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Article published In:
Dialogue in institutional settings
Edited by Franca Orletti and Letizia Caronia
[Language and Dialogue 9:1] 2019
► pp. 28–41

Why Trump won the elections

Populism and dialogue in the age of social media

| University of Bologna (Italy)

In this article I would like to focus on the dialogical transformations that the use of social media has introduced into political discourse, showing why they have an increasing relevance on the whole landscape of our contemporary political arena. In order to do that, I will analyse their semiotic functioning, and the way in which they have transformed the traditional dialogical structure, still present in other forms of technologically mediated communication. Finally, I will advance some hypothesis on how these transformations can favour the growth of populism, a phenomenon that should concern anybody interested in dialogue, since populism represents precisely the death of any form of dialogue.

Keywords: social media, Internet, Digital Age, populism, political discourse, technologically mediated dialogue, communication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Social media and digital mediated dialogue
  • 3.The digital revolution and its criticisms
  • 4.Turning to social media
  • 5.Back to Donald
  • 6.A tentative conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Sources
Published online: 5 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00030.vio
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Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Kayam, Orly
2023. Trump’s Rhetorical Way to Presidency. In U.S. Democracy in Danger [Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, ], ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo

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