Elena Block – författare

In Discursive Disruption, Populist Communication and Democracy, Elena Block explores the links between declining democratic discourses, populist communication, and reflects on the communicative and moral dimensions of populism.

Block proposes the concept of discursive disruption to help to identify, analyze and understand the disruptive power of populist speech, turning to the communicative styles of Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chávez and the US’s President Donald J. Trump to illustrate and support this new conceptual and analytical tool. While the mainstream political class and media traditionally sought to manage the processes of political communication, the book contends that they have now been displaced and their role has been undermined. Middle ground politics and journalism have been substituted by the adversarial rhetorical styles of populists, multiplied through multi-fragmented channels, texts and voices. With this book, Block continues her introspection in the conceptual, communicative and mediatic dimensions of populism by adding a perspective that draws on democratic and discursive theories.

Discursive Disruption, Populist Communication and Democracy is ideally designed for scholars and professional communicators in political science and communication studies eager to understand the connection between weakening discourses of modern democracy and the pervasiness of confrontational styles of populist communication in contemporary political exchanges.

In Discursive Disruption, Populist Communication and Democracy, Elena Block explores the links between declining democratic discourses, populist communication, and reflects on the communicative and moral dimensions of populism.

Block proposes the concept of discursive disruption to help to identify, analyze and understand the disruptive power of populist speech, turning to the communicative styles of Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chávez and the US’s President Donald J. Trump to illustrate and support this new conceptual and analytical tool. While the mainstream political class and media traditionally sought to manage the processes of political communication, the book contends that they have now been displaced and their role has been undermined. Middle ground politics and journalism have been substituted by the adversarial rhetorical styles of populists, multiplied through multi-fragmented channels, texts and voices. With this book, Block continues her introspection in the conceptual, communicative and mediatic dimensions of populism by adding a perspective that draws on democratic and discursive theories.

Discursive Disruption, Populist Communication and Democracy is ideally designed for scholars and professional communicators in political science and communication studies eager to understand the connection between weakening discourses of modern democracy and the pervasiness of confrontational styles of populist communication in contemporary political exchanges.

The long-lasting hegemonic rule of President Hugo Chávez not only involved significant rearrangements in the control of political power in Venezuela but also shifts in the way its citizens constructed, connected and interacted with politics. In this book, Elena Block explores the political communication style developed by Chávez to transmit his ideologies and engage with his publics — A style that unfolded incrementally between 1998, the year of his first presidential campaign, and March 13th 2013 when his death was announced after a long struggle with cancer. What sort of political communication did Hugo Chávez develop to establish hegemony in Venezuela? What made him so popular?

Block argues that Chávez’s political communication style can be better understood through the concept of mimetisation, a systematic sequence of communicational events and practices whereby the Venezuelan President managed to build a bond with his constituents. Applying a mixed qualitative method of collection and analysis of relevant data, this phenomenon is examined via the President’s emotional use of common cultural symbols; dramatized and informalised language; savvy use of communication and media, and boost of inclusive, compensatory, and participatory practices in which his constituents not only felt mimetically mirrored, but also endowed with an identity.

Shedding new light on contemporary theories of populism from the perspective of political communication and identity construction, the notion of mimetisation can be adjusted and applied to study the links of populist phenomena, the mediatisation of politics and government, cultural appeal and identity politics in other cultures and situations in contemporary times.