The Crises of Political Communication. Media, Democracy and the silent majority

Abstract

The article examines the contemporary crisis of political communications through the analytical perspective of three dominant paradigms – liberal-pluralist, constructionist and critical political economy of communication. The main argument is that each of them offers a different understanding of the sources and manifestations of the crisis – from the erosion of rational public debate and the rise of post-truth politics, through the fragmentation of shared symbolic frameworks, to the structural contradictions of capitalist media systems. This also implies different approaches to overcome it. At the center of the analysis is the concept of the silent majority, seen as a discursive and political construction that simultaneously reflects and deepens crisis processes. The conclusion marks the possible ways out of the crisis, based on the choice between two different understandings of communication – as a commodity or a democratic right.