“Once more with feeling”

Abstract

As early as 2003, I argued that print, televisual, and networked media responded to the global immediacy of 9/11 with an intensified regime of “premediation” that aimed to prevent the repetition of catastrophic shock and surprise generated by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. In this chapter I will suggest that this media logic of premediation continues to govern US media in the second decade of the 21st century. More specifically, I will argue that Donald Trump’s election in 2016, which was totally unexpected by political pundits across the media spectrum, produced a global media shock parallel to that of 9/11. Although the audiovisual immediacy of his election to the US presidency did not equal the destruction of the Twin Towers, the media’s response has been to participate in endless premediation of his potential presidential actions. Trump has encouraged this premediation through a strategy I have described as “evil mediation.” Through incessant tweeting of Fox and Friends and provocative and elliptical statements thrown out on the margins of formal presidential appearances, Trump manipulates US and global media to engage in incessant premediations of his actions and their possible effects on the US economy, the environment, migrants, or global security. In this way the Trump presidency functions medialogically as an ongoing threat of terrorism against the United States and the world.