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The Discursive-Digital Link: Antagonism and Polarisation in Digital Spaces
We are in a state of crisis. Democracy is under threat, authoritarian politics are on the rise, and digital media--once heralded as emancipatory technologies--are increasingly implicated in democratic erosion. The Discursive-Digital Link offers a critical framework for understanding the entangled relationships between discourse, digital media, and the hidden dynamics behind antagonism and polarisation.
The Discursive-Digital Link presents a fluid social ontology that theorises how discourses and digital communication technologies are inseparably entangled, and how this entanglement contributes to the formation of complex hierarchical relations. Drawing on discourse theory and new materialist perspectives, Dehghan maps how the various components of the discursive-digital link--users, collectives, identities, the medium's design, underlying neoliberal capitalist logics, and structural power dynamics--together shape antagonistic frontiers in digital spaces. Through detailed case studies across multiple digital media, Dehghan demonstrates how these entanglements manifest through different articulatory logics that could transform societies toward either agonistic progress or disastrous polarisation.
By revealing the logics of discursive-digital alliances and active passivity, Dehghan provides critical insights for academics, activists, and anyone seeking to foster progressive togetherness. The Discursive-Digital Link offers a powerful theoretical framework and methodology for analysing digitally mediated communication. It challenges monolithic understandings of polarisation, technological solutionism, and symptom-focused approaches, instead advocating for radical structural interventions across all entangled components of the discursive-digital link--a necessary shift in both academic research and progressive political strategy to address the democratic crises of our time.
Book Details
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publish Date: Sep 17th, 2025
- Pages: 222
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.99lb
- EAN: 9781032487281
- Categories: • Political Process - Media & Internet• Media Studies
About the Author
Ehsan Dehghan researches the dynamics of discursive struggles in digitally mediated communication. He is based at the School of Communication and is a Chief Investigator at the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia.
Praise for this book
Written with an urgent elegance, Dehghan argues that the sedimentation of neoliberal capitalism is so entangled with our digital existences it's imperative to forge progressive alliances and a new simplified politics. Thought provoking and challenging - do as he suggests, turn off technology, escape the noise....and read this book--Natalie Fenton, Professor of media and communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
This is an urgent, compelling and original intervention that critically explains the vital function of digital platforms in shaping discourses and political contestations in neoliberal capitalism. Based on the articulation of a dynamic social ontology of the discursive-digital complex, which is used to elucidate pressing empirical cases, Ehsan Dehghan develops a novel conceptual grammar for comprehending, dissecting, evaluating, and transforming the different ways that digital media structure political communication and antagonistic relations in contemporary societies. This is essential reading for those who wish to understand and engage with one of the most challenging issues of our time--David Howarth, Professor of political theory and Co-Director of the Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis, Department of Government, University of Essex, UK
The Discursive-Digital Link presents a much-needed counterpoint to deterministic narratives around digital media, democracy, and polarization. Drawing on discourse theory and actor-network theory, Dehghan ambitiously charts new paths towards reassembling the social in social media--Johan Farkas, Assistant Professor in media studies and the author of Post Truth, Fake News and Democracy, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Drawing on and expanding the Discourse Theory approach, Dehghan's book offers a timely project aimed at providing an integrative understanding of meaning-making in online spaces. It presents much-needed, synergistic explorations of how content and mediation technologies interact in shaping contemporary political discourses, as demonstrated through several case studies. With accessible examples and a clear narrative style, the book introduces a new model of theorisation and analysis for a better understanding of the interrelations between digital spaces and the contemporary politics of democracy--Majid KhosraviNik, Reader in Digital Media and Discourse Studies, University of Newcastle, UK