Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics

Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics offers a systematic examination of the relationship between post-Marxist discourse theory and critical media politics. The volume interrogates discourse theory – as read via the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe – through an engagement with major approaches to critical media politics, including autonomist Marxism, Bourdieuian field theory, cultural studies, Habermasian public sphere theory, psychoanalysis, and semiotic theory. Contributors draw from a range of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds to critically explore a number of key theoretical issues in media politics, including the relationship between media practices and political practices, discourse and materiality, discourse and institutions, discourse and affect, the media and mediality, media and radical democracy, and the politics of digital networks and new social movements. The book concludes with a chapter by Peter Dahlgren, which in light of the book's contributions assesses the value of discourse theory to a critical media politics.

Lincoln Dahlberg teaches and researches in the areas of media politics, critical theory, and digital democracy. He has published extensively in these areas, including co-editor of Radical Democracy and the Internet (2007). Lincoln is currently a visiting research fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at The University of Queensland.

Sean Phelan is Senior Lecturer at Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. He has published mainly in the areas of critical media politics and journalism studies, including several essays informed by discourse theory. He has a particular research interest in exploring the relationship between critical political theory and media studies.