Political Economy and Media Ecology of Trumpism: A Contribution to the Study of Anti-systemic Politics

Abstract

Concepts developed in the field of political economy offer a useful framework for explaining, from a western perspective, the phenomenon of Trumpism as an expression of anti-system politics emerging rich democracies in response to the effects of neoliberal growth models and the cartel forms of political parties. While insightful, this theory does not account for the role of media in presumed relationships. The article aims to offer, through exploratory analysis, the theoretical basis for conceptualization of the links between media, anti-system politics, and growth models. Trumpism developed, we argue, under the conditions of destabilization of traditional institutional arrangements of the news business, which enabled and limited the functions of journalism important for the democratization of the „Western“society. The paper contributes to the development of an alternative theoretical approach to the study of the media aspect of Trumpism concerning the prevailing corpus of ideas about "post-truth", "false news" and "echo chambers".