Politicality and the Web — Tracking the Cross-Currents

Abstract

Summarising the opportunities for ‘political mediations’ in the rapidly evolving, multifaceted space of the web presents a number of complications, due in part to its immense capacity to embrace and adapt material from across a broad range of traditional media platforms. Indeed, on one level, the web is difficult to treat as a medium separate from older forms of media, as ever-expanding broadband capabilities allow it to develop as a conduit for TV, radio and even cinematic productions (through iPlayer, podcasts, YouTube and LoveFilm), while content displayed under ‘brands’ of mainstream print media often shadows its offline ‘older sister’ in terms of genre, format and style (e.g. editorial cartoons, Private Eye). Moreover, the web enables audience connectivity and shared responses to ‘real-time’ broadcasting and other content through social-media sites, such as Twitter, live blogging, official and unofficial forums, and comment threads. Leading political blogs, or ‘influentials’ (Perlmutter, 2008), with their more personalized approach to reporting on political events, present a relatively definable — though evolving — communicative space through which to venture into the wider political mediascape online. Political blogging is therefore at the centre of the following account.