Neoliberalism, Media and the Political [Hardcover]

Neoliberalism, Media and the Political examines the condition of media and journalism in neoliberal cultures. Emphasizing neoliberalism's status as a political ideology that is simultaneously hostile to politics, the book presents a critical theoretical argument supported by empirical illustrations from New Zealand, Ireland, the UK and the US.List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction: Disfiguring Neoliberalism 1. Articulating Neoliberalism in Critical Media and Communication Studies 2. Neoliberal Discourse: Theory, History and Trajectories 3. Neoliberal Logics and Field Theory 4. Neoliberalism and Media Democracy: A Representative Anecdote from Post-Rogernomics New Zealand 5. The Journalistic Habitus and the Realist Style 6. Media Cultures, Anti-Politics and the 'Climategate' Affair 7. Neoliberal Imaginaries, Press Freedom and the Politics of Leveson 8. Media Rituals and the 'Celtic Tiger': The Neoliberal Nation and its Transnational Circulation Conclusion: The Possibility of a Radical Media Politics

Sean Phelan draws upon a diverse range of theoretical sources & and a handful of illustrative case studies in order to diagnose the contemporary condition of actually existing neoliberalism. & Phelan has managed to produce a book that offers both a valuable contribution to the scholarly understanding of neoliberalization and a timely critique of the pretensions of postideological journalists and the disingenuous proclamations of postneoliberal politics. (Simon Dawes, Cultural Politics, Vol. 11 (3), November, 2015)

Understanding how the concept and mechanics of neoliberalism work through and in the media and the consequences for our political lives is one of the key issues of our times. Phelan manages to weave political economy with cultural studies, discourse theory with field theory alongside an historical analysis of the concept of neoliberalism, to offer an incisive and insightful empirical critique of how neoliberalism gets mediatedls5