant mode of representation, institutional robustness and democratic pathway.
The paper applies the concept of ‘mediatisation’ as a theoretical framework to transitional democ... more The paper applies the concept of ‘mediatisation’ as a theoretical framework to transitional democracies. In doing so it addresses the question of how recent changes in the media environment impact on the dynamics and outcomes of struggles for democratic transition. The argument is based on two propositions: First, mediatisation is best understood as a transformative process that defies clear cause-effect attributions. Second, besides journalistic media as institutions of public communication, communication technologies have also to be considered as a crucial factor that drives the mediatisation of politics, and indeed transitional politics. We conclude by pointing out that mediatisation in emerging democracies is a multi-faceted and often ambiguous process that is shaped by the political, social and cultural context in which it takes place. It thus results in different configurations of the media-politics nexus than in established western democracies, at times serving to strengthen ...
This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. D... more This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. Disruptions take ownership of and re-present the past to evaluate and contest established forms of power in the post-transitional present. They thereby potentially engender conflict that can redirect the future path to consolidation. An illustrative case is the radical opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters? (EFF?s) disruption of the South African State of the Nation Address in 2015, which descended into violence. The author adopts a mixed-methods approach that prioritizes interpretive analysis and thick description. An analysis of videos of the disruptive performance in parliament is complemented by investigation of its media coverage and the real-time public reaction on Twitter. She finds that the form of the performance engenders conflict; but performance is also its subject, for it seeks to expose the vacuum of democratic substance behind the regime?s masquerade of power. While the disruptive performance therefore serves an important accountability function, it simultaneously sets a problematic course for future democratic transition as it performs this function through moral essentialism. The South African case presents a particular type of disruption with specific functions and democratic implications. But it also demonstrates that a concern with the formal aspects of performance in general is a fruitful lens for considering the relation between observable form in processes of meaning-making, its political functions and the democratic change it can effect.
It is often claimed that political disinformation is more abundant than ever, that populists are ... more It is often claimed that political disinformation is more abundant than ever, that populists are particularly prone to lying, and that we live in an era of post-truth or epistemic relativism. Contrary to these views, we interpret this historical trend as a shift from objective to authentic forms of political truth claims. We develop a diagnostic framework that captures different types of political truth claims and their distinct elements. This framework enables interrogation and understanding of the current state of epistemic contestation and change. The rise of both populist and deliberative approaches to democracy, which we use as key examples, are indicators of a gradual shift towards a greater importance of authenticity in the public sphere. We nuance this proposition by distinguishing between different forms of authenticity employed by populist and deliberative politics: communicative authenticity in deliberative politics and original and personal authenticity in populist politics.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. D... more This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. Disruptions take ownership of and re-present the past to evaluate and contest established forms of power in the post-transitional present. They thereby potentially engender conflict that can redirect the future path to consolidation. An illustrative case is the radical opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF’s) disruption of the South African State of the Nation Address in 2015, which descended into violence. The author adopts a mixed-methods approach that prioritizes interpretive analysis and thick description. An analysis of videos of the disruptive performance in parliament is complemented by investigation of its media coverage and the real-time public reaction on Twitter. She finds that the form of the performance engenders conflict; but performance is also its subject, for it seeks to expose the vacuum of democratic substance behind the regime’s masquerade of power. While th...
Let us first consider populism as a set of mental constructs or concepts. Imagine the inside of N... more Let us first consider populism as a set of mental constructs or concepts. Imagine the inside of Nigel Farage's head. Thought bubbles float around in there; one bubble contains an idea of ordinary people, another of the immoral elite, a third of himself as exceptional. How do these mental representations play out? First, they are relational (Wirth et al., 2016, p. 8). Each idea or concept is shaped by the other ideas within Farage's head. If the elite are mind-numbingly tedious bureaucrats, Farage's idea of himself is as a mischievous rascal. Second, they take material form through processes of representation. As the concepts emerge from Farage's brain, back into the world that inspired them, they gain material form-the word 'them', a pointed finger, a naughty chuckle, a pint of bitter. Through this process of becoming embodied in symbols, the concepts adopt form and adapt their meanings to the norms and conditions of the world they enter. Ordinariness may manifest itself as a pint of bitter in the cultural context of the UK, and the symbol of the pint adds to the meaning of ordinariness the values of the traditional working-class. The concepts also change their meanings as they are transmitted and experienced through media. Words, gestures and other symbolic actions are captured in video clips and print, posted on Twitter, retweeted in modified or original form, cited in the press and contextualised, recirculated, recontextualised or perhaps ignored. The meanings of a
In this study I investigate how populism can be understood and explained from a communication per... more In this study I investigate how populism can be understood and explained from a communication perspective. Most literature constructs a dichotomy between populist ideology and style. A communication perspective instead emphasises that ideological content and stylistic form are inseparable in populist performances of political representation. For this purpose I compare two populist parties: the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – a radical-left, explosive phenomenon in South African politics – and the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which paved the way for Brexit. These two cases have emerged from contrasting democratic contexts, yet both respond to fault lines in representative democracy and engage in similar practices of symbolic communication. My approach offers a reconceptualization of populism as a communicative process. I achieve this by conducting an in-depth analysis of populist disruptive performances as exemplary manifestations of populist ideology and identifying their key fea...
