The De Gruyter handbook on digital political communications

Wheeler, Mark; Iosifidis, Petros

London Met Repository

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Wheeler, Mark and Iosifidis, Petros (2026) The De Gruyter handbook on digital political communications. De Gruyter contemporary social sciences handbooks, 33 . De Gruyter, Berlin. ISBN 978-3-11-138603-4 (In Press)

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Abstract

This handbook contains over 40 contributions. It refers to how the Information Communications Technologies (ICT) are impacting upon the public sphere and whether social media facilitates an electronic agora. For advocates of a digital democracy, the abundance of unfiltered information streams, platforms and podcasts could enable ‘net’ citizens (or ‘Netizens’) to connect on a many-to-many or peer-to-peer basis. Such viral engagements will enhance grassroots political causes, social movements and direct-action campaigns. Consequently, the new technologies will remove the old hierarchies to create cyber-networks of connectivity.
Conversely, critical theorists argue that social media has created societal, economic and political dislocations which have eroded rational debates into ideological polarisations. Rather than encouraging Platonic philosopher kings, the internet has unleashed irrational forces requiring content regulations and controls They are facilitated by the illegitimate cloak of anonymity which perpetuates post-truths or outright lies. Most profoundly, the public requires protections from malicious software so that the state should have ‘lawful access’ to pernicious or illegal sites, alongside gaining regulatory authority over the darknet, along with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It has been pitched that as humans will lose their antimony to the machines, public service and democratic media will be replaced by a commercial race to the bottom due to this growth in mis or dis-information.
It is contended that social media and more widely accessible forms of AI could have a major impact on matters of trust and integrity. This has led to questions about what technological fixes political parties, governments, social media companies and civil society organisations utilise to preserve digital electoral integrity. Moreover, conspiratorial social movements such as MAGA, QAnon and the English Defiance League (EDL) have spread online post-truths (or lies) while simultaneously complaining about the propagation of ‘fake news.’ The assault on the mainstream news providers has led to a decline in the public’s trust in the legacy news organisations.
Further, through such political communications networks and nodes, normative editorial and journalist practices are under threat. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has been defined by its expansion of executive power, immigration crackdowns, the slashing of federal budgets and agencies, international tariffs, and a transactional foreign policy founded on America First values. Most especially, Trump 2.0 has continued to weaponise dis(mis)information and communications conduits and he has utilised his celebrity online persona, his charismatic authoritarianism and his symbolic information tools to define his reactionary, ideological agenda. Yet, despite its assorted followers’ best efforts through obfuscation, denial or redaction, Trump’s second administration has been overshadowed by the scandal surrounding the revelations in the files held by the FBI on the late disgraced pedophile financier Jeffery Epstein, not least those containing information about Trump himself. These matters, however, exist well beyond US borders and boundaries, but may be seen to be applicable to the MPG’s generic matters of politics, power, accountability, sovereignty and the very core principles of the common good.

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