POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN POST-DIGITAL SOCIETIES

ABSTRACT In his contribution to the Special Issue “Digital and semiotic mechanisms of contemporary populisms”, Jan Blommaert offers a communicability model which accounts for political discourse (and others) in the post-digital era we live. He starts by arguing that the idea of the public (a homogeneous entity) that was very popular in the 20th century sociological imagination of how propaganda worked in “manufacturing consent” can no longer be used to explain the fragmented audiences of our post-digital era. The author illuminates his argument by resorting to the circulation of political tweets/retweets as texts in our algorithmic-oriented world. Such a circulation aims at niched audiences. In the last section, the author argues that discourse analysts need to operate from this communicability model if they are to understand the cruciality of political discourse in our contemporary social lives.

摘要：在为特刊《当代民粹主义的数字与符号机制》（Digital and semiotic mechanisms of contemporary populisms）供稿的稿件中，扬·布隆马特（Jan Blommaert）提出了可传播性模型（communicability model），用以阐释我们所处后数字时代中的政治话语及其他各类话语。开篇他便指出，20世纪社会学想象中广为流行的“公众（同质化实体）”观念——该观念曾用于阐释“制造共识”语境下的宣传运作逻辑——已无法解释后数字时代碎片化的受众群体。作者以算法主导的当下语境中政治推文及转推的文本传播为例，阐明了其核心论点：此类传播的目标受众实为细分群体。在文末部分，作者提出，若话语分析学者欲理解政治话语在当代社会生活中的关键意义，便需基于这套可传播性模型开展研究。