The changing terms of mediation place new demands, opportunities and risks on the performance of ... more The changing terms of mediation place new demands, opportunities and risks on the performance of the political persona. Visibility has become a double-edged sword, leaving representatives vulnerable to exposure while new tools provide opportunities for emerging entrepreneurial actors. This double risk to elites’ mediated personas—exposure and challenge from entrepreneurs—renders their armour of authenticity dangerously fragile, which nourishes a public sense of being inefficaciously represented. It is this climate in which populism currently flourishes around the globe. Three primary criteria of mediated self-representation by politicians—visibility, authenticity and efficacy—form the focus of this paper: how do populists negotiate such demands in different democratic contexts, and wherein lies the symbiosis between populism and the new media environment suggested by the literature?To answer this, the paper compares two populist cases responding to different democratic contexts: UKI...
How can we make sense of the current age of global political disruption when populism leaves norm... more How can we make sense of the current age of global political disruption when populism leaves norms overturned and the future form of democracy unpredictable? Political representatives are no longer elected for their experience and expertise but out of a desire for an ephemeral sense of authenticity, a direct connection to citizens, and the certainty of the truths they tell. But when populists project these ideas and claim to represent the citizenry, what is reality and what is strategic performance for the media? This conceptually rich book explores the performative strategies of the populist politicians who disrupt the normative order with acts of ‘truth-telling’. It disentangles their complex use of media—from their appeal to news values through spectacular disruptions to sophisticated social media commentary—in repertoires of mediated performances. Based on vigorous empirical research in both established and transitional democracies, it develops a theoretical framework of populist communication in the new media environment
Media, Communication and the Struggle for Democratic Change, 2019
This chapter investigates the use of social media as a channel of communication between citizens ... more This chapter investigates the use of social media as a channel of communication between citizens and government. It draws on the concept of ‘listening’ in democratic communication (Couldry, N., Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2010; Dobson, A., Listening for Democracy: Recognition, Representation, Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). In the run-up to the 2015 State of the Nation Address, the South African presidency conducted a listening exercise on Twitter, which failed on all counts. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses of Twitter conversations, the chapter evaluates the quality of listening and identifies the reasons for the collapse of the conversation. The findings suggest that while poorly performed listening campaigns can result in spiralling frustration among citizens, social media platforms like Twitter can also provide opportunities for governments to listen in a manner that serves a more posi...
This paper investigates the influence of democratic context on how populist political actors comm... more This paper investigates the influence of democratic context on how populist political actors communicate on social media. In particular, it focuses on representations of ‘the people’: how does democratic context shape populists’ definitions of ‘the people’ when represented in ‘the people’s media’? I compare two populist parties: the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa and the UK Independence Party in the UK. These cases contrast across democratic context and history and associated trust in political institutions and actors, yet both use social media very effectively. I present a pre-study of a qualitative analysis of populist politicians’ representations of ‘the people’ on Twitter. Social media platforms are arguably suited to a populist communication style, yet allow for different communication strategies in populists’ relationship with the people. Inter-regional comparative studies of populism are all but non-existent, especially across different democratic contexts. Yet this study avoids the traps of Western-centric research on populism that too often entangles the concept with local political and cultural factors. It simultaneously places social media firmly on the populism research agenda. Populists’ definition of ‘the people’ is constructed through both discourse and strategic media choice. In turn it constructs the populist identity and legitimizes a domesticated notion of democracy. In Western Europe populism is generally regarded as an exclusionary phenomenon. It exploits and deepens the current crisis of democracy with a less-than-liberal definition of ‘the people’, who are increasingly mobilized via social media. Yet populist representations of ‘the people’ can under certain conditions have an inclusionary effect on democratization. In newer democracies such as South Africa, populists increasingly use social media for supposedly inclusionary outreach, despite digital divides. Populists’ utilization of the medium’s democratizing image in both contexts begs the question: democracy for whom?
