The Fourth Age of Political Communication: Democratic decay or the rise of phronetic political communication?

Abstract

The ‘fourth age’ of political communication is emerging. In the fourth age the logics of media and digitization shapes the public sphere, because algorithms and polarized drama increasingly determine what we become aware of in digital and mass media. The result may very well be a less informed public sphere. The emerging class of policy professionals has the opportunity to mix the logics of mediatization and digitization. While such a mix may very well lead to democratic decay, based on elitism, it may also hold fruitful potentials for a more democratic and ethical type of political communication, called phronetic political communication.

The Social Media Paradox or How Political Dialogue is Hard to Practice on Facebook: The Portuguese Case

“…Their efforts contrast with the quasi-null interaction of mainstream center-and left-wing parties (see Table 2). This result does not refute the general statement that highly asymmetrical communication and power play is the main characteristic of the political communication in social media (Aagaard, 2016), but seems to confirm that, somehow, populist parties and single-issue or "niche" parties are stronger believers of the "direct communication"…”

Public expectations towards the roles of the Indonesian house of representatives

“…According to Peter Aagaard, political communication is marked by a shift to digital political communication in the digital era. This can lead to a more democratic and ethical form of communication (Aagaard, 2016). Communication is not only monopolised by political elites but can also be initiated by the public.…”

Tristes por diseño: las redes sociales como ideología

“…La consolidación de la influencia de Internet en el espacio de debate público y su cada vez más profusa utilización partidista han conducido a la comunicación política a la cuarta fase de su desarrollo (Aagaard, 2016;Bennett & Pfetsch, 2018;Blumler, 2016;Esser & Pfetsch, 2020;Magin et al, 2017;Roemmele & Gibson, 2020). Este nuevo estadio se caracteriza, entre otros factores, por la adquisición de las redes sociales de la condición de principal canal de comunicación política en convivencia con la televisión (Esser & Pfetsch, 2020); la orientación de las campañas a micronichos de individuos (Roemmele & Gibson, 2020) cada vez más activos (Esser & Pfetsch, 2020) mediante el uso estratégico de la tecnología digital y el big data (Calvo et al, 2019;Roemmele & Gibson, 2020); la utilización de bots automatizados (Calvo et al, 2019) y la modulación de la opinión pública mediante algoritmos (Esser & Pfetsch, 2020).…”