My discussant slides for APSA 2013 hybrid media panel.

1. Integrating Older and Newer Media in
the Study of Political Communication:
Power, Interdependence, and
HybridityResponse by Nick Anstead
APSA General Conference,
Friday 30th August 2013, Chicago
[email] n.m.anstead@lse.ac.uk
[twitter] @nickanstead

2. General thoughts
• Media is both ubiquitous (Livingstone, 2009) and hard
to define (Bennett, 2003).
• Political communication is increasingly central to the
study of politics.
• This remains a radical approach - both in academia and
certainly in public discourse.
• Application maybe dependent on discipline and sub-
discipline - content hybridity, institutional hybridity,
cultural hybridity etc.
• Role of methods: big data vs. small data. Value in both.

3. Freenlon & Karpf, Big Bird and Bayonets
• This paper underlines the continuing power of broadcast, event television
(especially significant in certain genres: politics / news, sport, reality TV).
• Continuity: Is this an extension of the "zinger"? Echoes of "you're no JFK".
Also post debate spin room "who won" discussions.
• To what extent are the boundaries blurred between MSM and new media
(can we go beyond what the paper describes as a "back and forth")?
– Put another way, to what extent can we identify hybrid actors, as
opposed to just hybrid content?
• The link between social media and public opinion (as a theoretical
concept) remains under-theorised.
• The definition and idea of elites is debatable (see Davis, 2010 on "fat
democracy").

4. Papacharissi, Affective Publics
• This paper brings us back to the question of political action.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of a move away from
deliberative theory?
• The claim that Twitter is a primary source of news seems to set this paper
apart.
– This is justifiable, given the case studies chosen.
– Actors involved start with ideologically distinctive viewpoints.
– So do we need a comparative study of hybridity? And if so, what are
the dividing lines in it?
• Can studying events such as the Arab Spring in this way lead us to
misunderstanding them (ie. do they appear more middle class and / or
liberal than is the actuality?).

5. Chadwick, Hybrid Media Logics in Political
Communication
• Important to focus on the "inherent complexity, instability and messiness" of systems.
But where is this going in broad historical terms? Can it lead to a form of stability?
• But what about the agent element, the human part?
– The age of key interviewees was very noticeable (Kuennesberg, Straw, Stringer in
their mid-to-late 30s).
– Discussion of norms does go someway toward this, but could we go further, taking
a more agent centred approach?
– What is the relationship between your work and actor network theory? Should
technology be seen as an actor?
• What is the role of ideology in hybridity?
– One reading is that hybridity has ended the ideological / rhetorical war between old
and new media.
– But also a new post-"Crashing the Gates" type conservative preservationist time is
evident (ie. municipal politics).

6. Final questions
• Normative issues need to be addressed. Is hybrid media a
good thing for pluralistic democracy? What do these examples
suggest?
• To be hybridised, things must be different to start with.
• So what is different now, and what remains different?
– Is it about technology, source, information, ideology?
• But are there dangers to that hybridity?
– What happens as social media becomes more managed
and curated (or "the dangers of Twitter...")?
– To what extent can offline power trump hybridity at times of
conflict (ie. Wikileaks)?

7. Final questions
• Normative issues need to be addressed. Is hybrid media a
good thing for pluralistic democracy? What do these examples
suggest?
• To be hybridised, things must be different to start with.
• So what is different now, and what remains different?
– Is it about technology, source, information, ideology?
• But are there dangers to that hybridity?
– What happens as social media becomes more managed
and curated (or "the dangers of Twitter...")?
– To what extent can offline power trump hybridity at times of
conflict (ie. Wikileaks)?