The Media and Politics - Siegfried Kracauer and Critical Theory of Political Communication

The research is concerned to explore the works of the German-Jewish social and cultural theorist Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966), focusing on his writings on film, totalitarian propaganda and other forms of political communication. Kracauer is widely regarded as one of the most original cultural theorists of the twentieth century. His various studies of the structure and processes of political communication, however, have attracted little critical attention. My research aims to provide a detailed reconstruction and analysis of these relatively neglected aspects of Kracauer's work. My concern is to show that Kracauer offers a highly insightful account of the manifold and complex relationships between politics, mass culture and the media in modern society. In focusing on these themes, I plan to explore Kracauer's account of the connections between the propagation of political messages, the mediation of spectacle and the representation of power. My aim is to unpack the methodological implications of his work for theorising present-day political communication and the contemporary media-scape. I intend to demonstrate that Kracauer's writings are still relevant today for the purpose of developing a thorough-going critical theory of mediated politics.

Supported by Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung