Political authority in a mediated age

Abstract

The nature and impact of authority have been central to social theory since antiquity, and most students of politics, culture and organizations have – in one manner or another – visited the topic. Theorists recognize that the exercise of authority is conditioned by the environment, but their work has not always integrated fundamental changes in communication infrastructure, and in particular the diffusion of mass media. With the daily evolution of telecommunications, this is a good historical moment to re-evaluate the notion of authority. My goal is to assess ways to both preserve extraordinarily useful categories from the past, and at the same time, make those typologies more sensitive to contemporary mediated communication. Here I synthesize American research on media and political communication with recent theoretical approaches to authority, expanding current views of coercion and submission.