Book review: Lincoln Dahlberg and Sean Phelan (Eds.), Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics

Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics is an interesting and relevant contribution to media and communications scholarship, with the twofold aspiration to address “the relative lack of attention given to media by discourse theorists” (p. 6) and “the corresponding dearth of engagement with post-Marxist discourse theory in critical media politics research” (p. 6). Post-Marxist discourse theory refers to the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. With contributions from various scholars, this edited collection seeks to “explore the ‘contestability’ of discourse theory, as a critical theory, in relation to media politics—to examine the extent of its applicability, its limits, and various possibilities of fruitful articulation with other theoretical approaches” (p. 60). [Opening paragraph].