Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics

A systematic examination of the relationship between post-Marxist discourse theory and media studies. This 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 and a range of issues in contemporary 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.