List of Tables and Graphs
List of Online Appendices
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Collective Speculation in Mediatized Populist Democracy
PART I The Speculative Media System
1. Speculation and Liquidity in Mediatized Politics and Marketized
Finance
1.1 Two “Neomodern” Myths in a “Liquid” New
Age
1.2. The “Modernist” Invention of the New Age of Popular Media
1.3. The Fifth Estate: The Discursive Sphere of “Neopopular”
Speculation
1.4. The Mediatization of Politics
1.5. Liquidity and Collective Speculation in Late Modern
Society
1.6. Structural Paradoxes in the Making of the “New Age”
2. The Rise of the Fifth Estate
2.1. The
“Balanced” Model of Control in High Modern Institutions
2.2. Breaking the Balance: New Speculative Centers “above” Big
Institutions
2.3. The Opening of a Sphere of Collective Speculation on Popular
Resonance
2.4. The Rise of the Fifth Estate, a “Field of Restricted Symbolic
Production”
2.5. Conclusion
3. Theorizing Collective Mythmaking on Media and
Markets
3.1. The Free Market Belief System as
Collective Myth
3.2. Collective Myths, Beyond the Constructionist Mainstreams
3.3. The Neopopular Code of Mythmaking: Scholarly Complicity and
Beyond
3.4. A “Strong Media Mythology”: Addressing Neopopular
Mythmaking
3.5. Understanding Popular Media Myths: From a “Weak” to a “Strong”
Model
PART II. The Cultural Autonomy of Neopopular
Mythmaking
Introduction to Part 2
4. Mythicizing Popular Media in Academia
4.1
Self-Propelled Binarizing
4.2. The Shared Mythical Core: Instances and Rules of Popular
Control
4.3. Liquid Binarizing: The Production of Unfalsifiable
Narratives
4.4. Inflating the Modernist Bubble: Self-Reproduction through
Self-Expansion
5. The Myth of “Active Control” in Media-Interpreting
Industries
5.1. Active Media-Using Prospects in
Commercial Marketing
5.2. Controlling the Active Voter: Modernist Myths in the Discourse
of Political PR
5.3. The Popular Middle: The Mythical Object of Active Control in
Political Marketing
PART III. The Counterperformativity of Neopopular
Mythmaking
Introduction to Part 3
6. When Being Popular Is Dangerous: The Case of a
Myth-Driven Political Campaign
6.1. The Media Coverage
of the New Right’s Celebratory Performance in 2001–2
6.2. The Ambiguous Reception of Celebratory Politics
6.3. Celebratory Politics and the Middle Ground of the Hungarian
Electorate
6.4. Discussion: Selectivity, Repolarization, and Audience
Partitioning
7. Latent Events in a Postnormal Media
Environment
7.1. Neopopular Speculation and Media Eventization
7.2. Eventization and Theories of Liminality, Spectacle, and
Catharsis
7.3. Latent Events as Experiential Enclaves
7.4. The Postnormal Space of Late Modern Media
Conclusion: The Dialectic of Liquid Modernity and the Crisis of Democracy
Appendix
References
Index
Peter Csigo is a Hungarian sociologist researching collective speculation at the fields of popular media and democratic politics
"This is a truly eye-opening, trailblazing new study. P�ter Csig�
sets the commonsensical idea of the 'mediatization' of contemporary
politics in an entirely new perspective. Misinformation,
miscomprehension, and misadaptation--too often downplayed as
occasional lapses or mere 'work accidents' of political
procedure--are revealed in this thorough, meticulously documented
study as pivotal, all but defining features of the emergent
politics-media tandem. Their summary effect is a self-enclosed
universe conjured by that tandem and operated from within it, in a
deepening separation from the daily life of targeted political
subjects and media consumers. Csig�'s study is a powerful insight
into the mechanism of the widely noted, but still poorly understood
breakdown of communication between the political elite and the
society it administers."--Zygmunt Bauman
"This is a very original, witty, and thoughtful book, most
particularly in its development of a double critique: first, of the
media industries themselves for creating and reinforcing the myths
associated with media's supposed resonance with their audiences;
and, second, of the academic field of media and cultural studies
for not distancing themselves sufficiently from these industry
myths. This is a genuinely original and rich line of analysis,
which forcefully hits out against the self-fulfilling
interpretative bubble in which industry and academic commentary
lives. The field of media and communications--and wider cultural
sociology--does not see many attempts to integrate cultural and
media analysis with wider social and cultural theory of the
sophistication this book offers, that has the potential to have
major impact."--Nick Couldry
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