This chapter further develops the concept of populist performance based on the preceding empirica... more This chapter further develops the concept of populist performance based on the preceding empirical analysis. It fills out the populist mode of representation as a set of forms and functions of exposure and representation. Disruptive forms transgress conventions of speech, behaviour and appearance of formal politics. The functions are to expose elites’ untrustworthiness, unresponsiveness and selectivity in who is represented and to perform populists’ own self-connected and responsive authenticity. Populism therefore performs a claim to truth-telling. This chapter also discusses the performative impact of bringing into being a political reality characterised by a crisis of representation and a people lacking in feelings of political efficacy. It makes populism highly consequential and contextual. Its meanings and implications are shaped by the dominant mode of representation, institutional robustness and democratic pathway.
The paper applies the concept of ‘mediatisation’ as a theoretical framework to transitional democ... more The paper applies the concept of ‘mediatisation’ as a theoretical framework to transitional democracies. In doing so it addresses the question of how recent changes in the media environment impact on the dynamics and outcomes of struggles for democratic transition. The argument is based on two propositions: First, mediatisation is best understood as a transformative process that defies clear cause-effect attributions. Second, besides journalistic media as institutions of public communication, communication technologies have also to be considered as a crucial factor that drives the mediatisation of politics, and indeed transitional politics. We conclude by pointing out that mediatisation in emerging democracies is a multi-faceted and often ambiguous process that is shaped by the political, social and cultural context in which it takes place. It thus results in different configurations of the media-politics nexus than in established western democracies, at times serving to strengthen ...
This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. D... more This article looks at disruptive political performance in the context of democratic transition. Disruptions take ownership of and re-present the past to evaluate and contest established forms of power in the post-transitional present. They thereby potentially engender conflict that can redirect the future path to consolidation. An illustrative case is the radical opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters? (EFF?s) disruption of the South African State of the Nation Address in 2015, which descended into violence. The author adopts a mixed-methods approach that prioritizes interpretive analysis and thick description. An analysis of videos of the disruptive performance in parliament is complemented by investigation of its media coverage and the real-time public reaction on Twitter. She finds that the form of the performance engenders conflict; but performance is also its subject, for it seeks to expose the vacuum of democratic substance behind the regime?s masquerade of power. While the disruptive performance therefore serves an important accountability function, it simultaneously sets a problematic course for future democratic transition as it performs this function through moral essentialism. The South African case presents a particular type of disruption with specific functions and democratic implications. But it also demonstrates that a concern with the formal aspects of performance in general is a fruitful lens for considering the relation between observable form in processes of meaning-making, its political functions and the democratic change it can effect.
How can we make sense of the current age of global political disruption when populism leaves norm... more How can we make sense of the current age of global political disruption when populism leaves norms overturned and the future form of democracy unpredictable?
Political representatives are no longer elected for their experience and expertise but out of a desire for authenticity, a direct connection to citizens, and the certainty of the truths they tell. But when populists project these ideas and claim to represent the citizenry, what is reality and what is strategic performance for the media? This conceptually rich book explores the performative strategies of the populist politicians who disrupt the normative order with acts of ‘truth-telling’. It disentangles their complex use of media—from their appeal to news values through spectacular disruptions to sophisticated social media commentary—in repertoires of mediated performances. Based on vigorous empirical research in both established and transitional democracies, it develops a theoretical framework of populist communication in the new media environment.
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Political representatives are no longer elected for their experience and expertise but out of a desire for authenticity, a direct connection to citizens, and the certainty of the truths they tell. But when populists project these ideas and claim to represent the citizenry, what is reality and what is strategic performance for the media? This conceptually rich book explores the performative strategies of the populist politicians who disrupt the normative order with acts of ‘truth-telling’. It disentangles their complex use of media—from their appeal to news values through spectacular disruptions to sophisticated social media commentary—in repertoires of mediated performances. Based on vigorous empirical research in both established and transitional democracies, it develops a theoretical framework of populist communication in the new media environment.